“seems to walk you right into the food-for-fuel debate,”

What debate? We have already put to bed the myth of corn ethanol causing worldwide food price rises - (UN Report)and all but the uneducated know that cellulosic is the focus of biofuels for the next two decades. This paper confirms the POSITIVE result of using miscanthus and switchgrass for next gen ethanol.

It also indicates that Brazil might want to address ways to counter carbon depletion from their cane crops.

Is it moral to expect other countries to leave their native vegetation alone, whilst the US and other developed countries persist using land for energy use that is more cheaply obtained elewhere. There is very little effort going into changing cropland back into forests and grasslands and reintroducing the Bison.

Solar, wind and geothemal energy are so cheap and plentiful that politicians and many others are assuming that coal will not be needed to be in use by the next election. This cheap energy will make it possible to make artificial foods and hydrogen of course, and croplands can be returned to native vegetation. Corn ethanol fuel obviously does not belong in this scenario or any other one. ..HG..

Gee, a group of researchers from the University of Corn ... excuse me, the University of Illinois, have determined that expansion of Brazilian sugar cane production would be a bad thing.

Stop the Presses!

Henry wrote:

"Solar, wind and geothemal energy are so cheap and plentiful ..."

These forms of energy are actually FREE and plentiful, but capturing them and converting them to something useful, like electricity, is exceedingly expensive. In particular, they demand a very large capital investment for each kW of generating capacity. With capital very scarce, and energy prices having retreated by 50% or more in recent months, there will be very little appetite for placing large sums of money at risk in the renewable-electricity market.

Beyond that, neither electricity nor hydrogen will be viable fuels for cars, trucks, ships, and planes for many years to come. Therefore, we need some way to produce LIQUID fuels, and if we have a low-carbon footprint and sustainability as added criteria, only biofuels will do.

The sugar cane issue is one of balance, I think. Cane is VERY productive and sustainable (if managed properly), so for the long term it is a sensible choice. OTOH, it may incur a carbon debt that can take many years to repay, so massive, sudden expansion would not make sense. Slow and steady expansion, combined with more aggressive CO2-mitigation efforts in other arenas, is the sensible course to wean ourselves from crude oil over the next several decades.

Wind is presently around $1700/KWh installed. Slightly higher due to increased demands for windmills. More expensive than conventional but less expensive than costs estimated for nuclear by the utilities and the bond rate makers (in the range of 2000 to over 6000 per KWh installed). Cost of production for wind is 0.96c/KWh according to the EIA 2005 (US figures). As long as wind has a lower penetration than 25% of production, capital expeditures for it's variation adds very little to the cost of electricity (wind 2030 DOE).

I do agree that liquid fuels will be important due to invested capital inertia.

Perrenials have many advantages that annuals don't have. There are studies to create perrenial rooted crop plants by engineering wild perrenial strains with annual crops. Check SciAm for the article. Whether it works is another story.

Photosynthesis in general though is a much less efficient way to convert energy from the sun. Even though our crops have a higher than average conversion rate it doesn't even come close to solar cells. The greatest advantage plants have is the ability to self replicate and grow, which is usefull at this stage of the game but it will be less advantageous as the cost of solar comes down and electrification takes place. Biomass could prove useful though in the production of local load leveling power to supplement some variable source such as wind or solar. Costs for this solution would be higher but would allow for the use of biomass locally without the need for transportation. Always a bulky problem.