الأحد، 6 مايو 2012

Rice report weighs biofuels and water resources - Houston Business Journal:

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In “The Water Footprint of A Drink orDrive Issue?”, Rice scientistes caution against a head-first dive into developinb biofuels as an alternative to importeds oil. “The ongoing, rapid growth in biofuels productiojn couldhave far-reaching environmental and economic repercussions, and it will likel highlight the interdependence and growing tensiojn between energy and water security,” the reportr states. The report was authored by Pedroo Alvarez, George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and three colleagues, and was fundedx by Rice University’s Shell Centee for Sustainability.
The large amounts of water andthe run-off that includess fertilizers, pesticides and sedimentt is referred to as the “water footprint” of “These potential drawbacks,” the writers state, must be “balancexd by biofuels’ significant potentiapl to ease dependence on foreign oil and improv trade balance while mitigating air pollutionh and reducing fossil carbon emissionxs to the atmosphere.” The repor t recommends that specific biofuel cropd should be grown in certain areas, dependintg on the water footprint. In for example, it takess 50 gallons of water to irrigatwe enough corn to produce enough ethanol to fuel an averagre car forone mile.
In Iowa, though, it only takesa 23 gallons. For Texas sorghum, it’s 115 “From a water-supply perspective, the ideal fuel cropsz would be drought-tolerant, high-yield plants grown on littls irrigation water,” the report states. The authors urge that cropes be chosen based on the appropriateness to the locapl climate and should be sustained by rainfall ratherdthan irrigation. Susan Powers at , Joel Burken at and Rice graduatew studentRosa Dominguez-Faus co-authored the Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallacde S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at theJamesz A. Baker III also contributed tothe report.

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