Leap-Frogging hydrogen hurdles

#74 on Discover's Top 100 Science Stories of 2009 is hydrogen power.

The only "waste" created by hydrogen fuel cells are water and heat. This makes them tremendously attractive as energy producers. Two of the main problems are that they currently require expensive platinum catalysts and the source is often fossil fuels.

Jean-Pol Dodelet of the National Institute of Scientific Research in Quebec has looked to the human body for inspiration. Within our organic construct, iron-based molecules extract energy from food. Dodelet and his team are looking at enhanced iron-based catalysts to use in fuels cells. It works just as well as platinum but is obviously less expensive.

MIT's Daniel Nocero is also using nature for his work, this time looking at plants. When his catalyst is combined with photovoltaic cells like the ones used in solar panels, it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, mimicking photosynthesis. He wants to use this technology to provide power to those living off the grid.

With Nocera's system, only dependency is on the sun.

Algae make clean, renewable fuel

#37 on Discover's Top 100 science stories of 2009:

" When researchers conceived of turning algae into diesel fuel three decades ago, the idea sounded like something out the old sci-fi movie Soylent Green. But in July, ExxonMobil teamed up with biologist J. Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics to take algae biofuel to the marketplace. ExxonMobil invested $600 million to design better strains of algae and to convert them into fuel. Meanwhile, several start-up companies - including Aurora Biofuels and Solix Biofuels - have built pilot plants that prove it is possible to brew algae-derived diesel fuel in large quantities. "At the beginning we'd tell people, 'I know this sounds crazy,'" says Bryan Wilson, a Colorado State University engineer and co-founder of of Solix Biofuels. "But with the ExxonMobil investment, algae is entering the mainstream.

Traditional biofuel crops such as soybeans yield up 50 to 150 gallons of fuel per planted acre per year, but Solix's facility near Durango, Colorado, is producing more than 2,000. The centerpiece is a sealed growth chamber, or photo-bioreactor, made form a clear polymer to let sunlight through; inside is a strain of algae selected for its high rate of oil production. (Closed reactors are less susceptible to contamination by outside algae than are open-pond systems.) After the algae are harvested, their oils are extracted and refined into renewable diesel. Besides sunlight, the algae require little more than carbon dioxide from nearby power plants, so operating expenses should be low.

Wilson predicts his company's algae fuel (and its coproducts, which are to ve sold for animal feed) will be cost-competitive with petroleum diesel within five years. "It represents a large-scale solution to a global problem," he says."

- Elizabeth Svobada

The solar panel/tortoise conundrum

Nothing is ever easy. Convincing the public that global warming is a reality and alternative, renewable sources of energy are paramount is difficult. Preserving endangered species of flora and fauna without bringing progress to a grinding halt is another hard-to-sell idea.

What happens when the two are combined?

For the answer to that, we turn to the Mojave Desert, where Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource Energy is pushing to erect 400,000 mirrors to gather the sun's energy in an effort to meet the state's goal of using sustainable energy for a third of it's overall energy needs.

So far, so great, right?

Well, there's a hurdle in the form of a turtle. Or, to be more scientifically accurate and precise, the desert tortoise, an endangered species whose main habitat is smack in the middle of where BrightSource wish to build its solar farm. This would result in the tortoises' living space being permanently eradicated.

A baby desert tortoise

The Sierra Club wants the company to relocate the project, which would also effect the Western burrowing owl and bighorn sheep.

"It's actually a good project," said Ileene Anderson of the Center for Biological Diversity, based in Tucson. "It's just located in the wrong place."

Unfortunately this will not be the first time such a dilemma is encountered and so it seems some sort of precedent should established and precedent be reached.

The site is optimal for BrightSource; it has virtually unbroken sunshine year round.

What is likely to happen is that BrightSource will have to spend $25 million moving the shelled critters and 12,000 acres elsewhere. This may seem a hefty price to impose on a company doing such forward-thinking work, but endangering the tortoises any further beyond moving them is not an option.

The disagreement comes down to what BrightSource would pay for long-term maintenance of the new tortoise land purchased.

It will probably be months before state and federal regulators determine the final fate of the desert tortoise.

Drawn from an AP article by Michael R. Blood.

WCI #12: The power of garbage

Scientific American says: "Trash is loaded with energy trapped in its chemical bonds. Plasma gasification, a technique that has been in development for decades, could finally be ready to extract it."

Apparently, it's pretty darn easy. Electricity is shot through a gas, which can be simply be ordinary air, and creates plasma. Plasma is superheated ionized gas that can reach temperatures of 7,000 degrees Celsius, hotter than the sun's surface. This is essentially what lightning is, and what researchers are doing is creating lightning in a bottle.

The plasma dissociates the molecular bonds in trash contained in the chamber and organic compounds become something called syngas (CO and hydrodren), the detritus of which is called slag.

The syngas can be used as fuel in a turbine to create electricity or used to create ethanol. The slag can be used for building material, something already being done in France and Japan. Although there are heavy metals in slag, the toxicity passes EPA standards but give pause to communities that may host such a plant.

But every ton of trash processes with plasma reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by two tons less than coal.

Creating energy by eradicating land fills.

What's not to like?

Natural gas again in the spotlight

The Associated Press has gotten on board.

WCI #11: Saltwater crops

More SciAm wisdom.

"As the world's freshwater supply becomes scarcer and food production needs balloon, salt-tolerant crops could ease the burden. Researchers at Australia's University of Adelaide used genetic engineering to enhance a model crop's natural ability to prevent saline buildup in its leaves, allowing the plant to thrive in conditions that would typically wither it. If the same gene tweak works in cereal crops such as rice and wheat - the researchers are testing them now - fallow lands destroyed by drought of overirrigation could become new breadbaskets."

There's a lot of saltwater out there....

Further, according to Wired:

"Saltwater-loving plants could open up half a million square miles of previously unusable territory for energy crops, helping settle the heated food-versus-fuel debate, which nearly derailed biofuel progress last year.

By increasing the world’s irrigated acreage by 50 percent, saltwater crops could provide a no-guilt source of biomass for alt fuel makers and tone down the rhetoric of U.N. officials worried about food prices, one of whom called the conversion of arable land to biofuel crops "a crime against humanity."

While growing crops in saltwater has been on the fringes of horticulture for decades, the new demand for alternative energy has pushed the idea onto the pages of the nation’s most prestigious scientific journal and drawn the attention of NASA scientists.

Citing the work of Robert Glenn, a plant biologist at the University of Arizona, two biologists argue in this week’s Science that "the increasing demand for agricultural products and the spread of salinity now make this concept worth serious consideration and investment."

Glenn has been arguing for the value of all kinds of saltwater farming to a small but growing audience for nearly thirty years, but it is the demand for biomass to turn into fuel that brought NASA calling. His team’s report for the agency estimates that salt-loving crops could be used to produce 1.5 billion barrels of ethanol annually on a swath of new agricultural land almost five times the size of Texas.

"I’m convinced that saltwater agriculture is going to open up a whole new expanse of land and water for crop production," Glenn said. "Maybe the world hasn’t needed a 50 percent expansion in irrigated agricultural land because we’ve had enough food, but now that biofuels are in the mix, I think it’s the way crop production should go."

The world’s population has grown by five billion people since 1900 to an astounding 6.7 billion today. Despite the population explosion, food production — primarily animal feed and commodity cereals like wheat and rice — has been able to keep pace. But the food system has been severely stressed by a variety of factors, including the increasing use of arable land to grow energy crops to turn into biofuels.

Even if energy crops didn’t cause all or even most of the precipitous rise in food prices in 2007, most social and environmental groups agree that the best location for bioenergy crops would be on currently unusable land. That would ensure that land used to grow food crops in poor countries wasn’t converted to growing energy crops to power cars in developed nations.

A key question has remained, though: where exactly will humans find a whole bunch of unused land that is still good for growing crops?

Photo from Wired.com

Overly salty land could play a large and previously underappreciated role. That’s because there’s plenty of previously uncultivated territory in the world’s coastal deserts, inland salty soils, and over-salinized agricultural land.

After taking into account environmental protections and other factors, Glenn’s report estimates that 480,000 square miles of unused land around the world could be used to grow a special set of salt-tolerant plants — halophytes. Glenn’s team calculated that this could produce 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent per year. That’s 35 percent of the United States’ liquid fuel needs.

Halophytes thrive in saltwater. While salt damages most plants, these salt-loving plants actually use the saltwater to draw in fresh water. In essence, they make themselves saltier than the surrounding water, which, through osmosis, drives fresh water into the plant.

These plants are attractive candidates for both food and fuel because they have very high biomass and oil seed yields. The Science authors note that one leading halophyte-candidate, Salicornia bigelovii, produces 1.7 times more oil per acre than sunflowers, a common source of vegetable oil.

"[Some halophytes] yield even more than things like switchgrass and they’ll be grown on land that’s just not used right now," said Glenn.

Of course, turning halophyte biomass into fuel will require further cost reductions in the production of biofuel from cellulose. Research into cellulosic ethanol continues around the world at a breathtaking pace and many industry observers expect the next five years to yield enough breakthroughs to make the technology economical.

Halophytes could also be part of the solution to another environmental problem: heavily-salinated wastewater from large farms. Right now, that water is dumped into manmade wetlands. For example, in California, the Imperial Valley authorities dump their salty water into the Salton Sea.

"That’s a huge ecological problem waiting to happen," said Glenn.

After absorbing 80 years of agricultural runoff, the Salton Sea is 25 percent saltier than the ocean, and is facing serious ecological problems (see also: my review of a documentary about the Salton Sea). Instead of pumping salinized water into these wetlands, the farms could capture that wastewater and use it to grow halophytes. Already, Sharon Benes, a plant scientist at Fresno State, has been planting test plots in the San Joaquin Valley.

But even if halophytes can help solve some of the world’s environmental problems, Glenn is realistic about the difficulties of changing agricultural systems.

"I started in aquaculture back in the early 70s and we thought, golly, aquaculture is going to save the world. Looking back, it’s been 35 years, but over half of the key fisheries products come from aquaculture, it just took longer than people thought," Glenn said. "I think it’s the same thing with saline crop production."

Citation: "Crops for a Salinized World" by Jelte Rozema and Timothy Flowers. Science, doi 10.1126/science.1168572

Image: Salicornica bigelovii and Salicornica virginica growing in Galveston, Texas. flickr/Anna Armitage"

WCI #7: Delivering the US from oil

According to December's Scientific American "Plug-in Hybrid Trucks are improving the long view of the short haul."

The ubiquitous cargo trucks that haul everything from mail to produce use about 40 percent of the fuel consumed in the US every year. Many are looking to use vehicles with better fuel efficiency, but a major technological opportunity is being overlooked by most.

"The fuel use of even a small truck is equal to many, many car," says Bill Van (heh) Amberg, senior VP of Calstart, a clean transportation technology nonprofit and director of the Hybrid Truck Users Forum. "A utility truck as a hybrid would reduce more petroleum than nine Priuses."

The article states: "Some 1,300 commercial hybrids on the toad today get up to twice the fuel efficiency of their conventional counterparts. But these traditional hybrids are inherently limited. They make more efficient use of petroleum-based fuel by capturing some of the energy lost during braking.

"Plug-in hybrids, on the other hand, draw energy from the grid. They can drive for miles - in many cases, an entire day's route - without using any fossil fuel at all. This shifts energy demand away from petroleum and toward grid-based sources."

This still leads to carbon usage, as many electrical plants are still coal burners, but last year 30 percent of electric power was supplied by nuclear and other zero-carbon renewables and with more and more responsible companies shifting their paradigm, this number is sure to grow.

Using plug-in hybrid technology for such vehicles just makes common sense in many ways.

"A cargo truck runs a short daily route that includes many stops to aid in regenerative braking. Most of the US Postal Service's 200,000-plus mail trucks, for example, travel fewer than 20 miles a day. In addition, fleet vehicles return nightly to storage lots that have ready access to the 120- or 240-volt outlets required to charge them."

The Department of Energy has recently launched a massive, $45.4 million project to put near ly 400 medium-duty plug-in hybrid trucks on the road in 50 municipalities and utilities. They are working with Ford using the auto-makers F-550 chassis. They will be running in 2011.

Start-up Bright Automotive is going even further, planning to replace 50,000 conventional trucks by 2014. Their prototype, called IDEA, travels 40 miles on battery power, then switches to a four-cylinder engine that manages an eco-friendly 40 mpg. The truck is streamlined and more aerodynamic than most on the road today and only weighs as much as a mid-sized sedan.

Even with the appeal of carbon savings, the vehicles offer a far more practical benefit. Once battery technology improves the price will make it almost idiotic to not have one.

It won't take long for the vehicles to become the economic choice.

As David Lauzman, Brights VP of product development projects, people will soon be saying, "I have to have them because it saves me money."

WCI #5: Wind power from the stratosphere

The fifth installment of new ideas from Scientific American:

"According to a Stanford University study released in July, the high-altitude winds that constantly blow tens of thousands of feet above the earth hold enough energy to supply all of human civilization 100 times over. California's Sky WindPower has proposed harvesting this energy by building fleets of airborne, ground-tethered windmills (below), while Italy's Kite Gen proposes to accomplish the same feat using kites."


One would hope they are taking flight plans into account.

WCI #3: Hot Nukes

According to SciAm:

"Uranium and Plutonium ar not the only fuels that can power a nuclear reactor. With an initial kick from more traditional fissile materials, thorium can set up a self-sustaining "breeder" reaction that produces uranium 233, which is well suited to nuclear power generation. The process has the added benefit of being resistant to nuclear proliferation, because its end products emit enough gamma rays to make the fuel dangerous to handle and easy to track."

With Copenhagen and the EPA announcing the danger of CO2 and governments taking steps to reduce dirty power plants, nuclear power is the most tested and efficient way to produce energy without sending electric bills through the roof.

Until we perfect solar and all the other natural energy producing methods, that is. As safe as nuclear power has become, there's still room for mistakes. With more natural methods, the biggest disaster would be lack of power.

WCI #2: Affordable solar energy equipment

Yes, we all receive light and heat from the sun free of charge, but the cost of converting that energy into electricity that can run our televisions, computers and video game systems as well as charging all of our on-the-go devices has up to now been almost prohibitively expensive.

According to the Scientific American article "The No-Money-Down Solar Plan," "Installing a rooftop array of solar panels large enough to to produce all the energy required by a building is the equivalent of prepaying an electric bill for the next seven to 10 years - and that's after federal and state incentives."

Some companies have come up with a solution: provide the panels free of charge, then bill the customer for power as it is used. Even though the consumer still has a monthly fee, solar power would be cheaper by the kilowatt-hour than grid-provided electricity as well as offering a negligible carbon footprint.

As SolarCity co-founder Peter Rive puts it, " This is a way to get solar without putting any money down and to start saving money from day one. That's a first."

SolarCity is the largest installer of household solar panels to undertake the system. They lease the panels to customers but there is no charge for the power produced. The overall effect is a highly reduced monthly bill because when the sun isn't out, customers still need utility-provided electricity. The total of the monthly lease and power bill is lower than a pre-panel power bill alone.

Berkeley and Boulder have taken similar strides. Using municipal bonds, they give out loans to residents who want to buy and install solar panels and the city is paid back over the course of 20 years via the homeowners property tax bill. This, again, still winds up costing less than a traditional utility bill.

Using Berkeley as a model, 10 states have already adopted similar programs even though the example is only two years old. And with the Waxman-Markey climate bill passing, the option for cities to do so would become federal law.

Although to current cost of solar panels is still high, it is dropping and forecasters predict grid parity within the next decade (meaning creating enough solar panels to energize the same amount of homes and businesses would cost the same as systems still in place).

But with fossil fuels increasing 3 to 5 percent a year over the last decade and the cost of solar panels falling by 20 percent each time its insulation base doubles, it seems it's only a matter of time before even the most conservative of homeowners will see the advantage of solar.

If you can't make them care about the environment, hit them in the spot they most certainly do care about: their wallet.

Power transformers, pt. 2: James D. McCalley, electrical and computer engineer, Iowa State University

The Concept: Energy systems analysis

While the energy industry is facing a crisis in the present, the future holds even more conundrums unless they are addressed now.

McCalley is working on computer models to "plan the mix of technologies, the means of distribution and the environmental impact of our energy supply 40 years out."

Meaning he is looking ahead to 2050 right now by researching "optimal energy flow patterns, indentifying infrastructure enhancements to realize the optimal performance and forecasting the influence of the market on energy supply and demand."

His equations include the good stuff: solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and clean fossil fuels.

He may need to concentrate on the first four as the final one may literally go the way of the dodo by the end of the century. Maybe he should look more closely at biofuels but he idea is sound.

Maybe pre-efficiency will (it certainly should) become the new energy buzzword.

Power brokers, pt. 5: Daniel Nocera, chemist, MIT

Again, from Discover

Nocera's "bright idea": Split water to generate hydrogen energy - but do it in a cheap way.

Since he puts it so well himself, this is verbatim:

"Nature is the best solar fuel enerhy storage machine known, so let;s figure out how it works. Light comes in four photons, and then it hits the leaf, and it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. A leaf makes twice as much hydrogen as it does oxygen, and then it stores the result as a solid fuel. So you've stored the sunlight in a fuel,and the energy is in the chemical bonds. Then you eat that fuel, and you get all the sunlight back out in a time-released way. So you are literally chewing the sun.

"Our lab at MIT invented a process that splits water and performs photosynthesis cheaply, outside the leaf. Lately we've found out we can use the Charles River as a water source. We can use waste streams as water sources. We can use the ocean as a water source. So you can generate hydrogen through artificial photosynthesis whenever you need it. I'm very interested in the nonlegacy world, especially Africa and India. Giving a little kid in Africa 500 watts of energy will change his life. And that's not much energy.

Al Gore has been walking around saying: "Just use the technologies. They're on the shelf. Take them off." But he's gone a bit over the deep end. Yes, we do have the technologies. I have photovoltaics. I can store hydrogen in a fuel cell and get all the energy out. I can build any number of systems for you right now, but guess what? They're too expensive. The reason you need scientists like me to discover my little cobalt phosphate catalyst - the material that can drive photosynthesis outside the leaf and in the lab - is because I'm going to do it cheaply.

"To take care of the average house in a day, you need 20 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is equivalent to only 5.5 liters of water. To drive that point home, I'm holding the amount of water in my hands that you need to power a very big house on the California coast. That amount of water takes care of that house as well as powering a fuel cell car around town. So that's the future. There's no way to stop it. Nature already did this 2-billion-year experiment and decided on this process, and it's coming soon."

There ya go!

Power brokers, pt. 3: George Huber, chemical engineer at UMass Amherst

From the December issue of Discover magazine.

Huber's "bright idea": Produce ethanol or other renewable fuels from biomass we do not use for food.

This has been addressed in A Cooler world previously. Grassoline is one such fuel, onion skins another. Non-edible plants are known as cellulosic biomass and include wood chips and agricultural waste, all of which can be converted to fuel.

First you break it down to liquid or gas form. Then add catalysts to convert it into a compound. From this basic compound of biomass one can produce gasoline, diesel, even jet fuel.

People could be at the pump and not even know that they are pumping a plant product in their tank; it can be used interchangeably meaning that radical engineering changes in automobile manufacturing won't be necessary.

And it can happen in five to 15 years.

Another bonus: lower to zero admissions when compared to fossil fuels.

Woo hoo!

Power brokers, pt. 2: Ralph Masiello, innovation director at KEMA (

From the December 2009 issue of Discover magazine.

KEMA - A global, leading authority in energy consulting and testing & certification.

Ralph Masiello's "bright idea": Store renewable energy so we can use it when we need it.

One of the main problems with the electrical infrastructure is that there is really no way to store electrical power - "every time somebody in the house turned the light on or off, ultimately the source of electricity - the generation plant - had to wiggle up or down."

But we have finally reached the point that we can put storage on the grid, handling fluctuations and the imbalance between demand and supply.

Right now, plants have to pay someone to send excess energy to, sometimes dropping the price of electricity to -$20/megawatt hour, an expenditure that is passed on to the consumer.

However, batteries are too limited, and Masiello suggests figuring it out as a fuel problem. He calls for a smart grid that only releases energy when asked for, storing it otherwise.

There are some legal and industrial hurdles, but in the long run, it would mean cheaper electricity, and power generated by wind and solar, not coal.

Power brokers, pt. 1: Lowell Ungar, senior policy analyst, Alliance to Save Energy

The December issue of Discover Magazine contains an article called "Power Brokers." In it, "Eight leading thinkers offer visions of how to make our energy supply cleaner, more efficient and more abundant.

Lowell Ungar of the Alliance to Save Energy suggests treating efficiency like a fuel and make it the cornerstone of US energy policy.

He states there are dozens of simple things everyone can do, from merely knowing which lightbulb is the best to use or if a ground source heat pump would work where you live. Is your home adequately insulated, saving energy that could be lost through leakage?

Write your congressman. Let them know you support energy-efficiency policies such as carbon cap legislation. Encourage local builders to use natural lighting and cooling.

Try to buy a more energy efficient home. Some of the foreclosure problems in the country sprang from utility bills - there is good evidence that such bills are the second-leading cause of foreclosures.

Protect your pocketbook while you protect the planet and go Green.

Rice alliance calls to make Houston clean tech capital

Story here.

Houston workers rallying against climate change legislation

Today, thousands of workers in the energy industry are gathering at the Verizon Wireless Theater downtown at 12:30.

Story here.

These are not necessarily denialists; the organizers believe that the proposed emissions trading bill will negatively affect the economy by eliminating jobs in the fossil fuel industry. They are not, however, taking into account jobs that will be created by ramping up research and development in alternative energy fields.

Granted, the money required to do so is somewhat daunting, but once it is there, jobs will abound.

They also want to see nuclear pushed harder. I agree.

Another argument is that CO2 emissions won't be affected because developing countries are contributing far more to the output and any cutbacks the US makes will be negligible.

Well then, why not make it a cool, hip, American thing to be green? Asians delight in Coco-Cola, Levi's, McDonald's and whatever other ridiculous pop (and often unhealthy) fad we as Americans come up with, so why not set an example in the environmental category as well?

Europeans are kicking our butt in alternative energy but they also enjoy our fast food chains.

Between the EU and the US, leading by example may be the best way to get countries like India and China to literally clean up their acts.

What have we got to lose but industrial stagnation and dirty air?

Green jobs floundering, will recovery help?

Speculation is that hiring in the alternative energy industry will increase in the next 12 months but probably won't become a bigger part of the US job market. This is according to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in an Associated Press story from the second National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas.

What is lacking is investment, which supporters hope to see increase over the next year. This will only happen, however, if people get back to work and pique interest in expanding. Sound like a Catch-22? Solis hopes not.

"There'll be more, hopefully, credit available for this expansion because there will be more confidence because that's what we're lacking right now - that investment and confidence in the market."

That's a big "hopefully."

Former veep Al Gore put in his two cents (of course) by saying: "The economic crisis, the security crisis and the climate crisis are all intertwined, and the common thread running through them is our absurd and dangerous overdependence on carbon-based fuels."

I have no problem with, nay I very much enjoyed and agree with An Inconvenient Truth, but such rhetoric is doing more to alienate potential supporters than it is winning them over.

But despite the above statement, venture capitalists increased investments by 73 percent in the last three months over the previous three (see the KBR blog below) according to Ernst & Young. However, this is far below investments from just a year ago.

Before government initiatives were announced last year, investments were at a record high. That was well before the recession's full impact was felt.

The big downside has been the loss of jobs in wind, solar and other alternative energy companies. Projects were scuttled when credit markets froze and venture capital dried up.

Investments have been slow in coming as those with money conduct research to make the "wisest possible investments."

Union leaders are calling for large federal public works projects due to the fact that commercial and new housing projects are virtually non-existent.

Time will tell, but with the economy in dire need of stimulation and increasing proof of human involvement in global warming, such projects are beyond needed.

That said, give me a job!

KBR researching biofuel manufacturing

Yes, the same KBR surrounded by controversy while providing logistical support to the US military in the Middle East is looking to make biofuel production economically feasible, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Because KBR is headquartered in Houston, one of the centers of the international oil and gas industry, it has the infrastructure in place to scale up biofuel production; one of the problems is that biofuel manufacturing works in the lab but mass production is hampered by lack of funds, technology and space.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for the supply of renewable fuels to grow to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

KBR is backing the construction of a 27 million gallon per year plant in Iowa and is providing engineering support to five more cellulosic ethanol plants.

Exxon and other oil companies already exploring the possibilities of biofuel. Maybe soon, the bloodshed and backstabbing over foreign countries' oil will begin in the American cornbelt. That's actually just sci-fi speculation, but human nature is what it is.

At least the corporate assassins will be doing it over less polluting power sources.