With these new laws, Louisiana is heading two directions that our nation should obviously have been following since ethanol became a strategy for weaning us off dependence on foreign energy sources.

Grow hemp for oil instead of drilling into the earth's crust 

The first one is to only produce ethanol for fuel from non-food sources while looking towards feedstock’s to produce it from that can grow in wastelands not fit for growing food crops. Even the corrupt and inept military dictatorship in Myanmar used these same standards when first setting up its renewable fuel program, which failed anyway for other reasons. 

Realistically and obviously so, corn is the most wasteful way to produce ethanol yielding only a few gallons per acre from soil valued for its food producing qualities. There are so many other crops that are totally ignored by our energy leaders and the mainstream news media which could give much higher returns from wasteland with no economic value unless to produce ethanol.

Hemp
Industrial hemp is one of them, an excellent source of feedstock for many products including fuel while it’s illegal to farm because its cousin marijuana can be smoked to make the smoker feel good.

Algae is another unbelievably efficient source of feedstock for fuel.

Much of the crude oil we drill from the ground got there having first started out as algae that died and settled to the ocean floor eventually fermenting into fossil fuel.

The US energy department studied algae in the 1980’s for its potential as a fuel source but disregarded their efforts in favor of corn.

It was a strange direction for them to take.

Algae can be used to produce ethanol and biodiesel oil while being grown at rates thousands of percents higher per acre than corn. Believe it or not, there are algae farms now using pollution from coal burning to fertilize the algae with to get much higher yields.  

There are even forms of algae that emit ethanol without having to harvest or process the algae.

There are other strains that do the same for biodiesel oil growing it on their backs where the oil builds up like greasy scum on top of the water where it can be scooped off. Even worse, since there is so little incentive in this country to get anything with regard to ethanol correct, companies who are coming up with technologies to harvest fuel from algae are being turned away going to other countries to further the future of their industry.

There is however one use of algae that recently came out that big oil companies can’t compete with - crude oil made from algae that can be processed in our existing oil refineries that’s cheaper to produce than drilling oil from the ground.

And while it can be made into gasoline or diesel fuel, since it doesn’t contain high sulfur and nitrogen compounds like crude oil, it won’t pollute like fossil fuels do. But still our leaders only want to talk about ethanol made from corn because corn farmers vote and have powerful lobbyists to support their cause.  

So it’s encouraging to know it’s possible for elected officials to get something right for a change.

But you see, if all these new laws did was produce ethanol from sources other than food crops, I would haven’t paid much attention to what Louisiana officials are doing other than to dismiss it as just another loser direction to take us down.

I’ve been hearing about replacements for corn as feedstock for ethanol production for a long time, how cellulosic ethanol made from grass and wood waste is going to save the future of ethanol in the US.

My problem has always been that ethanol has two faces, one that our leaders keep in a dark closet and the other they present to us as the only ethanol that there is, anhydrous ethanol.

Anhydrous ethanol is ethanol with almost no water content.

Hydrous ethanol is like moonshine which is around 90% alcohol and ten percent water but can still have fuel potential with as much as 35% water content.

Anhydrous ethanol takes a great deal more energy to produce because it has to be distilled three times, at least that’s the way they’re producing it here in the US. There are far more energy efficient and environmentally friendly ways to do it but it seems when it comes to energy products in this country, the worst way to get the job done is the only way our leaders are willing to take us.

But that’s not the only problem with anhydrous ethanol.

It causes a huge loss of mileage, much more than is publicly admitted, one third as compared to gasoline, which is 3% when mixed with gasoline at 10 percent like we have now. But depending on the type of ignition system a vehicle has, it can cost anywhere from a 3 to 30 percent loss of mileage.

When adding it to gasoline at 10%, a thirty percent loss of mileage says that ethanol is causing a 20% mileage loss to the gasoline it’s mixed with on top of the fact that it’s not performing for the 10 percent of space it takes up in your tank mixed with your gasoline.

Then there are the emissions of acetaldehyde from ethanol and increased gasoline emissions caused by the gasoline not burning properly.

These emissions mix in ultraviolet sun rays causing low level ozone which is on top of the fact that they’re carcinogens before they turn into the unhealthy dangerous low level ozone. And low level ozone causes its own set of problems outside of what it causes by your breathing it.

It reacts with water vapors in the suns rays to cause changes in weather patterns as proven by NASA scientists Drew Shindell.

Professor Shindell says there’s no such thing as global warming caused by carbon dioxide, that what we see happening on a daily bases with regard to weather pattern changes are caused by low level ozone causing pollutants and low level ozone itself, that it’s happening where we emit the pollutants as we emit them.

Ethanol plants emit the same low level ozone forming pollutants mixed with millions of tons of water vapor, which they do in much higher amounts when distilling corn beer three times to extract anhydrous ethanol instead of once for hydrous ethanol.

Then there’s the strain making ethanol from food products puts on world food supplies along with fertilizer run off from corn fields creating what’s called dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

A dead zone is where hundreds of thousand of square miles of once shrimp rich fishing ground are now dead. In fact it’s expected that floodwaters from the Midwest emptying into the Mississippi river right now are carrying with them the largest amount of the worst polluted water in the history of our civilization.

It can be expected to kill perhaps the whole Gulf of Mexico when the July and August sun turn it into a toxic soupy cauldron of death. And the worst aspect of that story is the people responsible for it are living in extreme denial of what they have done.

The flooding itself is a clear result of how weather pattern can be dramatically effected by the same pollutants the ethanol industry and its products exclusively produce in such high amounts that it could cause this kind of reaction from mother nature.

Really this list of how bad a fuel ethanol is goes on it seems endlessly, that is only when talking anhydrous ethanol mixed with gasoline.

But hydrous ethanol mixed with gasoline comes with near zero negative side effects while it actually has the potential to get us off dependence on foreign oil if the programs around it are designed responsibly. And this can be done quickly also where if all the other states followed the direction Louisiana is heading while competing with each other for who gets it right first, the future favorable prospects for ethanol could change in matter of months.

Then ethanol could be credited for securing ours and the rest of the world’s energy future instead of destroying it. In fact I fully expect to see this happen soon now that the hydrous ethanol genie has been let out of its corked bottle in Louisiana.

Read for yourself what Louisiana legislation intends to do -

 (2) Hydrous Ethanol - The use of hydrous ethanol blends of E10, E20, E30 and E85 in motor vehicles specifically selected for test purposes will be permitted on a trial basis until January 1, 2012. During this period the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry Division of Weights & Measures will monitor the performance of the motor vehicles. The hydrous blends will be tested for blend optimization with respect to fuel consumption and engine emissions. Preliminary tests conducted in Europe have proven that the use of hydrous ethanol, which eliminates the need for the hydrous-to-anhydrous dehydration processing step, results in an energy savings of between ten percent and forty-five percent during processing, a four percent product volume increase, higher mileage per gallon, a cleaner engine interior, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions:

HB 1270, entitled “The Advanced Biofuel Industry Development Initiative,” was co-authored by 27 members of the Legislature. The original bill was drafted by Renergie, Inc. Representative Jonathan W. Perry (R - District 47), with the support of Senator Nick Gautreaux (D - District 26), was the primary author of the bill.

 - If you’re a state lawmaker wanting to impress your citizens with something that will work, I feel confident that Louisiana legislators will not mind if you plagiarize their work. But don’t even bother thinking of heading in this direction if you’re an elected official at the federal level. The federal government is responsible for what’s happening now with anhydrous ethanol and has no intention of changing its course. Our federal government is bent on destroying the future of the greatest nation in the world using anhydrous ethanol to do it. In fact I would urge all of you who read this article to keep the truth about hydrous ethanol out of our leaders in Washington’s hands because this Louisiana program will work. But I assure you, like with everything else the federal government and our elected leaders who run it get a hold of, if they pick up the hydrous ethanol ball and start running with it, there will not be enough brains space in your mind to try to comprehend how they screwed it up anyway.

Governments take great things and ruin them. It’s been this way since the dawn of time and is even more obvious now after we’ve tried to follow government in a true direction towards freedom. Hydrous ethanol is easily brewed in your backyard or locally in your community. You don’t need federally institutionalized programs to help or force you to use it for fuel. The federal government performs big wasteful tasks like running the military well. But when they apply their big approach to small issues that have big potential, anhydrous ethanol mixed into our gasoline is the kind of thing they come up with.

Our government runs our military well even though it makes a lot of mistakes doing it. But then when we put small-minded men in control of the military, we get wars all over the world. So perhaps we need smaller minds paying attention to our energy needs and bigger minds designing our foreign policy. But one thing is for sure, anhydrous ethanol needs to go and appears to now be heading for the door. We can all thank Louisiana for that.  

Thank you Louisiana

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