Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich weighed in on cellulosic biofuels yesterday during his latest trip to New Hampshire.
“Well, I think there are new technologies that allow you to use corn stalks and corn husks and other things. I am in favor of developing some biofuels and I think it can be done in a way that doesn’t affect the cost of food at all," Gingrich told local radio talk show host Al Kulas after delivering a speech at the Keene Country Club on Monday. This was his third trip to the Granite State in just three weeks, according to the Boston Globe.
Unlike corn-based ethanol, cellulosic biofuels are made from non-crop plant matter. Mass producing the stuff won't cause food prices to skyrocket, at least in theory, putting to rest a fear that has plagued the industry for years now
It is refreshing to see Newt Gingrich move beyond the "Drill baby drill" rhetoric of the Republican Party and embrace non-partisan solutions to the nation's energy crisis. Newt's words yesterday echoed President Obama's own call for  "biofuels made from things like switchgrass and wood chips and biomass." Let's hope other Republican presidential hopefuls follow his lead.
Photo by Gage Skidmore
Video of Newt Gingrich talking biofuels in New Hampshire (fast forward to 4:00 mark)
Article ©2011 David Green for Gather.com. Follow me on Twitter @NHPrimary2012 or on Blogger at NewHampshirePrimary.Blogspot.com
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Comments: 6
Problem is, there isn't much energy in switch grass or corn stalks. The corn stalks right now get chopped up and spit back out onto the field to decompose and add nutrients to the soil. If you didn't put them back into the soil, you would need even more fertilizer. You need lots and lots of switch grass to get it to actually amount to real power.
Alternative energies help. But we need a cheap reliable source for base power. Wind, solar and switchgrass can nibble on the edges, but can't be used for base power.
Coal, nukes, hydro. Unless some great technology breakthrough happens, we need one of these three.
But the law under which National Parks were formed does provide for the extraction of resources from them. Our leadership has the legal means to do things like hydrothermal energy, in National Parks.
I was raised & live in the communities of the Olympic Peninsula (west of Seattle). Logging country, big-time. The fastest-growing, heaviest-producing timberland in the country.
A lot of our timberland base was taken out of rotation in the late 1980s, as a means of extending protections to the Northern Spotted Owl.
Many rural residents in the region matter of factly accept that we were a political casualty. That the intention was to damage "the logging industry", and the Owl was a handy means to the desired end.
The real source of cellulose in a world that makes serious use of this exciting potential technology, will be our timberlands. Not our corn fields.
To tip the balance of our overall resource-dependency from established agricultural lands, toward politically-charged timberlands which powerful interests see as halfway back to Wilderness by the time they come up for harvest, is likely to be something those interests will resist.
Furthermore, anti-forestry interests strongly resist innovations which allow the use of immature, small forest plants. Such interests do not want to see forestry placed on a short-rotation basis - and cellulosic fuels bear all the signs of being very short-rotation friendly.
Cellulosic fuels have the theoretical potential to be a serious game-changer, though. It may be that even the most powerful & entrenched anti-forestry interests will simply have to be 'thrown under the bus'.
For example, if an American University holds a hot patent on a cellulosic conversion technique or organism, and they find commercialization of it too hampered or limited here in the USA, they may ultimately license it in Brazil, Africa, and eastern Russia.
That could represent a geopolitical 'disturbance' that the Powers That Be may find unacceptable. Those who dream of ultimately de-commercializing our forests, may find themselves checkmated by cellulosic technology.
And that could go a good ways to explain Newt Gingrich' seeming-enlightenment.
See Wikipedia entries: Niagara Falls, and Sir Adam Beck 1 and 2 (Canadian) & Robert Moses Hydroelectric Power Plant (USA).
Niagara Falls is one of, if not the largest hydroelectric resource in North America. However, we do not use it to capacity: during tourist season diversion of water to the generators is limited in order to maintain a nice 'display' of water falling over the falls (during daylight hours).
Total capacity at Niagara is 4.4 gigawatts - the equivalent of about 4 'full-size' nuclear plants.
We could exceed the production at Niagara, by reexamining the potential to dam other large rivers. It's mainly a "political issue".