Here farmers, local power utilities, researchers and the federal government have joined in a partnership to prove that electricity can be generated economically from biomass. This pilot project will convert switchgrass to electricity in a coal fired power plant, and is another step toward the development of home-grown energy supplies in Iowa and across the country. The next step is the development of biomass energy systems which utilize hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity. I call this concept electrofarming and it has many advantages over the coal-fired biomass system. For example, hydrogen fuel cells produce no emissions, only water and electricity.
Fuel cells are more efficient than turbines, even at lower power levels.
Farms could use electrofarming systems to provide the energy for their farm and sell the excess to the power grid, leading to higher rural incomes and more decentralized power production. However, none of these benefits will be realized without a lot of hard work, both by us and by American farmers. One small step in the right direction will be the extension of the ethanol tax credit to 2007, a provision of the transportation bill now being debated on the floor of the Senate. Passage of the President s climate change incentive package, with the clarifications I mentioned above, is also necessary to bring about these changes. Above all, we need to be sure that the Department of Agriculture assumes a major role in the process of finalizing the implementation rules, so that American farmers emerge as the winners they deserve to be.