Biofuels grown by airport tarmac?

Washington Examiner:
John Deere combines will be landing at the nation’s 15,079 airports soon if President Obama and his green energy team get their way.

Seemingly dead set against drilling for more fossil fuels, the administration is eyeing an unusual idea of turning airports into biofuel producers, planting grasses that can be brewed into ethanol. But there’s a hitch: they first have to figure out which grasses won’t attract deer and birds that could get in the way of fast-moving aircraft.

The ideas surfaced today in a release from the Agriculture Department which noted that some airports are already using wasted space as solar and wind farms. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack is already onboard the plan to farm fuel at airports. “Converting airport grasslands to biofuel, solar or wind production not only provides more environmentally-sound alternative energy sources for our country, but may also increase revenue for airports,” he said.

Vilsack touted a USDA study that said one advantage to farming fuel at airports is that nobody really cares what it looks like, thereby avoiding fights with locals opposed to windmills and solar panels. Plus, some airports already lease land to farmers for grain production.
... 
How did they overlook highway medians and road sides?  So far biofuel production has been unsuccessful other than heavily subsidized ethanol.  The switch grass biofuel plants were going bankrupt before even Solyndra.

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