Switchgrass’ Future

Centuries ago the prairies of the USA were covered with native grasses such as Bluestem, Buffalograss, Indiangrass and Switchgrass. With the advent of intensive agriculture virtually all of these native grasses became very scarce. They revived in the late 1980s with the introduction of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which took millions of acres of marginal farmland and converted it back into a more natural setting.

Recently switchgrass has been discussed as a potential alternative for the production of ethanol. The biomass created from the very tall grass is viewed as being more similar to the production of alcohol, made from sugarcane, which has allowed Brazil to become self sufficient in energy production.

Another experiment with switchgrass recently took place in southern Iowa with an Alliant Energy project. During the past three months 31,000 bales of switchgrass, totaling over 15,000 tons of renewable fuel was ground into fine particles and then blown into Alliant’s Ottumwa Generating Station where it was mixed with coal.

The test produced almost 20 million kilowatt hours of electricity, enough to run 1,850 average homes for a year. It also set a world record for electricity production from swithgrass.

You’re going to be hearing a lot more about switchgrass in the future. One recent study showed that SD had enough biomass potential to produce 1/3 of the energy that is produced in Saudi Arabia.