On the Newsstand: Biofuels
The most recent issues of two monthly magazines, National Geographic and Wired, boast solid cover stories on biofuels – solid because they make clear the limitations of corn-derived ethanol and focus on the promise of celluloic ethanol – yet the covers themselves present two very different ways of shifting the conversation past corn ethanol and on to cellulose.
On the cover of National Geographic, the title “Growing Fuel: The Wrong Way, The Right Way,” is superimposed over an ear of corn. This is a little confusing as the article focuses (in turn) on producing ethanol from U.S. corn, Brazilian sugarcane, U.S. cellulosic crops, and algae. The article explains the lower energy return from corn-based ethanol and makes a promising case for the other possibilities. So why tout corn on the cover?
The cover of Wired is the template for the button that could, with the right marketing, start appearing on the lapels of biofuel advocates, the single word, “Switch,”woven through a stalk of switchgrass. The sub-head then drives home the point: “Forget oil. This plant is the future of energy. Inside the new science of ethanol.”
Wired takes the edgier route and quickly dismisses corn, focusing first on the history of cellulosic ethanol research, which dates to the 1970s energy crisis. From there, it focuses on the development of the industrial enzymes that break tough cell fibers into the sugars that yeast ferments into ethanol, and on the business prospects for scaling production, reducing costs, and building a national infrastructure for the fuel.
Considering the stories together, the success of the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol industry makes a strong case for the industrial possibilities of a U.S. market for cellulosic ethanol. This is the sort of coverage that biofuels deserve. This new coverage is in stark contrast to the myopic framing in Rolling Stone’s July article, which, while rightly pointing out the insurmountable problems that limit corn ethanol’s potential, conflates all the possibilities of ethanol with all the drawbacks of corn and buries discussion of cellulosic fuels at the end of the piece.
Biofuels do have a future, as does responsible mainstream press coverage of their development.
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