Posted by
Rich on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:12:55 AM
The
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (or "Big Green") is touting Governor Crist's
proposal to buy 187,000 acres of land near the Everglades from U.S.
Sugar for $1.75 billion dollars in their editorial, "
An offer that's hard to refuse". This is really an offer that is hard to believe.
Big
Green and our Governor are looking to take prime agricultural land that
produces sugarcane off the market and put it under government
centralized control and management. We believe the cost to Floridians
will be much higher than the $1.75 billion, much higher. Big Green
asks, "What becomes of U.S. Sugar's 1,700 employees and the South
Florida cities like Clewiston whose existence is tied to cane farming?"
What happens to all the tax revenue we Floridians lose forever, the
jobs, the families, the cities?
But here is the real kicker. Big
Green loves ethanol, except the corn based kind of course. Guess what
sugarcane is a great source of? Ethanol and alcohol, both of which can
be alternative fuels to replace Big Oil. So Big Green is taking fertile
sugarcane growing land away from Floridians that could be used to
produce ethanol and get us off of Big Oil.
Let's look at what sugarcane bagasse can produce. The fibrous material left over from pressing sugarcane is called
bagasse. Bagasse is 35% of the chemical energy stored in sugarcane.
Brazil has since 1973
moved to producing ethanol and alcohol from sugarcane bagasse to fuel
their cars and power plants. Here are some facts about their production
of sugarcane based alternative fuels:
According to Wikipedia,
"Part of the bagasse [in Brazil] is currently burned at the mill to
provide heat for distillation and electricity to run the machinery.
This allows ethanol plants to be energetically self-sufficient and even
sell surplus electricity to utilities; current production is 600 MW for
self-use and 100 MW for sale. This secondary activity is expected to
boom now that utilities have been induced to pay "fair price "(about
US$10/GJ or US$0.036/kWh) for 10 year contracts...The energy is
especially valuable to utilities because it is produced mainly in the
dry season when hydroelectric dams are running low [Florida gets 1% of
its power from hydroelectric plants]. Estimates of potential power
generation from bagasse range from 1,000 to 9,000 MW, depending on
technology. Higher estimates assume gasification of biomass,
replacement of current low-pressure steam boilers and turbines by
high-pressure ones, and use of harvest trash currently left behind in
the fields. For comparison, Brazil's Angra I nuclear plant generates
657 MW."
Brazil is a great success story and has reached energy
independence by using ethanol and alcohol produced from sugarcane
coupled with cars that use biofuels.
So Big Green wants us to
not grow sugarcane which can produce ethanol, alcohol, and provide
excess electrical power because they want us to preserve the
Everglades. They do not want us to drill for oil and natural gas off of
Florida's Gulf coast because it would damage the environment. They do
not want us to use nuclear, coal, oil or natural gas fired plants
because they harm the environment. However, they want us to use
alternative fuels like ethanol but don't like corn based ethanol.
That
leaves solar, wind and who knows what to fuel our transportation
industry. Oh, I know we can conserve our way out of this self-imposed
mess.
Does anyone else see the insanity of Big Green's ideology
and the lack of vision of Governor Crist? We must as a state and nation
become energy independent. Nothing can be off the table as we move
toward that goal. It is a national security issue.