Green Options

In 2006 I attended a BIO meeting in Toronto focused on the new bio-based economy.  Oil had just risen to $70/barrel and it was a time when environmental NGOs, biotech companies and even oil companies seemed to be on the “same page” in terms of their enthusiasm for moving to plant-based feedstocks as the perfect alternative to oil dependency.  With the very obvious international security costs of the oil economy, and what were then thought to be unimaginable energy costs, it was a remarkable sort of celebration event for all the alternative energy and materials folks who has suffered under the decades of cheap oil.  As much as I was happy to see such “multi-stakeholder” agreement, I was sad because anyone with an agricultural perspective could see a train-wreck coming.

People were making presentations about cool second generation innovations like “Cellulosic” ethanol from sources like switchgrass or Miscanthus and also about ethanol alternatives like butanol.  People were talking about bio-materials for even things like the auto industry.  However; the side conversations were about the huge boom underway in the corn ethanol industry.  Orders for stainless steel tanks were back-logged two years.  What had started as a local, farmer-cooperative funded industry had become a venture capital frenzy.  I could see that long before the promise of “second generation” biofuels could be realized, corn ethanol would get to be big enough that it would end up fracturing the amazing consensus about the bio-economy that was functioning at that conference. 

It’s no surprise that the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures oppose the American Clean Air and Security Act, but so does Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Dow Chemical and Ford Motors support it.

Yesterday was a big day for the biofuels industry. President Obama issued a presidential directive to the USDA to expand access for biofuels that includes $800 million to fuel biofuels research. The purpose of the directive, in part, is to aggressively accelerate the investment and production of biofuels. What the directive does not do, is set dollars aside to help improve the infrastructure for higher ethanol blends including E85 although it encourages production of more flex-fuel vehicles.

This announcement appears to be serious, at least as serious as a government proclamation can really be– they created another committee to oversee that the presidential directive. The USDA, EPA and DOE will form a Biofuels Interagency Working Group with a mission to increase energy independence in part through the development of the nation’s first comprehensive biofuels market development program.

Corn ethanol was given a reprieve today when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its proposed rule for implementation of the Renewable Fuels Standard or RFS2 that includes calculations of all greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) for all fuels. The RFS was signed into law as part of the Energy and Independence Act of 2007 which limits the maximum amount of corn ethanol to 15 billion gallons of the required 36 billion gallons by 2022.

There was palpable concern among corn ethanol proponents leading up to the ruling due to the controversy surrounding Indirect Land Use as well as the passing of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) last week by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which was not favorable for corn ethanol.

It’s almost been a year since Virent Energy partnered up with Shell to advance their biogasoline synthesis technology, known as bioforming.

I’ve been curious about their progress, and recently listened to a lecture given at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Virent researcher Paul Blommel on the bioforming process.

During bioforming, sugars and polymers are rearranged into alkanes (biogasoline) that can be used for fuel in combustion engines. The gasoline produced is of a higher volatility and better production efficiency than corn ethanol.

Virent is still in the developmental stages of gasoline production. Their patented aqueous phase reforming (APR) technology and BioForming process is currently producing a liter per day of pure gasoline from plant material. For now they are mainly using simple sugars found in plants, but plan to tap into the more woody lignocellulose too.

After the lecture, I had a chance to talk with Blommel in depth. Read more of that conversation after the jump.

The Renewable Fuels Association finds errors in last week’s University of Minnesota study on the pitfalls of corn ethanol.

The major problem with corn ethanol doesn’t come in its emissions while a car is in motion; it comes from the energy-intensive process used to make it in the first place, and the fertilizer needed to grow corn.

CNN is reporting that the ethanol industry’s top lobbying groups have sent a letter to the executives at Ford, GM and Chrysler, urging the Big Three to adopt widespread support for higher ethanol blends in gasoline and mandatory E85 flex fuel capability on all new cars.

The three ethanol groups — Growth Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association and the American Council on Renewable Energy — painted a bit of a doomsday picture for the Big Three in their letter, suggesting that the only way for the auto industry to avoid “dire consequences” is to “bring resourceful, innovative and practical solutions” to the table.

In what could be a major breakthrough for second generation ethanol production, German researchers have developed a new method that easily converts raw wood into sugar using a liquid ionic salt bath at room temperature followed by reaction with a solid acid resin.

The process works by chopping the complex raw wood molecules into smaller and simpler bits — the end product being single sugar molecules. The method can also be used on other second generation ethanol feedstocks such as grass straw. Once you’ve made the sugar, the rest of the process of making ethanol is as simple as making beer — literally.

While campaigning in Iowa this week, John McCain offered a glimmer of new support for the ethanol industry that he has long been opposed to.

Water conservation has always been a hot button for Aid Organizations and Environmentalist. With a world wide lack of drinking water, and more third world countries getting involved in the growing bio-economy, I think it’s fair to look behind the curtain of the fuel movement that calls itself “Green.”