Schock also kindly provided a link to a POET press release discussing the preliminary results of Iowa State's research on the impacts of corn stover removal on soil fertility. From which I learned, inadvertently, that POET was funding the very same research I had linked to in my post yesterday.

I have no reason to doubt POET's forthrightness, and I take very seriously Robert Rapier's evaluation that "they have done a good job" on the cellulosic ethanol front. But I find it deliciously ironic that one of the top five results returned by Google for the search terms "corn stover removal soil fertility" turns out to be research paid for the company planning to do the removal.

Other studies have shown that "indiscriminate stover removal' does have a significant effect on soil fertility. Clearly, Schock is telling us that POET plans to be a discriminating stover remover. But when market forces comes into play without adequate government supervision, the line between discriminating and reckless abuse gets awful murky.

So the news that POET, the largest ethanol producer in the U.S., has managed to cut production costs for cellulosic ethanol from $4.13 a gallon to $2.35 a gallon in the past year at its trial plant in Scotland, South Dakota, is potentially significant. POET is now predicting big things, reports the Argus Leader:

"Two years ago, I would have told you this was a long shot," CEO Jeff Broin said. "Now I'll tell you that we will produce cellulosic ethanol commercially in two years."

Two years instead of five! That's a big improvement! According to Broin, the factors involved include "reducing energy use, enzyme costs, raw material requirements and capital expenses."

POET's preferred feedstock: left over corn cobs and other post-harvest remnants known as "corn stover" that farmers typically leave to rot on their fields. A few weeks ago, POET organized a "Project Liberty Field Day" in Emmetsburg, Ohio in which 16 different agricultural machinery companies demonstrated new equipment specifically designed for the collection of corn cobs.

I asked Robert Rapier, who has established himself as one of the more influential commentators on all-things-biofuels, what he thought of the news. The critical factor, he said, is knowing what the cost of the inputs are. How much will POET be paying for the corncobs?

"The key to this is going to be how much they have to pay for the biomass. The cost that is quoted assumes a certain price for the biomass. I had a farmer tell me recently that he wouldn't bother gathering it for the price POET wants to pay. So I would say that the costs mentioned in the news story are a best case scenario for getting the farmers to sell corn cobs at the right price."

But the question I always have when hearing about biofuels made from farm "waste" is what happens to soil fertility when you keep extracting more and more plant material from the life-cycle of the farm, and turn it into fuel? Not surprisingly, this is a hot topic among agricultural research scientists in Iowa.

From "Studying Stover Harvest Effects on Yield, Soil, Climate:"

Corn stover has been used for many years as bedding and food for livestock, as well as to nourish and protect soils. In recent years, the ubiquitous stalk, leaf and cob residue of corn plants left in fields after harvest has found a new market: as a potential source for cellulosic ethanol production.

But harvesting the stover -- which, when left in place, halts erosion and supplies vital nutrients back to the soil -- could have unintended consequences, from lowering the fertility of fields to affecting productivity, soil and water quality and even climate. A comprehensive new study by Iowa State University agronomy researchers may soon shed light on these questions.

One result of the study, according to the authors, will be better information on "the optimal nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilization rates needed to supplement nutrients lost from residue removal."

That's not such great news. The production of synthetic fertilizer is highly energy-intensive and consumes a lot of fossil fuels. What's the good of replacing gasoline with cellulosic ethanol made from farm waste, if we need to burn more oil to replace the soil nutrients that we are subtracting from the earth?

That would be the "Wall-E" dystopian future, folks. Nearly 20 percent of California's electricity consumed by couch potatoes watching ESPN's SportsCenter, "So You Think You Can Dance," and Hannah Montana reruns. I lust after a sweet 42-inch flat-screen as much as any other red-blooded consumer, but that certainly seems extravagant to me. Wasteful, even. And probably unnecessary, given the extraordinary gains in energy efficiency manufacturers were able to achieve with refrigerators, washing machines, and dishwashers after California told them to tighten up their act.

But don't try telling that to an industry flack.

"Television manufacturers will see an increase in the cost of compliance due to increased research and development, component sourcing, design and development," wrote Tim Brison, a senior vice president for Sony Electronics, in a Nov. 2 letter to the commission...

"The consumer electronics industry and California consumers bear the burden of the regulations so PG&E can meet its energy milestones," [said Jason Oxman, a senior vice president with the Consumer Electronics Association.]

Evil California! The energy commissars are coming to take your TV away! Next thing you know, we'll be back to black-and-white and forced to eat vacuum tubes with our broccoli. Oh the ignominy. First they demonize our SUVs and now they're shaming us for our wasteful television habits!

Prediction: Ten years from now, all the televisions sold in the United States will be vastly more energy efficient than they are now, and no one will give it a second thought. We'll also have avoided building a few new power plants just to maintain our sedentary life-styles.

Texas!

There are many reasons why Texas is suddenly the U.S. leader in wind power -- lots of wind, fewer bureaucratic constraints on siting new facilities, generally high electricity prices that make wind power relatively more attractive. Some of these can be replicated elsewhere and some can't. But maybe the most important fact to consider about Texas is how fast the wind power marke thas grown. Ten years ago, Texas had an installed capacity of just 180 megawatts. In 2007, 4296. Two weeks ago...6223 at 8:30 p.m.

So whenever you hear someone pooh pooh the idea that renewable energy will ever account for a significant proportion of global energy consumption, just refer them to Texas. If the economics are right, change can happen, very, very quickly. If, for example, a cap-and-trade system rejiggered energy prices to make wind and solar even more competitive, investment would flow to the cleantech sector like the Mississippi flows to the Gulf of Mexico. Sure, there are storage and transmission issues, but these can and will be solved, if the prices are right.

Now, it is true that many Texan wind farms are operated by foreign companies, and that has caused a brouhaha of late, because stimulus money aimed at boosting the deployment of wind farms inevitably gets spent on wind turbines that are manufactured in foreign countries. There are still jobs, especially for depressed rural areas, in wind farms, but the really good jobs are in building turbines. The political heat on one recent project got so intense that the developer has now promised to build a wind turbine plant in the United States, as part of the deal.

Balancing green jobs and green power is always going to be tricky. If the U.S. wants to ramp up green power as fast as possible, other nations will benefit, because they have emphasized the development of their green power sector more consistently than has the U.S. But that is all the more reason to push forward on a climate/energy bill that resets marketplace parameters in the United States. Because if Texas-sized wind power growth tells us anything, it is that abrupt transformative change is entirely possible. And where growth at that rate occurs, there will be jobs, and lots of 'em.

The International Energy Agency, reports Spencer Swartz in the Wall Street Journal, is predicting that even if China and India continue to consume ever more oil, overall, the world's appetite for crude is slowing down.

The IEA, which advises rich nations, such as the U.S., on energy matters, is set to use its closely watched annual World Energy Outlook report to forecast that improved energy-efficiency measures in developed nations, as well as climate-change legislation, will help to slow the rate of global oil consumption.

Swartz reports that Deutsche Bank is bold enough to predict that "global demand will peak by 2016 ... due to efficiency gains and technology improvements in electric vehicles."

This kind of thing doesn't happen by accident. Yesterday Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $38 million worth of grants to Alaska, Kansas, Utah and West Virginia to "support energy efficiency and conservation activities."

Hardly a week goes by when the DOE isn't making a similar announcement. On Sept. 14, Chu announced $354 million in grants to 22 other states. On Oct 1, $72 million. All the grants are part of the DOE's Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) program, created in 2007 under the auspices of the Energy Independence and Security Act, but funded for the first time, to the tune of $2.7 billion, by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the stimulus bill). So far, $1.6 billion in grants have been disbursed.

So if you're feeling gloomy at the state of financial regulatory reform, or the compromises being made to get a healthcare bill passed, or the failure of same-sex marriage in Maine, consider this. Every single day, the Obama administration has been making steady progress in addressing two of the greatest challenges the human race faces -- human-caused climate change, and a fossil fuel-constrained future.

I'll let Joe Romm, the indefatigable climate change activist, have the last word. In a post published yesterday, "One year after his election, Obama on verge of audaciously fulfilling his promise as the green FDR," Romm writes:

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn't stop catastrophic climate change ... then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.

In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in the year since he was elected is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives.

Specifically, Romm cites the stimulus funding for "energy efficiency, renewables, transmission and smart grid, and mass transit and train travel," Obama's decision to raise fuel economy standards, Obama's EPA ruling that greenhouse gas emissions are a pollutant covered by the Clean Air Act, and the progress made so far toward a climate bill.

Not bad ... for a start.