Unsustainable Ethanol, and other stuff

A recent study has looked at ethanol as a means to replace gasoline, and found that it wouldn't help matters much. Specifically, in order to fuel the US auto fleet on ethanol, essentially all arable US land would have to be turned over to corn production. However, the study is the first I've read to claim that current ethanol actually has a positive energy balance, which should be controversial. In any case, the study does limit itself to conventional (corn and sugar) ethanol production, and doesn't seem to deal with the better option of cellulosic ethanol. However, this paragraph is right on:

Considering that, eventually, petroleum may no longer be available in the amounts currently consumed, one must conclude that substitution of alternatives to fossil fuel cannot be done using one option alone. It will prove more prudent to have numerous options (e.g., ethanol, fuel cells, solar energy), each participating with fractional contributions to the overall national and global need for fuel energy. Finally, it is important to notice that no option comes free from significant environmental problems.

"Numerous options" seems to be a pretty solid reccomendation of plug-in hybrids to me. Actually, it's almost the perfect argument for flex-fuel, plug in hybrids in a single paragraph.

Ah, but the eternal question: Where do we get the electricity? In Ontario we're busy importing gigawatts every day as our largest coal-fired reactor is down due to labor problems. Well, it won't surprise you to learn that the Ontario government is taking a fresh look at nuclear power. Just in time, Amory Lovins comes in with a bitch-slap:

The U.S. Congress may soon accomplish an extraordinary feat: a national energy policy that undermines national security, substitutes hogs-at-the-trough market distortions for free markets, and is anti-life, anti-human-rights, and anti-federalist—all at the same time. Let's focus here just on the first part: how the energy bill that may soon become law would lastingly undermine the Pentagon's security mission.

This erosion takes three main forms: doubling and prolonging for decades U.S. dependence on the most vulnerable, concentrated, and hard-to-fix element of its oil infrastructure, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS)1; putting major terrorist targets along our coasts and near our cities; and greatly facilitating the proliferation of nuclear bombs. For brevity, we'll examine here only this last piece—nuclear energy.

Nuclear power, once claimed to be too cheap to meter, is now too costly to matter.

Ouch. Read the whole thing - it's really good.