Biofuels

"It is one of the ironies of our time that while concentrating on the defense of our country against enemies from without, we should be so heedless of those who would destroy it from within." — Rachel Carson

What do you love most about Virginia's landscape? Perhaps the Blue Ridge Mountains, the rivers emptying to the Chesapeake Bay, or the large expanses of farmland surrounded by communities living an agrarian, traditional rural lifestyle. But what allows the rural community and the farms to exist into the future? Tobacco crops are dwindling as our culture changes. Textile mills and the manufacturing jobs that sustained rural Virginia have moved overseas. How are farmers and those wishing to preserve the landscape of Virginia going to succeed?

Biofuel crops are the answer to a host of questions, environmental and economic, that face rural Virginia. In brief, farmers who grow biofuels instead of tobacco produce a crop that creates energy for running cars or heating homes—energy that is part of a closed CO2 loop so it doesn't add to global warming.

Public Policy Virginia has done much to raise the awareness of the great potential in biofuels with farmers, legislators and businesspeople in the Commonwealth. In December 2005, for example, PPV held a biofuels forum in Danville, Virginia. PPV brought together farmers, researchers, environmentalists and government officials on this very important issue for Virginia. Displacing fossil fuel use with biofuels (such as ethanol from switchgrass), will help protect the environment and ensure that there will be farms, not sprawl. Out of this initial conference came the following:

1. A briefing for the full Virginia Tobacco Commission about the potential for warm season grasses in Virginia’s tobacco regions. Subsequent to this briefing the Commission has funded the planting of hundreds of test acres of energy grasses.
2. The creation of the Virginia Biomass Energy Group to bring together people from all over the Commonwealth to focus initially on biofuels, but today on the entire range of biomass energy feedstocks.
3. Further conferences, publications and briefings about biofuel potential.
4. The inclusion of biofuel potential as an issue in some 2006 Congressional campaigns and in at least three such campaigns in 2008.

To read more on this subject, please download Al Weed's article Biofuels Are in the Fight to Stay, in MS Word format.

Other Subsections in Biomass Energy

• Issue Summary
• Biofuels
• Our Bioenergy Future
• Virginia Biomass Energy Group
• Resources Online