Everyone knows that corn ethanol is a joke. Oh, you believed all those E85 commercials? Well, it’s not as good as it looks. Regular old gasoline is able to produce about 5 times as much energy as went in to it’s production. Corn ethanol only produces about 1.3 times as much energy as goes it to it’s creation because it has to have the sugar extracted from it, then it is converted to sugar ethanol. This process makes it barely break even in it’s efficiency. The plus, of course, being that it is a renewable resource that grows here in the US and removes dependency on foreign oil. Sure, it’s nice and “green”, but it’s still got 15% regular old gasoline in it and it really isn’t efficient enough to lower the prices at the pump.

What if we could take plants like corn or pretty much any other crop and turn it in to 100% ethanol fuel that is more efficient than current corn/sugar ethanol? Enter cellulosic ethanol. Part of what makes sugar ethanol inefficient and expensive is that not all plants have a lot of sugar in them to extract and process in to ethanol. All plants, however, have cellulose. Lots of it. A company called Range Fuels has plans to build a 100 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol plant in Georgia, using wood waste from Georgia’s forests as it’s feed stock. Range Fuels’ claim is that their ethanol will be able to produce 16 times as much energy as goes in to its production. Similarly, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is spearheading a 125 million dollar initiative to research and develop biofuels utilizing cellulose to help relieve our dependence on foreign fuels.

These technologies go beyond using sugars found in sugarcane and corn to produce the ethanol and instead use non-food plants and parts of plants, relying on the cellulose. Instead of raising the prices of sugar or corn at the grocery store because it is instead being used to create fuel, the stalks left over would instead be used as the fuel. The corn could once again do what it’s best at: give me a stomach ache and not get fully digested. It goes beyond just using things like woodchips and corn stalks to create the fuel. Almost any bio waste could be turned in to ethanol, such as grass clippings, fallen trees, and pretty much any other plant waste. Now that the fuels are starting to be produced, it is just a matter of time before all of the car manufacturers start realizing that this is the way of the future and start making all of their cars ethanol-ready.

The real question is: How long until I’m driving an ethanol hybrid plug-in that I charge in my garage next to a personal ethanol processor into which I unload my grass clippings, weeds, and other yard waste so that I can fuel my car for the week?