Why not ethanol?

Its certainly getting bad press at the moment but Iv'e been looking into it and it would appear that ethanol production is very easy and can be done at the backyard and community scale.

By no means am I advocating we replace all oil with ethanol. Wev'e got to cut back on oil BIG time but if local commuities can be producing some of their own liquid fuels thats got to help build resilience.

Up until very recently most ethanol plants in the U.S. have been owned and operated by community and farming cooperatives. Much of the ethanol's bad press is due to the Big Boys moving into the industry.

Though they are making ethanol from corn, it can be made from anything containing sugar. In Louisianna, a place not known as a big sugarcane producer, they can produce 555 gallons per acre, thats 2103 litres of ethanol per acre. In Brazil, its something like 4000 litres per acre!

I don't know how much we can produce here per acre but I do know that we can grow it. Iv'e got in my garden. Thriving!

Even if NZ can only produce half as much as Louisana, that is 1000 litres per acre, thats 20 tanks of petrol that aren't being consumed.

Have a look at http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol.html for more info.

Cheers
Richard