THE NEW YORK TIMES - May 18, 2008 - Letters
Ethanol and the Energy Question
To
the Editor:
There
is an ethanol alternative that does not use food as a feedstock. It uses a
negative-cost feedstock that we have plenty of: garbage.
The
municipal and industrial waste generated in the United States could provide up to
50 billion gallons per year of clean transportation fuels through the use of
plasma gasification. It could also provide a substantial reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating methane gas from landfills.
Building
on progress over the last two decades, waste conversion using plasma
gasification has become a commercial reality as an environmentally friendly and
economical way to transform waste material into clean energy.
Daniel
R. Cohn
Cambridge, Mass., May 12, 2008
The
writer, a senior research scientist at M.I.T., is a co-founder of a plasma
gasification technology company.