News that Panda Energy will build an ethanol plant near Yuma should be seen in the larger picture of solving America’s energy problems.
Thanks to new technologies, agriculture could start producing not only the nation’s food but also some of our fuel and electricity.
Panda’s plant is an excellent example of how farm-made energy could reap environmental as well as economic benefits. The end product, ethanol, is a clean-burning liquid fuel that can be mixed or sometimes substituted for gasoline. The ethanol will be made from corn, but the energy used to cook it into usable fuel will come from cow manure. So one renewable fuel will be used to make another renewable fuel – all of it grown on Colorado’s Eastern Plains, not imported from the politically volatile Middle East.
The facility will save the equivalent of 1,000 barrels of oil per day, making it one of the nation’s most energy-efficient ethanol facilities. By itself, the plant can’t possibly quench the nation’s seemingly insatiable thirst for liquid fuel, now about 140 billion gallons a year. But it shows one way the nation can start weaning itself off foreign energy supplies.
Indeed, there’s a push to have agriculture produce 25 percent of the total energy used in the country by 2025. Appropriately called “25 by 25,” the effort is backed by farm groups, environmental organizations and progressive energy companies. The effort doesn’t promote just one technology but an array of energy options: Ethanol from crops and farm wastes; diesel from soybeans or used restaurant grease; natural gas from manure; electricity from wind turbines and solar panels.
The technologies should be evaluated on their economic and environmental merits. But taken together, they could help solve intertwined policy problems: improving national security, curbing global warming and providing reliable, affordable energy.
Agriculture as energy source would help rural areas, which long have had stagnant economies and shrinking populations. The Panda plant, for instance, will provide 40 to 60 good paying jobs – a windfall for Yuma, population 3,500.
But it’s only a small part of a very big, potentially bright picture. Given the many opportunities in making energy from farms, Colorado’s elected leaders and business groups should join the “25 by 25” push.
