Ethanol bust documented on blogosphere?
By Mark | Posted 05/10/2007
Categorized in Corporate Reputation , Marketing , energy
The month of October is already appearing ghoulishly doubtful for ethanol supporters. Ethanol - originally touted as a magical fuel expected to solve high gas prices in the US and climate change concerns world-wide - now appears to be drying up long before reaching most gas stations and consumer automobiles.
Using Collective Intellect's Media Intellect monitoring tool, I have been monitoring the rise of ethanol in popularity and noting the minute amount of negative content generated around it since the ethanol hype began earlier this year. I can confidently say that the last two weeks have provided the most negative sentiment I have witnessed in regards to the Ethanol and Biofuel industry yet.
The pinnacle of last week's anti-ethanol blog posts came on October 2 when VeraSun halted their massive BioTown project in Reynolds, Indiana due to low ethanol prices. AutoblogGreen provided excellent coverage of the event:
"That's right, the one town in America where everything was supposed to be about bio-energy can't support an ethanol plant."
The following day a post from Todd Sullivan's - Valueplays examined the economic distress that effected the VeraSun decision:
"In 2006 when ethanol was selling on the spot market for $4 a gallon, it was too expensive. Now that it is $1.50 a gallon (almost a full dollar cheaper than gas), it isn't 'economically viable for producers.'"
And to add insult to injury, Noble Prize Laureate Paul Crutzen's 2006 study was posted and commented on by Stoat on October 4, hypothesizing "that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), can contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings."
Those are a few highlights of last week's higher ranked posts from the Collective Intellect interface. But it appears that the ethanol fire-storm actually began on Friday, September 28, again with an AutoblogGreen's post: "Accenture forecasts a biofuel bubble burst"
"According to a recent study by Accenture, the biofuel sector is repeating the pattern that the dot.com companies had during the early 2000s."
As if the Accenture study and a flurry of Economist reposts wasn't enough, Primate Legend Jane Goodall claimed in a NewsBusters.org post that biofuels are destroying the rainforest.
A solid week of negative blog posts on ethanol and other biofuels is no coincidence or fluke. There remains, of course, many posts that defended and continued supporting the ethanol boom, which aren't included in this piece. However, this does not negate the fact that there has been a massive increase in negatively-oriented posts towards the ethanol and biofuel industry; leading many to believe we are headed towards an ethanol bust.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Ethanol bust documented on blogosphere?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.collectiveintellect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/64