SUSTAINABILITY
The grass is always greener
Sustainability involves more than producing vast quantities of biofuels. It means making wise choices. Switchgrass and other dedicated energy crops offer numerous opportunities to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions and meet other environmental objectives.
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Ethanol produced from dedicated energy crops is projected to yield 10X more energy than the amount of fossil fuel used to produce it. Current starch ethanol yields just over 1X, but still a healthy amount more than gasoline, which requires more fossil energy to deliver it than it contains. See Comparison >>
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Crops like switchgrass have few natural pests or diseases, so growers will not need to apply large amounts of pesticides like they do with row crops.
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Many energy crops simply out-compete weeds, so, once established, they need little or no herbicides.
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Deep root systems of perennial grasses use water very efficiently, and since these plants recycle their own nutrients, little fertilizer is needed. This also reduces emissions of nitrous oxide (N20), a greenhouse gas.
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Switchgrass fields have 1/100 the soil erosion and 1/8 the nitrogen runoff of corn.
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Compared to traditional row crops, energy crops provide additional habitat to 2 to 5 times as many bird species.
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And on and on