Ottawa, the Cellulosic Ethanol Capital of the World

I’ve been away for a couple weeks, and am catching up on what’s been going on in the North Country. It seems Ottawa is a world leader in getting cellulosic ethanol to service stations and into cars.

Cellulosic ethanol is a fancy way of saying ethanol made from some other plant than corn – wheat straw, switchgrass, miscanthus, young softwood trees, etc. It’s one of the Great Hopes of the biofuels revolution because it’s making fuel out of things we don’t eat. (The big downside of corn ethanol is it drives up the price of corn worldwide, hurting everyone from dairy farmers to Mexicans who can’t afford tortillas.) Many agricultural experts here in the North Country believe cellulosic ethanol can be a growth industry here because our climate grows grasses really well.

Have anyone out there filled up on cellulosic ethanol in Ottawa, at the gas station on Marivale Rd. or via MacEwen Petroleum, as mentioned in the above article? It’s a 10% blend, they say, but it’s a start.