As public concerns increase over oil prices and global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have turned their attention to alternative energy sources created from plants.

"What we found is that if you burn this biomass to make electricity to power electric vehicles you can get a lot more transportation and a lot more greenhouse gas offsets than if you converted it to ethanol," Campbell.

Scientists say electricity derived from switchgrass is the most efficient energy source they studied. They say it would take far less valuable farmland to produce energy from switchgrass than it would take to produce the same amount energy in the form of corn-based ethanol.

In the move toward biofuels to replace petroleum products, Campbell says cars powered with bioelectricity appear to be the way to go.

"If we're going to anticipate that shift and think holistically about the best way to build up our bioenergy resources infrastructure, then we might want to start thinking about bioelectricity as a viable energy pathway," said Campbell.

The authors of the study say they now need to consider other issues related to biomass energy conversion, such as water consumption, air pollution and the relative costs of converting biomass to ethanol or to electricity.

Source: VOA News.com