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I like your thinking. I have been writing letters off and on through the years to our governor and senators on this topic as well.

One of the main arguments that I have heard to refining cellulosic and other non-food material (garbage, grease, etc.) into biofuel is that it takes more energy than is generated by the end product (biofuel). While I don't know if this is in fact true, here's my thoughts.

Recently the wind farms in the gorge produced so much power on one day that it almost overloaded the grid. My thought for years has been that when we have surpluses of this sort, why not use that "unusable" surplus of power for the creation of biofuel or to create the gases necessary for fuel cells or for carbon sequestration, etc.? By using the "surplus" power in this way, you use what would otherwise be wasted to achieve positive results. This biofuel or the fuel cells can be used to supplement the power grid's needs when solar or wind power runs short to kind of even out the ebb and flow of power generation dependant upon the sun and or wind.

posted 4 years, 10 months ago
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