US President George W. Bush hopes that a grass that once covered tens of millions of hectares across North America could help the US kick its addiction to foreign sources of oil.
The plant, called switchgrass, looks nothing like grass in the traditional sense. It can grow up to 4m tall and has stems as thick and sturdy as pencils.
On their first forays into the massive plains at the heart of North America, European settlers found the tall plants spanning as far as the eye could see. But the grass rapidly gave way to corn, wheat and beans to feed the expanding movement, and to roads and cities.
In a twist of history, the grass once sacrificed for human food and space could soon grow again in vast fields to satisfy an even more pressing hunger for energy, if Bush, researchers and high-profile investors have their way.
Most Americans first heard the term switchgrass in a major speech by Bush in January, when he proposed a ramped-up research effort into turning biomass into ethanol, a clean-burning fuel.
The ultimate goal is to replace petroleum-based petrol with pure ethanol or a mix of gasoline and ethanol. In that scenario, drivers with so-called flex cars would be able to pull up to a gas station and decide which kind of fuel they want to use.
The US government is not alone in investing more money into ethanol research and production. Last month, investment bank Goldman Sachs put US$30 million into Iogen Corp, a Canadian company and leader in renewable cellulose ethanol technology.
Goldman Sachs spokesman Michael DuVally said his company saw the "potential for an attractive return" on its investment, and with gasoline prices in the US at all-time highs, other investors agree.
California-based billionaire Vinod Khosla, who has invested part of his personal fortune in ethanol technology, is an "evangelist on this stuff," said David Bransby, a professor at Auburn University in Alabama and an expert on switchgrass and ethanol.
For ethanol enthusiasts, Brazil is the holy grail, having weaned itself of foreign oil with a 30-year push to expand sugarcane production for fuel, now widely available and often cheaper than regular gasoline.
To date, most US ethanol efforts are focused on corn, a crop that experts say falls short of sugarcane's qualities because of the energy needed to grow it -- in the form of fertilizer and cultivation -- and its lower efficiency rating.
The ratings rank how much energy is contained in a fuel product per unit of fossil fuel used in its production. Ordinary gasoline has a 0.8 fossil energy balance rating; ethanol from corn, 1.5; ethanol from sugar cane, 8; and the emerging category of cellulosic ethanol, such as that from switchgrass, a range from 2 to 36, based on current experiments.
"Corn is not all that efficient as [an] energy crop," said Scott Matthews, who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
In addition, corn production for ethanol cannot satisfy the US thirst for fuel. Currently, the US produces only 4 billion gallons of ethanol from corn -- less than 3 per cent of its annual level of consumption.
The most optimistic production estimates are for 15 billion gallons of ethanol, but others say corn's potential has nearly been maxed out.
Although sugarcane is about five times more fuel-efficient than corn, it can currently only be grown in the south of the US, although sugar growers are exploring how to grow the crop further north.
That is where switchgrass comes in. Although its energy efficiency is uncertain, since it falls into the emerging category of cellulosic ethanol, it definitely outstrips that of corn, and has a number of other advantages.
As a native grass, it requires little fertilizer and is resistant to many pests and plant diseases, according to Bransby.
In addition, switchgrass is great at capturing carbon dioxide and trapping it underground with its 3m deep roots, thus acting against the gas which is produced by burning fossil fuels and which many scientists say is the main reason for global warming.
Bransby hopes that switchgrass ethanol will be commercially available by 2012, as Bush proposed in his speech. There is more than "just interest" in the topic, "there is activity", the academic adds.
He even sees soaring oil prices as a silver lining to the cloud, "because it forces us to do what we should have been doing 20 to 30 years ago."
In fact, escalating prices have created a sort of demilitarized zone for cooperation along the entire political spectrum.
Conservatives are finally interested in alternative fuels to reduce US reliance on foreign oil, while environmentalists like the clean-burning qualities.
In Washington, lawmakers are beginning to take the subject seriously -- although the US federal government is way behind countries like Thailand and the Philippines, where national governments are mandating increased biofuel use, or Brazil, which requires 25 percent of its gasoline to contain ethanol.
Some individual US states, however, now demand some biofuel content.
Democratic Senator Kent Conrad, who has introduced legislation calling for a US$40 billion investment over five years into alternative fuels and technology, has renewed the cry for enforced improvements in the fuel efficiency of vehicles as well as cleaner coal plants.
He is particularly enamored of the switchgrass idea.
"Wouldn't it be great if the president, instead of looking to the Middle East, could turn to the Midwest, because we could help grow our way out of this crisis?" Conrad said.
President William Lai (賴清德) attended a dinner held by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when representatives from the group visited Taiwan in October. In a speech at the event, Lai highlighted similarities in the geopolitical challenges faced by Israel and Taiwan, saying that the two countries “stand on the front line against authoritarianism.” Lai noted how Taiwan had “immediately condemned” the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and had provided humanitarian aid. Lai was heavily criticized from some quarters for standing with AIPAC and Israel. On Nov. 4, the Taipei Times published an opinion article (“Speak out on the
The image was oddly quiet. No speeches, no flags, no dramatic announcements — just a Chinese cargo ship cutting through arctic ice and arriving in Britain in October. The Istanbul Bridge completed a journey that once existed only in theory, shaving weeks off traditional shipping routes. On paper, it was a story about efficiency. In strategic terms, it was about timing. Much like politics, arriving early matters. Especially when the route, the rules and the traffic are still undefined. For years, global politics has trained us to watch the loud moments: warships in the Taiwan Strait, sanctions announced at news conferences, leaders trading
Eighty-seven percent of Taiwan’s energy supply this year came from burning fossil fuels, with more than 47 percent of that from gas-fired power generation. The figures attracted international attention since they were in October published in a Reuters report, which highlighted the fragility and structural challenges of Taiwan’s energy sector, accumulated through long-standing policy choices. The nation’s overreliance on natural gas is proving unstable and inadequate. The rising use of natural gas does not project an image of a Taiwan committed to a green energy transition; rather, it seems that Taiwan is attempting to patch up structural gaps in lieu of
News about expanding security cooperation between Israel and Taiwan, including the visits of Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) in September and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) this month, as well as growing ties in areas such as missile defense and cybersecurity, should not be viewed as isolated events. The emphasis on missile defense, including Taiwan’s newly introduced T-Dome project, is simply the most visible sign of a deeper trend that has been taking shape quietly over the past two to three years. Taipei is seeking to expand security and defense cooperation with Israel, something officials
RSS