Hi All

Zubrin actually says something sensible in this article (thanks to LJK's bioastro posts)...

Alcohol Economy guts Oil dependence

...and he makes a case for a mixed alcohol - ethanol/methanol - economy as the goal of energy policy. Several good reasons - methanol can be made from coal and natural gas, and most countries have a lot of both, ethanol is easily biodegradable, and it can be made from plants. Plus energy density is much higher than hydrogen.

Tom's earlier post makes a good point - that ethanol needs to be made from more of the plant to be a net energy source. Raw sugar from a plant is less than 20% of the potential sugar if all the cellulose is broken down. Currently the energy balance is slightly in the red, but if cellulose can be broken down the gain goes up immensely as 90% of the plant becomes useful.

Cellulose decomposition is becoming easier and cheaper, but it should get a bigger R & D boost - then agricultural excess will be an excess no longer.

Adam