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http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/../photos/data/2/AmericanFlag.jpg Article goes on to say it's not a definitive answer (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/07/1925350.aspx)

http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/501/Corn_for_Ethanol1.jpgAlan Boyle - Cosmic Log - May 7, 2009

A great and informative article. I'll admit to having a strong leaning between the two. --Ed.

Suppose you take an acre's worth of switchgrass and turn it into ethanol for your flex-fuel car, while your neighbors take their acre's worth and burn it in a power plant to generate electricity for their plug-in hybrid. Which car would go farther?

If you guessed that your car would, you'd be way off. About 7,000 miles off, in fact.
In a study published online today by the journal Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/sciencexpress/recent.dtl), researchers say using biomass to generate electricity is more efficient for transportation than making biofuels - and might actually do more to cut CO2 emissions as well.

So does that mean bioelectricity is better than bioethanol? Wrong again.

"Currently, at a commercial scale, we're only beginning to explore these two different scenarios," said lead study author Elliott Campbell, an engineering professor at the University of California at Merced (http://www.ucmerced.edu/news_articles/05072009_study_suggests_bioelectricity_could.asp). "In both cases, it really remains to be seen which technology pathway can develop quicker."... http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/07/1925350.aspx

I did do the poll first, then read in the article the exact words that were going through my head:

"In both cases, it really remains to be seen which technology pathway can develop quicker."

I got the question right for now, but it's quite possible for that answer to change in the near future.

Since ethanol articles get large responses, I expected this one would too.

Yes, I'm aware that Alan Boyle says the jury is out on this, but still confirms my suspicions that it's lot's more efficient to burn biomass like switchgrass directly at a powerplant than spend more energy converting it into ethanol, then distributing it

If you eat corn and ride a bicycle, you can do about 10x better than a car on switchgrass ethanol: about 80,000 miles per acre of corn. (150 bushels/acre x 56 pounds shelled corn/bushel x 16 ounces/pound x 24 Calories/ounce / 40 Calories/mile)

Regardless of your fuel source, driving a 3,000-lb vehicle to move a 150-lb person will never be an efficient use of energy.

If you eat corn and ride a bicycle, you can do about 10x better than a car on switchgrass ethanol: about 80,000 miles per acre of corn. (150 bushels/acre x 56 pounds shelled corn/bushel x 16 ounces/pound x 24 Calories/ounce / 40 Calories/mile)

Regardless of your fuel source, driving a 3,000-lb vehicle to move a 150-lb person will never be an efficient use of energy.

Yeah maybe one day we'll be driving 1,000 pound cars that only go about 20 to 30mph which run off of a combination of batteries and embedded solar panels. Really though, it seems like most places we go 20 to 30mph is fast enough. In any large city that still puts you at getting from one side of town to the other in less than an hour.