GREEN ETHANOL'S DIRTY FUEL (ethanol plants powered with coal)

[Shallah Kali]

GREEN ETHANOL'S DIRTY FUEL
As natural gas prices rise, some ethanol producers are using coal — a move critics say doesn't add up
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/16834568.htm

Doug Tiffany, a biofuels specialist at the University of Minnesota, notes other downsides to coal. A coal-fired ethanol plant is more expensive to build, and, once built, it's less flexible for future expansion. Coal also is costly to ship.

Then there's pollution. Compared with natural gas, burning coal produces twice as much carbon dioxide, more mercury emissions and more particulate matter, Morris notes. That could spell trouble for coal-fired ethanol plants if a California initiative gains traction.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his state's Legislature have embraced a plan to rate all motor fuels by greenhouse gas emissions over their entire life cycles, from production to transportation to ignition.

{snip}

Meanwhile, a greener variation on coal-fired ethanol debuted near Bismarck, N.D., last month, earning modest praise from environmentalists. Great River Energy, the Elk River-based power generator, located an ethanol plant next to an existing coal-burning plant. Heat for ethanol production is supplied entirely by waste heat from the coal plant. It's touted as the first such ethanol plant in the world/

I wonder how many other plants like that could make use of their waste heat. If we have to put up with the blasted coal plants it is insane to waste anything so costly to us all.