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How do you turn Miscanthus or switchgrass into ethanol?

There is currently no commercial cellulosic ethanol process available.

Crop-based biofuels compete with food. Here's a commentary on that subject from Lester Brown:

Exploding U.S. Grain Demand for Automotive Fuel Threatens World Food Security and Political Stability

Now that the year’s grain harvest is safely in the bin, it is time to take stock and look ahead. This year’s harvest of 1,967 million tons is falling short of the estimated consumption of 2,040 million tons by some 73 million tons. This shortfall of nearly 4 percent is one of the largest on record.

Even more sobering, in six of the last seven years world grain production has fallen short of use. As a result, world carryover stocks of grain have been drawn down to 57 days of consumption, the lowest level in 34 years. The last time they were this low wheat and rice prices doubled.

The growth in world grain consumption during the six years since 2000 averaged roughly 31 million tons per year. Of this growth, close to 24 million tons were consumed as food or feed. The annual growth in grain used to produce fuel ethanol for cars in the United States alone averaged nearly 7 million tons per year, climbing from 2 million tons in 2001 to 14 million tons in 2006.

Now the amount of grain used to produce fuel is exploding. Investment in crop-based fuel production, once dependent on government subsidies, is now driven by the price of oil. With the current price of ethanol double its cost of production, the conversion of agricultural commodities into fuel for cars has become hugely profitable. In the United States, this means that investment in fuel ethanol distilleries is controlled by the market, not by government.

The huge profits from converting corn into ethanol following the late 2005 oil price hikes have led to a jump in groundbreakings for new ethanol distilleries in the last few months. The World Ethanol and Biofuels reports, published biweekly by F.O. Licht, show construction starting on an astounding 54 new ethanol distilleries in the United States between October 25, 2005, and October 24, 2006. With a typical construction period of 14 months, virtually all of them will be producing by the end of 2007. Together these plants, with 4 billion gallons of annual ethanol production capacity, will consume 39 million tons of grain per year, nearly all of it corn.

(...)

In looking forward to 2007, how much will we need to increase the harvest to avoid a further drawdown in stocks? First, we need a rise of 73 million tons just to overcome the 2006 production shortfall. Beyond that we will need 24 million tons of additional output to cover the estimated annual growth in food and feed needs. If we then add 39 million additional tons to supply the 54 new distilleries cited above, for the U.S. alone we are looking at a growth in demand of 136 million tons of additional grain from the 2007 harvest if we are to avoid a further decline in stocks.

For a world where the growth in the grain harvest has averaged scarcely 20 million tons per year since 2000, the chances of such a huge jump in the harvest next year are not good, even with the stimulus of high grain prices. Beyond this, farmers must contend with spreading shortages of irrigation water and the prospect of even more intense heat waves as the earth’s temperature rises.

Cellulosic ethanol doesn't exist yet, and large scale crop-based biofuels are likely to be an unsustainable, unethical, uneconomic disaster for civilization. Some choice.


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