Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Ethanol will put the FOSSIL in fossil fuel

An excellent interview of Vinod Khosla by Stone Philips of NBC Dateline, discussing the advantages of Ethanol as a GREEN RENEWABLE fuel. There is a transcript and linked video.

The key here is the infrastructure buildout - deploying FFV - flex fuel E85 capable cars, and fuel station buildout providing E85 fuel on a critical mass.

Noteable is the point about Brazil's huge shift in FFV cars, and how a significant portion of Brazil's automobile internal combustion fueling is done with Ethanol very cost effectively and with many benefits to air quality in urban areas.

What is apparent is there are no technical impediments to modest deployment on a larger scale, merely the need to buildout the infrastructure top to bottom. The result will be a shift from our present petroleum monopoly to a partial renewable fuel market for automobiles with many benefits - to consumers, and reduction of pollution, and lower costs.

Highlighted is the promise of improved technology of cellulosic ethanol - which will eventually use cheap switchgrass productively by technology innovations in the cellulosic feedstock and related ethanol processes.

At MSNBC

A simple solution to pain at the pump

The ethanol revolution is coming





Saturday, October 07, 2006

Innovation in Ethanol ( to the chagrin of the Oil Drum Cabal )

This excellent article at Wired magazine by Khosla, indicates more in depth about a very promising means to make cellulosic ethanol viable, very quickly and to a degree that will gain momentum in automobile fueling, with critical mass in the marketplace.

Khosla's bet on his recent startup investment Kergy and its Ethanol manufacturing process technology is spot on - a better process from Robert. E. (Bud) Klepper, that will move this dream of Ethanol to a viable and commercially competitive fuel alternative.

Innovation of Substance in Process Technology will rule the day. And may we see long overdue heartburn in Houston, Riyadh [possibly montana too?] over this... or at the minumum, a nice healthy drop in oil prices... Competition is good.

See this post at VentureBeat ( the new blog by Matt Marshall, formerly of SiliconBeat )

My sincerest condolences to the Oil Drum . Oil Drummers are welcome to change horses any time, even if there might be some embarrassment in doing so.

The spirit of Innovation will move markets and change paradigms, even reduce greenhouse gases and make the formerly impossible become possible.





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