Much Ado About Ethanol
Last week, President Bush announced in his State of the Union address that the United States is "addicted to oil." This realization comes not a moment too soon, as a peak in global oil production may be on the horizon, according to experts featured in this month's Peak Oil <http://www.worldwatch.org/ct/20060207/pubs/mag/2006/191/> issue of World Watch magazine.
Luckily, there are alternatives. Biofuels, particularly ethanol, may be part of the answer. By fermenting plant material into ethanol, the U.S. and other oil-guzzling nations could grow a much larger share of their fuel domestically, offering them an opportunity to dramatically reduce reliance on oil imports and mitigate the release of carbon into the atmosphere. (See State of the World 2006, Chapter 4: Cultivating Renewable Alternatives to Oil <http://www.worldwatch.org/ct/20060207/pubs/sow/2006/toc/4/>.) As Worldwatch biofuels project manager Suzanne Hunt notes in a recent Reuters article <http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/34844/story.htm>, the biggest potential for large-scale production lies in cellulosic ethanol technologies--ethanol made from agricultural, forestry, and municipal wastes, not food crops.
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