Sometimes, when you ask a question, you get a good answer.

A recent post on a push to increase the U.S. gasoline blend rate ended with this thought-provoker: At this rate, will cellulosic ethanol, from non-food plant materials, ever get off the ground?

Yes, replied Sam Salyer, a representative for a Massachusetts-based biofuel company called Qteros.

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For the moment, the price at the pump is reasonable. A spike in demand or a terrorist disruption, however, will quickly remind us that we are desperately dependent on oil as we continue to consume 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Even in these recessionary times of moderate demand, we are running out of easy to extract oil from dessert sands. We are turning to sources of unconventional oil, such as tar sands in Canada, to produce oil with ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

For a while, corn ethanol was viewed by some as a step in the right direction. Now we are like the character in a Woody Allen comedy who explains, “I used to be a heroin addict; now I’m a methadone addict.” At a time when a billion people go hungry, many as a result of disappearing water on this heating planet, fuel from food is not the answer.

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Ongoing deforestation in countries such as Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia has been further linked to the rising demand for biofuels, according to speakers at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS):

“If reduced U.S. soybean production results in a parallel increase in Brazilian soybean production, a potential net release of 1,800 to 9,100 Tg (trillion grams) of CO2-equivalents of greenhouse gas emissions due to land-use change is possible,” [Michael Coe of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts] wrote in a summary of his talk. That is equivalent to more than 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Let’s just hope someone has that cellulosic biofuel breakthrough we’re all hoping for.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
The biofuels industry is also under attack due to food-from-fuel and land use issues. Over one billion people are hungry or starving. Agricultural expert Lester Brown reports, “The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year.” Scientific American: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Europe, now California, and soon many U.S. states, now insist that land use must be considered in evaluating biofuels.

During the middle of the conference, a workshop for the media was held. The theme of the workshop quickly became clear - the industry problems were the fault of regulators and we the press.

Professor Bruce Dale, Michigan State University, dismissed corn/soy land use change as an “emotional issue.” He continued, “The California Low Carbon Fuel Standard is intellectually bankrupt.” To demonstrate the flaw of land use, he stated that replacing a gasoline powered vehicle with an electric vehicle would only increase the demand for coal power and therefore do nothing to reduce greenhouse gases.

The example is quite flawed. Automakers consistently tell me that their gasoline powered vehicles are about 15 percent efficient and their electric vehicles are 60 to 70 percent efficient. EVs need much less energy.  Even if you could find an EV powered purely with coal, it would produce less lifecycle emissions than a comparable gasoline or corn ethanol fueled vehicle. According to the latest figures published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), non-hydro renewable sources of electricity enjoyed double-digit growth during the past year while coal was down by 1.1 percent. Incremental demand for electricity is bringing more renewable energy on-line.

In fact, the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is based on the peer-reviewed work of scientists using Argonne National Labs GREET model. The work, industry comments, and findings are all available at http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm

The LCFS encourages the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy delivered to the wheels of vehicles. The scientific analysis behind the LCFS includes these examples of grams of CO2e emissions per mega joule of energy:

Ø    Gasoline    Oil Refined    92
Ø    Diesel    ULSD Refined    71
Ø    Diesel    Coal-to-Liquid    167
Ø    Biodiesel    Midwest Soy    30
Ø    Ethanol    Corn with Coal Electricity    114
Ø    Ethanol    Cellulosic from Poplar Trees    -12
Ø    Electricity    California Average    27

If the biofuels industry sees a future in biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol, the industry should be encouraged by the findings of the scientists contributing to the LCFS. On the other hand, if the industry is only betting its future on corn ethanol, then the regulation is a threat.

 
LCFS will not help the expansion of E85 stations for flexfuel vehicles. For the 2009 model year, the best rated car running on E85 in the United States was the Chevrolet HHR, with a United States EPA gasoline mileage rating of 26 miles per gallon, and an E85 rating of only 19 miles per gallon – and that’s the best from Detroit with mileage on all other U.S. flexfuel vehicles being worse. In other words, if you passed on using E85 and drove a hybrid with good mileage, you would double miles per gallon and produce far less greenhouse gas emissions than any U.S. flexfuel offering. Top 10 Low Carbon Footprint Four-Door Sedans for 2009

While the press was being scolded and air regulators were being metaphorically burned at the stake, most conference attendees had an afternoon to enjoy San Francisco. Many traveled using electric-powered buses and the hydro powered BART rapid transit system that carriers 100 million riders annually. So much for the press conference dismissing electric powered transportation as not being feasible.

Although attacking regulators, environmentalists, and advocates for the hungry will not save the biofuel industry, the federal government may save it. As the conference unfolded in California, a major announcement was made in Washington, DC, by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu when he announced that $786.5 million would be made available to accelerate advanced biofuels research and to help fund commercial-scale biorefinery demonstration projects.

One irony for the biofuel industry is that as oil prices increase, their economic model improves, but consumer demand for fuel moderates as consumers drive fewer miles, use more public transportation, and soon switch in growing numbers to electric vehicles. For decades, however, fuel will be in demand for many passenger vehicles, heavy-vehicles, long-distance goods movement, ships and airplanes. The opportunity is ripe for delivering fuel with lower lifecycle emissions. Promising cellulosic biofuel companies will be covered in my next article.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report. He is the author of a new book about the future of transportation – Save Gas, Save the Planet.

Image Credit: Lee Jordan via Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Beyond these entrenched extremes, ranging from wild optimism to abject skepticism, comes the real heavy lifting - understanding there are significant hurdles inherent in getting second generation biofuel from the lab into full-scale sustainable commercial production, but seeing those hurdles as challenges to be overcome, not as roadblocks from which to retreat, and working to bridge the gap from current reality to potential promise.

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We’ve all heard the arguments against corn ethanol before, but this is the first study of its kind to look at economic and health costs of not only corn ethanol but also of gasoline and cellulosic ethanol, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and BusinessGreen.com.

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Now, a new study from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering and Mascoma Corporation in Lebanon, N.H., has made a discovery that will prove invaluable in production large quantities of cellulosic ethanol, a likely substitute.

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Researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have made a potentially ground-breaking discovery in the production of biofuels from sustainable, non-food sources.

By heating cellulosic plant material to between 750 and 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit in the presence of a catalyst, then quickly cooling it, the team of graduate students led by associate professor George W. Huber was able to produce a mixture of hydrocarbons identical to gasoline in less than two minutes. The conversion is a relatively simple, one-step process that could create biogasoline for as little as $1 per gallon.

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Photo Source: marinebiology.edu

In case you didn’t know, the “dead zone” isn’t just a novel by Steven King or an old TV show, it’s an area about the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico that during the summer months is incapable of supporting sea life. The dead zone is created when fertilizer run off promote algae growth, which in turn throws off the oceans equilibrium by using all the available oxygen, killing everything else. So, good for algae perhaps, but bad for the sea life in general.

Carectomy recently reported that ethanol production for passenger vehicles could be responsible for a growth in this dead zone. In their words:

Corn is the biggest culprit in creating these environments, and now that the U.S. is looking to biofuels as a solution to its energy needs, the problem’s only getting worse. Bush signed legislation at the end of 2007 that will triple the amount of corn ethanol produced over the next several years.

More after the jump!

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Download Coskata Announcement

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Mr. Wagoner addressed a variety of issues, including the Coskata ethanol announcement, the future of the Hummer brand (hint: smaller), the risks associated with producing the Chevy Volt, and the impotency of CAFE standards. In case you wanted to hear it straight from the top, here you go:

Download Breakfast with Rick Wagoner

The biofuels industry is also under attack due to food-from-fuel and land use issues. Over one billion people are hungry or starving. Agricultural expert Lester Brown reports, “The grain required to fill an SUV’s 25-gallon tank with ethanol just once will feed one person for a whole year.” Scientific American: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Europe, now California, and soon many U.S. states, now insist that land use must be considered in evaluating biofuels.

During the middle of the conference, a workshop for the media was held. The theme of the workshop quickly became clear - the industry problems were the fault of regulators and we the press.

Professor Bruce Dale, Michigan State University, dismissed corn/soy land use change as an “emotional issue.” He continued, “The California Low Carbon Fuel Standard is intellectually bankrupt.” To demonstrate the flaw of land use, he stated that replacing a gasoline powered vehicle with an electric vehicle would only increase the demand for coal power and therefore do nothing to reduce greenhouse gases.

The example is quite flawed. Automakers consistently tell me that their gasoline powered vehicles are about 15 percent efficient and their electric vehicles are 60 to 70 percent efficient. EVs need much less energy.  Even if you could find an EV powered purely with coal, it would produce less lifecycle emissions than a comparable gasoline or corn ethanol fueled vehicle. According to the latest figures published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), non-hydro renewable sources of electricity enjoyed double-digit growth during the past year while coal was down by 1.1 percent. Incremental demand for electricity is bringing more renewable energy on-line.

In fact, the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is based on the peer-reviewed work of scientists using Argonne National Labs GREET model. The work, industry comments, and findings are all available at http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/lcfs.htm

The LCFS encourages the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy delivered to the wheels of vehicles. The scientific analysis behind the LCFS includes these examples of grams of CO2e emissions per mega joule of energy:

Ø    Gasoline    Oil Refined    92
Ø    Diesel    ULSD Refined    71
Ø    Diesel    Coal-to-Liquid    167
Ø    Biodiesel    Midwest Soy    30
Ø    Ethanol    Corn with Coal Electricity    114
Ø    Ethanol    Cellulosic from Poplar Trees    -12
Ø    Electricity    California Average    27

If the biofuels industry sees a future in biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol, the industry should be encouraged by the findings of the scientists contributing to the LCFS. On the other hand, if the industry is only betting its future on corn ethanol, then the regulation is a threat.

 
LCFS will not help the expansion of E85 stations for flexfuel vehicles. For the 2009 model year, the best rated car running on E85 in the United States was the Chevrolet HHR, with a United States EPA gasoline mileage rating of 26 miles per gallon, and an E85 rating of only 19 miles per gallon – and that’s the best from Detroit with mileage on all other U.S. flexfuel vehicles being worse. In other words, if you passed on using E85 and drove a hybrid with good mileage, you would double miles per gallon and produce far less greenhouse gas emissions than any U.S. flexfuel offering. Top 10 Low Carbon Footprint Four-Door Sedans for 2009

While the press was being scolded and air regulators were being metaphorically burned at the stake, most conference attendees had an afternoon to enjoy San Francisco. Many traveled using electric-powered buses and the hydro powered BART rapid transit system that carriers 100 million riders annually. So much for the press conference dismissing electric powered transportation as not being feasible.

Although attacking regulators, environmentalists, and advocates for the hungry will not save the biofuel industry, the federal government may save it. As the conference unfolded in California, a major announcement was made in Washington, DC, by U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu when he announced that $786.5 million would be made available to accelerate advanced biofuels research and to help fund commercial-scale biorefinery demonstration projects.

One irony for the biofuel industry is that as oil prices increase, their economic model improves, but consumer demand for fuel moderates as consumers drive fewer miles, use more public transportation, and soon switch in growing numbers to electric vehicles. For decades, however, fuel will be in demand for many passenger vehicles, heavy-vehicles, long-distance goods movement, ships and airplanes. The opportunity is ripe for delivering fuel with lower lifecycle emissions. Promising cellulosic biofuel companies will be covered in my next article.

John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report. He is the author of a new book about the future of transportation – Save Gas, Save the Planet.

Image Credit: Lee Jordan via Flickr under Creative Commons License.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Bob Lutz on Sunday, a 72-year old icon whose no nonsense attitude and charismatic demeanor have led some to dub him the ‘Rockstar’ of the automotive world. Our conversation focused on two of the hottest topics at the auto show: GM’s ethanol partnership with Coskata, and the Chevy Volt. I’ve summarized/paraphrased/and copied the conversation below:

How personally involved are you in the release of the Chevy Volt?
I’m way more closely involved with the Volt than with any other GM vehicle, which has something to do with the uncharted waters of innovative design, new technology, and because it’s such an unconventional motor.

Could you talk more about the Coskata announcement and cellulosic ethanol production?
The whole deal is that it doesn’t use such expensive enzymes to break material down. This kind of production [enzymatic cellulosic ethanol] is time consuming and the step that has been kind of a hindrance for the ability to mass produce cellulosic ethanol. What you can do here is take all this waste material, anything except glass or metal, grind it up into a powder, produce plasma with something like a lightning bolt or massive electric charge. This turns the material to gas, which goes to anaerobic bacteria—which naturally exist in nature—and that live and reproduce in this environment, and they output ethanol. Further steps separate the ethanol and water. All of these things, the scrubber, the shredder, the plasma initiator for the gas, all this is known technology. The big idea is combining all of these elements, not inventing new technology.

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