Cellulosic ethanol is the go-to excuse for the built in drawbacks of biomass guzzling.

The governor of Iowa said in a town meeting here recently that McCain opposing farm state ethanol subsidies was like dissing maple syrup in Vermont.  Political suicide.

He did however recognize farm biogas as a potent energy source.

Our challenge as environmentalists is to grab the slim chance to steer farm policy away from ethanol and towards farm biogas in the first years of this green job wave. 

With biogas powered farm equipment, to save farmers diesel fuel costs, organic fertilizer to save the cost of natural gas derived ammonmia fertilizer, and payments for backup for a renewable power grid, to farmers for their biogas based electricity; we have a powerful economic argument.

Millions of distributed solid oxide fuel cell/turbine cogeneration systems fed by farm biogas would take a lot of workers to manufacture, install, operate, and maintain.  Lots of green jobs there.

And it could offset and help prevent (by backing up a mainly wind/solar powered grid) most GHG emissions.

Plugin hybrids could be charged from that grid, replacing the gas and biomass guzzling vehicles and resultant financial crisis we are now plagued with.

The governor reponded favorably to utility regulatory reform to get farm biogas electricity as a backup for wind/solar electricity.  maybe with some careful, but well designed reason, pro-fuel farming politicians could be steered towards this much better policy.

Some cows here in Wisconsin already have wood chips for bedding.  The chips go in the manure digestor after that, then they are softened by the process, partially broken down, then reused as bedding.

Eventually they are turned into biogas and organic fertilizer, going through 2 or 3 cycles.

That's a big market for waste cellulose that poses fire danger as slash out in the forests.  Get a CCC harvesting and recycling that cellulose and every farm turning them into biogas to backup a renewable smart grid.

There's a path to profit.  Now government needs to facilitate that.  Forests suffering from a dangerous burden of flammable dead wood really could be a major backup power source for our national energy needs.

Proper subsidies and R and D could make that happen.  Ethanol subsidies need to shift to this better path to make farmers, tree and food, the alternative to OPEC and fossil based energy corporations.

Farm biogas from waste backing up a renewable smart grid, charging plugin hybrids.  We have science on our side.  And a climate and economy to save.  And plenty of biomass, manure, garbage, sewage, crop waste, wood waste. 

Every bit of biogas used offsets the release of 20 times the CO2 into the atmosphere.  And every bit of organic fertilizer recycled offsets 296 times the CO2, released from chemical fertilizer due to Nitrous Oxide.  That's a lot of GHG offset!

The latest wrinkle may be to use biodigestion (instead of acid, pressure, and heat) to break down pulp to make paper.  That way paper plants could become net energy producers, using the biogas from digestion to generate power for the grid and provide cogenerated heat for processing.

This is the sort of project we need from public university research and funded through government.  A way for paper mills to go green and compete with companies burning down brazilian rainforests and exporting our jobs from the hometown papermill to Brazil.

Compete with that!  Combined paper and clean energy production.