Closing the loop

Our local news station, KETV, reported on the dedication ceremony yesterday in Mead, NE for the new E3 BioFuels ethanol plant.  E3 stands for “Earth Energy Environment” and the plant is a closed-loop system that produces ethanol without additionally polluting the surrounding environment.  The plant is attached to a feedlot; it takes all the cow manure produced by the feedlot and runs it through an anaerobic digester to create biogas.  The biogas is used to fuel the ethanol plant.  Isn’t that cool?  Granted feedlots are not good things, but as long as they are around, we might as well find ways to make them work for us.  A conventional ethanol plant runs off traditional fossil fuels such as natural gas or coal; using the cow manure reduced our dependence on these fuels.  This isn’t a perfect system – the cows are stilled penned up and being fed corn, instead of grazing in open spaces, but I’d rather see their byproducts used wisely than what is normally done - letting the manure rot in the sun, smelling not-so-great, and creating run-off into local water supplies when it rains…