Steven Holt: “For years, ethanol was dismissed as a net energy loser. It cost more energy to grow the crops and ferment them and…”

“For years, ethanol was dismissed as a net energy loser. It cost more energy to grow the crops and ferment them and produce useful fuel; it took more fuel than it provided. It was a net energy user. So it was easy to dismiss that and not invest much money in distribution systems and so forth. Then, because there were not distribution systems, there was not much motivation to develop more efficient catalytic processes, to work with the waste, as you would be doing with cellulosic ethanol, for example. It really was, if we may mix an agricultural metaphor here, a chicken and egg problem, and we need to step in. This is the sort of thing that the government can do at low cost without picking winners and losers by actually providing more choice, by making it possible for people to distribute the fuel as the new technology makes it economical and efficient to produce that fuel. It is a matter of investment in research and investment in infrastructure. Some of this is done through incentives, some of it is done through demonstration projects, some of it is done through direct investment of research and development. We can break out of this self-defeating chicken and egg cycle, or chicken and egg restriction.”