Double duty - more for your buck

I'm just loving the controversy over green fuels. Are they good for us and the environment? Or, are they not? People are so stupid, they'll find controversy in anything, even the sun rising ever day. Why not be more productive and find ways to produce more energy from fewer bio-fuels? Like, oh, I don't know, methane as a secondary fuel after ethanol or biodiesel / bio-diesel as the primary fuel.

If we did things right:

1. Everything would be grown organically and Monsanto along with ADM would be out of business for creating a genetic nightmare, and creating an unsustainable form of agriculture.
   
2. All bio-fuel crops would not take the place of food crops. Food first and then crops for fuel.
3. All bio-fuel crops would do double duty by being used to produce a primary fuel and then thrown into a digester, along with our sewage and animal waste, to produce methane. Double duty and more for you buck. What comes out of the digester would be fertilizer to grow even more crops.

The only reason this isn't happening now, is that people in the U.S. and most other developed countries think in a linear fashion, rather dynamically. Just because a particular fuel-crop has been used to produce one type of fuel does not mean it can not produce methane before it becomes fertilizer.

For those who don't know, methane is natural gas and can be used in much the same way.

So, the next time a bio-fuel initiative is up for public input / vote, make sure you add methane production as a secondary fuel. Make it a requirement , essentially doubling up on the amount of energy extracted from a particular bio-fuel crop.

Be smart. Think how something can do more, not less.