Corn Power? Try Beer Power!

As we turn our cornfields into gas stations (and as gas prices still climb), the Australians offer a novel solution to clean energy: beer power. Scientists at the University of Queensland announced yesterday plans to install a microbial fuel cell at the Foster's brewery near Brisbane. Our friends the microbes will eat brewery wastewater containing sugar, starch, and alcohol (I know some locals who'd like that job) and turn it into clean water and two kilowatts of electricity.

Now the Madville Times proudly declares itself a secular adjunct to the Women's Christian Temperance Union ("Touch not the cup!"). However, in the usual Madville Times spirit of tolerance and open-mindedness, this writer acknowledges that some feel it's a darn shame to waste perfectly good alcohol on a car engine. Perhaps we could produce an even happier population by building some breweries next to our ethanol plants. Let the ethanol plants produce energy as their main product with distiller's grain for cattle feed as a by-product, but also promote some crop diversification by producing South Dakota cold barley soup and getting some clean electricity on the side. More jobs, more farm profits, more power, and, well, more beer. Sounds like real energy synergy to me!