I have had family visiting me for the past two weeks, which has slowed my posting down a bit. I am trying to finish up the followup story to the essay on the MixAlco process, but it will probably be early next week before that one is ready. Until then, here is a 12-minute radio interview that I did this week for a Midwestern radio program called Farm Talk:
RR Interview on the USDA Report and Future of Renewable Energy
We covered the implications of the USDA report covered in the previous essay, the future of cellulosic ethanol (I mentioned POET in the interview), the proposed ethanol pipeline, and what characteristics I look for in a renewable energy project.
I just listened to the interview, and I did misspeak at one point. I said that the report implies that you could take 1 BTU of fossil fuel and make 1 BTU of ethanol. What I meant to say was “the report implies that you can take 1 BTU of ethanol to make 2 BTUs of ethanol, but this is in fact not true.” Other than that, regular readers will find an emphasis on many of the themes often discussed here.