Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Ethanol and biodiesel are dead, long live methanol!”

Patrick Takahashi, writing in The Huffington Post: “Ethanol and biodiesel are dead, long live methanol! Methanol is the simplest alcohol, with one carbon atom; ethanol has two. Methanol is the only biofuel capable of being directly fed to a fuel cell. Plus, and this is difficult to accept, but true: one gallon of methanol has more hydrogen than one gallon of liquid hydrogen. Thus, the infrastructure is already largely in place for a methanol economy. So why is our country and rest of world enamored over ethanol and biodiesel? In two words, the Farm Lobby. They came up with a politically brilliant scheme to use corn as an answer to imported oil. By so doing, the price of farm commodities recently doubled and more. Farmers are ecstatic! The poor around the world are suffering.”

Stefan Tangermann, agriculture director for the OECD: “I call urgently for reduced support for biofuels. It is the only lever on which we can act rapidly.”

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