Let’s stop obsessing about corn
Just an FYI, my Clean Break column on Monday discussed the debate around ethanol and criticizes skeptics who dwell on the weaknesses of corn-based ethanol without seeing the long-term potential and appreciating the technical progress around cellulosic ethanol. I recognize we still have plenty of work to do to drive down the cost of cellulosic ethanol production, but I do take issue with those pundits who claim we need some kind of technological breakthrough before we can move away from non-grain feedstocks such as corn. Fact is the inventions have been done and an immense amount of work is going on to make cellulosic ethanol production economically feasible and sustainable.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca