While the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal continues to sound ethanol’s death knell, citing financial issues that aren’t—-to be fair—-necessarily unfounded. However, they routinely ignore the many cool innovations going on within the biofuel industry right now, the latest of which is perfect for what’s left of summer: watermelon ethanol. The journal Biotechnology for Biofuels reports that “20% of the watermelon crop doesn’t go to market every year due to imperfections, bad spots, or weird shapes.” But instead of just plowing them back into the ground, “watermelon juice can be fermented and used directly, or it can be used as a ‘diluent, supplemental feedstock, and nitrogen supplement’ with other biofuel crops.” Watermelon juice also has several health benefits, and can be used to produce lycopene, which is important for prostate health.

This development came out of left field for us, we must admit, but we’re pretty enthused about it - making fuel from waste crops that would otherwise be thrown away is at the heart of conservation. Besides, if they can distill fried chicken grease and leftover coleslaw into biofuel, every 4th of July picnic ever would be a boon to the industry.

Speaking of, someone write Nick Cannon, NAS, and Affion (the three guys who made “Eat That Watermelon“) and let them know about this. Dated references to minstrelsy are all well and good, but we’ve got a planet to save, dammit!

First off, it is WAY too hot outside.

But we aren’t the only ones feeling the heat these days. Obama’s energy plan is facing stiff resistance from grassroots protesters who, in keeping with the style of the times, are funded by corporate interests. A large protest in Houston, TX earlier this week that was “as much a celebration of oil’s traditional role in the Texas way of life” as it was a chance to bitch at the federal government was put together by Energy Citizens, a group backed by the American Petroleum Institute. In fact, many of the protesters were oil company employees who’d been brought in from work by buses to air their bosses’ grievances.

And it gets worse. The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity got busted for hiring a PR firm to send forged letters against climate change laws to Congressmen. Worse, the letters were sent under the pretense of concerned minority activist groups like the NAACP. Dick move, guys.

Why all this acrimony? Oil companies strongly object to setting limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases because they’re too cheap to buy emission permits. Their supporters and paid sycophants denounce the proposed legislation as an energy tax that undermines the economy of oil-rich states.

We’ve seen sponsored protests across the board in recent months, much of it from the conservative end of the spectrum, but Corn Car has long suspected that oil companies were propping up most of the anti-energy reform crowd, so that isn’t surprising. What really sucks longterm about astroturfing, though, is that it’s becoming impossible to just be an aware, outspoken citizen without being on someone’s payroll, or being suspected of it. As far as we know, our blog doesn’t have any corporate sponsors. Unless the interns are hiding the checks from us, the little bastards.

When we hear about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, we usually picture, well, this sort of thing. So color us surprised when “ethanol was welcomed with open arms at last week’s 69th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.” The Renewable Fuels Association made its presence felt at the rally as a partner (and sponsor, we’re assuming) to suggest ethanol fuel blends as part of the solution to our current dependence on foreign oil. Put that way, it makes more sense; many of the Sturgis faithfuls are “America First” guys, politically speaking, and shameless gearheads, so ethanol would appeal to them from more than one perspective.

Heck, there might even be a biker contingent at the 4th Annual Cellulosic Biofuels Summit in November. We just found out about the Summit; it’s in DC and allows “leaders from the agricultural, biotech, technology, developer, oil, auto and financial communities” to convene and hash out a plan to reach the commercial production of cellulosic ethanol. Between this and the Solar Decathlon in October, the nation’s capital might be running on alternative fuels until New Year’s. Quick, someone forward this to Rush Limbaugh so maybe he’ll have a heart attack and leave politics forever.

As a follow-up to our last post about Obama’s electric car support, here’s an article from the Christian Science Monitor that makes an interesting point: many of the companies receiving federal money under the President’s initiative are battery manufacturers. Most electric and hybrid car batteries are foreign-made, even in cars assembled here, and Obama doesn’t want batteries to become the new oil, an import-only resource that leaves us dependent on other countries and colors our international relations. Not saying there will be battery wars or anything, but it is important that we produce at least some of these technological components here.

Although if there were battery wars, we hope America would seize control of the Giant Energizer Bunny before our enemies did.

In an effort to combine staving off economic woes with his pledge to continue bolstering alt. fuel efforts, President Obama has announced $2.4 billion in grants, divided among 25 states, to develop next-generation electric cars and recreational vehicles.
Obama made this announcement in Elkhart County, Indiana, an area that he’s adopted as a weathervane for his administration’s effectiveness; Elkhart jumped from under 10% unemployment to nearly 20% in a year, which has spurred the president to pay them a visit and let them know that he will do his best to make sure no new Detroits are birthed from the recession. This current idea of his promises to encourage new investments, create jobs, and continue greening up the American lifestyle. We’re glad he’s tying all those strings together, because as nice as platitudes about a greener world are, they don’t mean anything without funding behind them. And these technologies could - and should - be a way to revitalize struggling communities without propping up failed industries or creating new company towns around them.

Here’s a list of the grant recipients in PDF format, and just for fun, here’s what Obama was telling Elkhart County a year ago, during his campaign for the presidency:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

As we mentioned a few days ago, we sat down with Aliza from Baltimore DIY Squad (a blog that champions “sustainable projects for an urban environment) to talk solar ovens - since readers have been sending us a fair amount of solar energy items as of late, it seemed like a topical and relevant thing to discuss. Besides, solar ovens are pretty cool.

A solar oven traps heat via reflective material in a black container, which essentially makes it a solar crock pot. Since solar ovens can’t really overheat or burn food, they can be used to bake almost anything; apparently someone had solar-baked cupcakes for sale at this year’s Artscape. They’re also good for drying/dehydrating food, and they can be made out of anything - the DIY Squad’s model is made from a car windshield reflector (pictured at right), and others have made them out of pizza boxes. We can see these things being put to good use for camping and other outdoor activities since they use practically no resources beyond sunlight.

We were also pointed to Homegrown.org, which is a resource center for local/responsible food consumption. As one might expect, the DIY Squad has issues with food crops like corn being converted to ethanol, but the recent advances in cellulosic ethanol blends fit right in with their mindset of making useless things functional (of COURSE we asked about that). Check out their blog and try their laundry soap mixture, if nothing else. Stuff works wonders.