Are bioenergy production plants giving way to wind and solar alternatives?

This post should have been published yesterday, in celebrating the very optimistic concept behind Earth Day. However, it is still relevant, in my opinion, on any day of the week.

With crude oil prices escalating to new record levels, a new move on a US university campus is on to turn farm waste into bioenergy.

Actually, the process involves the vigorous mixing of microorganisms into waste livestock manure from large farms to produce methane gas, which is then converted to power biodiesel or ethanol plants.

It is very significant that this US Department of Energy funded biodigester project got its funding since 2001 because the effect of the ongoing sub-prime lending fiasco, in which massive consumer defaults on long-term ‘balloon’ mortgage rates forced many financial institutions to provision for losses with huge write downs, has more recently reared its unwelcome head up again by strangling the funding for such invariably small-scale bioenergy projects.

Of course, conversely, utility-scale solar and wind energy plants and power installations are getting full funding and growing in leaps and bounds, brimming with foreign and internal investments, from New Mexico to California and from Texas to Arizona, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, in other developments, there is a $10 million prize for the producer of a “production-ready, consumer-friendly” 100-mpg vehicle!

All successful applicants will be entered to participate in several proving cross-country races next year and in 2010. Indeed, do not laugh; one potential contestant has already declared an automobile capable of an amazing 400 miles per gallon!

I just hope that the traditional snail-speed biased trend for many of the so-called highly fuel-efficient vehicles does not apply in this particular case.

I mean, if some of the regular ‘fuel efficient’ cars can do about 35 mpg and have a top speed of, say 220 km/h, what would be the equivalent for a 400-mpg car?

Finally, if you have no alternative outlet and you are out and about but away from the USB port of your computer, there is new hope to charge your iPhone and iPod with this backup battery reported here.

Additional sources to explore for further references:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/21/918802.aspx.

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9916858-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20, http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9925338-54.html, http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9925317-54.html.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/18/markets/oil.ap/index.htm?iref=werecommend, http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/10/markets/oil.ap/index.htm?iref=werecommend.