Never Mentions Water

Bill Ritter went to Lamar this week. He was there for the Liquid Maize ethanol plant ground breaking and the PCDI annual meeting.

He had only good things to say about ethanol production but never once mentioned water:

When asked what he sees as the future of Colorado’s green energy economy and the role corn based ethanol will play the governor [ Bill Ritter ] said, “Colorado, because it’s an ag producing state is going to be able to take advantage of the bio fuel future...we have such fantastic research and development that not only are we going to take advantage of it, we’re in large part going to direct it. I think we’re going to have a real role in deciding how that goes.”

More Ethanol, Less Alcohol

The next time you drink to Bill Ritter's ill-advised attempt to convert Colorado to an ethanol society, make it a Bud.

So much land is being converted to corn production for corn ethanol that the more mundane crops are being ignored. One of those crops is Hops, used in great quantities to make specialty beers.

The Colorado Springs Gazette is reporting that your favorite specialty beer will cost you a dollar more a six pack and 50 cents more a pint because of the Hops shortage.

It turns out that cheaper, mass produced beers don't use many Hops, so their prices won't be going up. Switch to Bud or pay more.

As long as we are covering price dislocations, expect to pay more for beef and pork for the same reason.

More Pandering to Corn Farmers, No Solutions

This is a water starved state. Our governor, Bill Ritter, has no business promoting a crop that uses a lot of water for a product that uses even more water. But that is what he is doing.

"This is a really important part of our agricultural economy, and the whole idea of growing the corn/ethanol economy is something that helps with respect to our entire sort of economic situation," [ Bill ] Ritter said. "So we're very focused on agriculture and making sure we keep that a stable part of our economy."

Even the farmers understand that the elephant in the corn ethanol room is water:

Yet, while some were grateful for his work on [corn ethanol ] thus far, Glen Murray, a corn farmer from Brighton, was slightly miffed that the governor [ Bill Ritter ] had nothing new to say about the issues concerning water use in the state.

"He didn't really give us a lot of direction," Murray said. "I mean conservation is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time. Storage is not new -- we've been talking about that for a long time."

The most curious quote of the evening came after the speech:

"Really, we can help ourselves a great deal with conservation, with re-use, with shared use between municipalities and agricultural land," said Ritter after his speech. "And then we have to decide at what level we embark upon greater water storage."

Ritter may not be aware that the Mark Udall bloggers appear to be trying to gin up an attack on Bob Schaffer based on his past support of water storage. We'd guess that issue just disappeared.

We ask Bill Ritter to explain his pandering position on corn ethanol when there will be a water crisis in this state.

Ritter Cornfused, Too?

During the Christmas holidays we had a lot of family in, and though the conversation seldom turned to politics, it did turn to E85 ethanol. One family member has a car that burns E85 and a gas station that sells it.

Congress heavily subsidizes the price of E85 in a number of ways to the point that E85 is almost always cheaper than gasoline. Apparently, the gas mileage that this family member gets is so significantly lower with E85 that if gas is cheap enough, he is unwilling to drive a few extra miles to fill up with E85.

We might have forgotten the conversation but for stumbling across a lengthy and readable CSU Coloradoan article that includes some very useful information on the future of ethanol, not corn ethanol. We only sample it here:

"When you start thinking about what kind of plant you should grow to best utilize its biomass, corn is not the answer," said Ken Reardon, a Colorado State University chemical and biological engineering professor who researches ethanol production. "Because corn uses a lot of water, people are now looking at crops that take less water to grow and produce more mass per acre than corn...”

"Once you produce the product you have to be able to get it to market, and building infrastructure from scratch cannot be done overnight,” said Ritter spokesman Evan Dryer. “Using corn ethanol helps us create a new market for the corn industry and helps us create a new consumer base for ethanol in general, and the governor supports that.”