Thanks very much.
This is fundamentally a flawed debate, and I have spent the last four years of my life debating this and challenging people on the debate. You really have a couple of scientists out there who are making some bold claims, and you have another hundred on the other side of the page who are doing some really remarkable things. Every hour the technology gets better in ethanol. Every hour there's new fermentation, cold cook technology, etc.--we're just getting better. And if we take dry distillers grain and use it as an energy source, we're going to go from one to two or two and a half. It's unbelievable. But the bigger picture, the one that frustrates me the most, is why the question isn't asked in the same sentence, “As compared to what?”
If you want to really talk about life cycle analysis, let's talk about coal. It is absolutely abysmal. It's godawful. For every unit going in, about 0.39 comes out. It's terrible. The tar sands are just as bad. With coal, you extract it from the ground, you burn it, you create steam, you run a generator, and then you put electricity in a line where you can have as much as 50% line loss, and yet that never comes out in the discussion. If at the very least we displace fossil fuel with renewable fuel, we've hit a home run.
So with all due respect, I welcome the debate.
Is that my 28 seconds?