

What if you bury corn down old oil wells . . . could you get carbon credits for that? - niels_olson

The US spends a huge amount of money every year on the corn subsidy. Originally, the idea was to make sure everyone got fed. Now everyone gets fed too much. Regardless of the value of ethanol, could we balance the scales by burying the corn instead of storing it around our middles? And, in the process, the people could acquire control of the carbon market itself.<p>I suppose the biggest issue would be the equal amount of oxygen and hydrogen going down the hole. Modern corn crops are all sugars, which are, in general, equal parts carbon and water. Oil is carbon and hydrogen, no oxygen.
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mechanical_fish
_could we balance the scales by burying the corn instead of storing it around
our middles?_

No. As our new DOE chair has pointed out, growing corn is not carbon-neutral:

<http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002722.html>

 _The US already subsidizes farmers to grow corn to turn into ethanol, but
$7bn in the past decade has been wasted because the process isn’t carbon-
neutral. “From the point of view of the environment,” explains Chu, “it would
be better if we just burnt oil.”_

So you can't "rebalance" the carbon scale by turning the corn into oil and
then reburying the corn: That's a lossy process that leaks carbon into the
air. You should instead simply bribe the agribusiness corporations to leave
the oil in the ground and play checkers all summer instead of planting excess
corn. ;)

