Socioecology Research Today

In Washington, the 112th Congress adjourned without renewing the $0.45 VEETC tax credit for blenders of corn ethanol and the $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. “With Congress in recess, there are no opportunities for further attempts to prolong the tax credit or the tariff, so we can confidently say these support mechanisms will [...]

In addition to looking at market access, in the form of blender pump and ethanol pipeline investments – the ethanol industry may well need to look carefully at its strategy to distribute E85 ethanol at a 25 percent discount to gasoline on a wider basis, and work carefully with automakers on rapidly increasing the number [...]

Strategies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emission in agriculture have been debated for some time, especially in Brazil, where the agricultural sector is an important contributor to the national emission balance. The present study focuses on the change in greenhouse gas balance from the conversion of sugarcane areas from burned to green harvest, considering [...]

Brazil is the largest worldwide producer of alcohol and sugar from sugar-cane and has an extensive alternative program for car fuel which is unique. The objective of this work is to offer one management option of a solid residue produced by this industrial segment. The pressed sugar-cane bagasse is burned to produce steam and electricity [...]

So-called flex-fuel engines use a mixture of fuels, the most common combination being around 15 percent gasoline and 85 percent ethanol. But these engines tend to pay a 30 percent efficiency penalty because they are optimized to use gasoline, says Rod Beazley, product group director for gasoline at the engineering-research firm Ricardo, based in Detroit. [...]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on November 17 that the 2009 renewable fuel standard (RFS) will require most refiners, importers, and non-oxygenate blenders of gasoline to displace 10.21% of their gasoline with renewable fuels such as ethanol. That requirement aims to ensure that at least 11.1 billion gallons of fuels will be sold [...]

Restoring the missing link between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades could mean re-engineering the River of Grass to bypass a sugar mill and a new U.S. Sugar ethanol plant, water managers revealed Thursday. Once the path is settled, construction could stretch over 20 years to build the new system of reservoirs and water treatment areas [...]

A new analysis suggests that biofuels grown in the tropics are not a much greener source of energy than drilling for oil–at least in the short term. The research paints an even gloomier picture of biofuels than previous studies, which have begun to cast doubts on the greenhouse gas benefits that these alternatives to petroleum [...]

So what is the carbon impact of biofuels? The answer depends upon a slew of unknowns. Will technological advances reduce the production cost of more environmentally friendly biofuels to the point of commercial competitiveness? Can these fuels be grown benignly if market forces offer higher profits when environmental constraints are ignored? Will improvements in yields, [...]

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2008) — When it comes to using distiller’s grains in finishing rations of High Plains cattle, a Texas AgriLife Research scientist says the type of grain used makes all the difference. Dr. Jim MacDonald, AgriLife Research beef nutritionist at Amarillo, said there’s been some skepticism about using distiller’s grains in this region. [...]