After a rash of negative publicity, biofuels backers say that advanced technologies will reshape the industry, making ethanol from sustainably grown sources cost-effective within a few years.
General Motors on Friday convened a panel of experts from cutting-edge ethanol companies that described different technologies--acid hydrolysis, specialty microbes, and genetically engineered energy crops--which they say will bring back biofuels' faded luster.
The key technology transition, already under way, is shifting from corn to other feedstocks for making ethanol from plant cellulose. With the right technologies and policies in place, the U.S. could meet one-third of its transportation fuel needs by 2030, said Candace Wheeler, a technical fellow at GM's research and development center.
The near-term projection is that, once ongoing plant construction is completed, ethanol will supply almost 10 percent of the U.S. gasoline demand, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Nearly all of that will come from corn.
Wheeler said that the "low-hanging fruit" feedstock for cellulosic ethanol is wood chips and other agriculture wastes. But to get to one-third of demand, long-promised ethanol feedstocks such as fast-growing grasses need to enter the ethanol picture.
"To really get a significant impact...you are going to have to use purposely grown energy crops," she said. "It's really a timing issue. With improvements in technology and economics, these things will be real in the very near future."
Backlash
After a period of government support and rapid investment, a biofuels backlash kicked into gear last year, with people questioning the environmental and economic benefits.
One concern is that farmland diverted to grow energy crops has contributed to higher food prices. Some U.S. senators, including John McCain, have called for repealing the existing biofuels mandates; European political leaders have also reconsidered its policies.
Also, corn ethanol emits roughly the same amount of greenhouse gases as gasoline, according to studies. Ethanol's impact on air quality is being studied by academics. GM has commissioned a study on this issue as well, Wheeler said.
Researchers say that cellulosic ethanol can lower greenhouse gas emissions significantly and that grasses, such as miscanthus and switchgrass, can be used to make ethanol on marginal crop lands.
However, cellulosic ethanol has yet to be produced on a commercial scale at competitive prices.
That will change once genetically optimized energy crops begin to be harvested, predicted Richard Hamilton, CEO of Ceres. The company uses genomics to analyze plant genes and breed grasses and fast-growing trees like poplar, willow, and eucalyptus.
"We need energy crops to get the industry to scale," Hamilton said during the conference call of panel speakers. "Within the next years, we are going to see competitive production costs. Cellulosic biofuels will be very cost-competitive with oil or other sources of biofuels."
Ceres' first sorghum and switchgrass seed products, sold under the Blade Bioenergy Crops brand, will be available this fall and planted next spring, he said. They are bred to be drought-resistant and grow rapidly.
Multiple technology paths
Right now, most ethanol production is going to the pumps in the form of a 10 percent blend with gasoline. Flex-fuel cars can run E85, a mix of 85 percent ethanol and gasoline, which is available at only about 1 percent of U.S. filling stations.
GM has committed to making half of its fleet flex-fuel capable by 2012. To prime the pump for E85, it has invested in two ethanol start-ups which are among the most favored to bring cellulosic ethanol to market.
Mascoma, spun out of Dartmouth College, is designing an ethanol-producing microbe that it says will lower the cost of ethanol production by cutting out the traditional step of using enzymes to make sugars.
Another GM investment is Coskata, which uses a combination of gasification and microbes to turn carbon-carrying feedstocks, including agricultural and forestry wastes or even trash, into ethanol at $1 a gallon.
Municipal waste can produce 20 billion of gallons of ethanol per year near city centers where the fuel is consumed, said Arnold Klann, CEO of BlueFire Ethanol, who spoke on the conference call. Earlier this year, an executive from Coskata estimated that municipal solid waste could yield about 8 billion gallons per year.
BlueFire recently received permits to begin construction of a trash-to-ethanol plant in Lancaster, Calif., that is expected to produce ethanol at $1 per gallon by September, Klann said. Its plans call for a 17 million-gallon-per-year facility next year and then 55 million-gallon-per-year plants after that.
After pretreating incoming trash, the company's concentrated acid hydrolysis process sprays the trash with sulfuric acid which turns the starchy materials into sugars that are then fermented into ethanol.
The remaining lignin material is burned to partly fuel the operation, meeting 100 percent of its steam requirements and 70 percent of its electricity needs, according to Klann. Using landfill also reduces landfill methane, a potent greenhouse gas, he added.
Company representatives on the conference call said that they need continued supportive government policies, notably loan guarantees, to scale up their operations.
Although these panel speakers were bullish on the future of biofuels, the question of whether the U.S. could grow enough biomass to make one-third of its fuel is still not completely resolved.
An oft-cited 2005 Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture study, nicknamed the "billion ton study" (PDF), concluded that 1.3 billion tons of biomass could be harvested sustainably each year in the U.S. by midcentury, which would meet about one-third of U.S. fuel consumption.
Wheeler said GM-commissioned research done at the University of Toronto reached similar conclusions. She added that the author of the billion-ton study plans to do a follow-on report with updated data.
BOSTON--Water is the new oil--a resource where demand continues to rise but supply is limited.
Experts at the Ceres Conference here on Tuesday focused on the risks to businesses and communities that the "global water crisis" poses, one with economic, environmental, and human health impacts. Ceres is a network of environmentally oriented investors.
Availability of fresh water has long been a concern for countries that are water stressed. But water is a tangible concern to more parties, including corporations which are integrating water into their climate change strategies.
A nuclear power plant in Tennessee was derated last year because of a drought in the region. In another case, a huge brewery was shut down because of a lack of available water.
"What's different today is that the global business community is seeing water as a business risk and core to their operations," said Chris Williams, the director of water programs at the World Wildlife Fund.
In California, the electronics industry consumes 24 percent of available water. And rising temperatures from global warming are eating away at a source of water--the ice pack in the North Sierra mountains, Williams noted.
The statistics on availability of water are not encouraging: there are 1.1 billion people in the world who do not have access to safe water, a number that will more than double by 2020.
Fifty percent of the world's wetlands, which clean water and prevent flooding, have been destroyed. Seventy percent of water usage is used for agriculture, but about 50 percent of that is wasted from evaporation or inefficient use. California uses six and a half percent of its electricity to pump water.
GE ups focus on water
Conglomerates likes GE, Siemens, as well as start-ups are developing desalination technologies and other processes for developing waste water for agricultural or industrial use.
At the end of May, GE will mark the third anniversary of its Ecomagination campaign to develop clean technologies with a series of announcements on water led by CEO Jeffrey Immelt.
GE will call for more conservation of water and release tools to help its customers reduce consumption and benchmarks to compare usage within industries, said Jeffrey Connelly, vice president of water and process technologies at GE, who spoke on the panel.
GE will also commit to lowering its own use and advocate for more attention to policy with a position paper.
"The technology is there, the money is there to invest. There needs to be a groundswell of all parties to move the needle forward," Connelly said.
But despite Connelly's focus on technology-based approach to addressing this "growing crisis," different water technologies have serious roadblocks.
Desalination, where water is passed through a filtration membrane, demands a large amount of energy to operate.
The infrastructure for water delivery in many countries, including the U.S., needs to be upgraded (water is still delivered in part by wood pipes in New York). Yet municipalities don't have the money to spend on these expensive overhauls.
Putting a price on water
Key to driving more innovation in water technologies is to put a price on water, like other resources, panelists said.
For example, satellite imagery is being used so that fields are not irrigated when it's raining, noted Bruce Schlein, the vice president of environmental affairs at Citi.
He said Citi sees other business opportunities in desalination, pipeline development, waste water treatment, and bottled water.
If water had a price, like oil has, the billions of dollars of investment in biofuels would not make sense, said Heidi Paul, vice president of corporate affairs for Nestle Waters.
She said it takes 3,700 liters of water to make one liter of ethanol and 900 liters of water to make one liter of biodiesel.
"If water had a price that was even a fraction (of its cost), those things wouldn't be done. They're done because oil has a price and water does not," Paul said.
- prev
- 1
- next
