Sustainable Bioenergy

From Robert Rapier, a presentation on sustainable bioenergy. This is particularly important in vew of last night's discussion at the Transition meeting - what 3-5 things do we need to do now. Robert's presentation is about sugarcane ethanol in particular. Along the way he points out that the Brazilians produce and consume oil in almost equal amounts, whereas US production and consumption are grossly out of balance. Ethanol to make up the difference is not difficult to Can we ever emulate Brazil? He believes we can, assuming we either cut our oil consumption by 75% or quadruple our oil production. The former is a huge change that I don't believe Americans are ready to make while the latter is simply improbable if not impossible.

This is a worthwhile presentation to look at since he also addresses the factors that makes a process sustainable. In his view we can approximate sustainability, never really achieve it.