two cheers for NZ

remember back about a month ago, i wrote about a company in Washington state buying trees to convert into fuel for transport and how it seemed like the best attempt towards sustainable transport that i've seen so far?

and it turns out i'm not the only one who is impressed with the concept of growing trees to convert to fuel.

New Zealand' Crown Research Institute went through the idea with a much finer tooth comb than i have the time to find and concluded that they could economically supply all of it's vehicle fuel needs with energy crop trees grown on unutilized and underutilized land in the next few decades. pretty impressive, eh?

personally, i'd suggest that the country might be better off looking at a more electric solution, since they have the capacity for huge piles of hydro and wind electricity and since the vast majority of their population has a short commute. but, given that they are such a small country and import most of their cars used from Japan, they have no choice but to work with the resources available. unlike the US or Japan, they don't have the resources to push the market to produce better cars.

so, two cheers for Kiwi ingenuity. now, to see if the idea goes anywhere.

how embarrassing would that be for the US and Japan?