Great Gristmill blog discussion:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/4/0241/31043/#2

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.jaffe.html

"The prospect of cheap cellulosic ethanol makes it possible to envision a very different energy landscape. Since it doesn't require fuel-intensive refining, Iogen's product would provide a net energy gain"

This is a bit misleading.  Actually the Iogen process requires more processing energy than ethanol from corn does.  Which is what it ought to be compared too. 

Sam is comparing it to the energy intensive process of breaking down the cellulose into fermentable starch and sugar using large industrial pressure cooking, similar to the process used to break down cellulose to make paper.

The Iogen process uses a bacteria that works like a natural organism in a wasp's digestive system to break down the cellulose.  That adds an extra  fermentation process which takes more energy than the single fermentation of corn mash.

The lower price of ethanol from  the Iogen process is due to the feedstock, crop waste, wood chips, or switchgrass is a lot cheaper than corn.

And the net energy gain from cellulosic ethanol is from the lack of chemical fertilizer needed to grow switchgrass and the fact that crop waste gets a free ride (so to speak) fertilizer wise, because the cost of the fertilizer is absorbed by the food portion of the crop, the grain or corn.

Monoculture switchgrass taking over the land now in conservation would further devestate the environment and burning more fossil fuel or using more nuclear power to process crop waste will cause more green house gas and other pollution and contamination related to nuclear power.

Only cellulosic ethanol from crop and food waste processed with wind, solar, and by using heat pumps to make fermentation and  distillation much more efficient will be an eco-friendly method.

And taking all that crop waste, normally tilled back in, out of the soil ecosystem will devestate the soil even further than chemical farming already has.  Use up the soil and we are sunk.

The costs, all heavily subsidized, for this cheap fuel could never compete with electric cars charged up with wind, solar, and wave power systems.

And where did anyone get the idea that burning ethanol is that much better than burning gasoline as far as global climate change is concerned?

The fuel cell/ethanol concept seems a good one as far as greenhouse gas goes, except that fuel cells are way too expensive and the catalytic converters to produce hydrogen from ethanol have not been perfected and still may emit a certain amount of CO2.

Wind, wave, and solar powered by the nuclear reactor in the sun is as close as we will ever get to perpetual free fueless non-polluting energy.  And run through electric vehicles and geothermal heat pumps it will beat these other schemes all hollow in every respect.

But that's in a real free market without  government subsidies, hidden as in the cost of war, global climate disaster, and nuclear waste; or  exposed in the form of pork barrel legislated corporate welfare for oil, nuclear, and agri-bizz interests.

Once again, I will repeat, the environmental movement needs to get unified behind the very best energy policy or the powerful interests behind these other subsidized corporate plans  WILL win.