In the face of rising gas prices and increasing turmoil in the Middle East, President Barack Obama today called for a one-third cut in oil imports by 2020. The President’s plan to accomplish this goal relies on a variety of energy sources including increased domestic oil and gas production.

But the aspect of the President’s plan that is of particular interest to our company is his call to increase biofuels production and use. Specifically, the President wants at least four commercial-scale refineries producing cellulosic ethanol or advanced biofuels to break ground within the next two years to help launch next generation biofuels in America.

That caught our interest because we have been working for a decade to commercialize cellulosic ethanol. In fact, our CEO is in Washington today testifying to the Senate Agriculture Committee about the progress we’ve made on cellulosic ethanol and how policy makers can help us bring this project over the finish line. In his written testimony, Jeff Broin wrote:

My company has been making steady progress toward the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol for more than a decade. But the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard, along with support from the Department of Energy and the Iowa Power Fund, allowed us to dramatically speed up our efforts. Today, we have an operating pilot facility producing cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs and light stover and plans to construct a full-scale commercial plant later this year.

Our model for cellulosic ethanol builds on the foundation of our 1.7 billion gallons of corn ethanol production capacity. We will bolt cellulosic technology onto our corn ethanol plants so that we can benefit from the infrastructure that is already in place and our existing relationships with farmers, many of whom are investors in those plants. The corn ethanol plants will also become more efficient because a byproduct of the cellulosic will be used to power both the cellulosic and corn ethanol production facilities. Because we use a waste product to produce cellulosic ethanol and generate power, an independent report found that our process reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 111 percent in comparison to gasoline. Cellulosic ethanol is a carbon sink, not a carbon producer.

(Got to the original article)

realcleverscience:

Very glad people are taking approaches to investigating the broader effects of alternative energy sources - and very happy that they’re showing positive results for these alternatives.

RCS Highlights:

For the first time, researchers have taken an overall look at Swedish biofuels and analysed what impact they have on the environment, both in relation to one another and to the fossil fuel alternatives petrol and diesel. The results show that they produce between 65 and 140 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than petrol and diesel, even when direct and indirect land use changes are taken into account.

Thus the report pokes holes in a controversial argument against biofuels produced from food crops, [namely,]… that these do not have any climate benefit because they crowd out food production and so force new land clearance for cultivation of food in other countries instead… “Our results do not indicate that biofuels produced from crops grown in Sweden currently lead to indirect land use changes.. Despite this, a number of economists have claimed that it could take 50 years for biofuels to repay their impact on the climate, specifically as a result of indirect land use changes,”…