FEB 10

A study conducted by a government laboratory in partnership with General Motors revealed that the U.S. has the land, water and transportation resources necessary to make a whole lot of cellulosic ethanol. Enough, in fact, to replace one-third of our gasoline needs by 2030.

The seven-month study evaluated the country's ability to complete each step needed to produce biofuels from "seed to station" and at what volume. Researchers found that the U.S. could produce 90 billion gallons of biofuel per year by 2030 and that it would cost about the same as producing the equivalent amount of gasoline. The laboratory assumed the fuel would be made of "energy crops," fast-growing plants that would not use the same land as that used for food crops.

Other assumptions were that each ton of biomass would create 95 gallons of fuel and that each ton would cost $40. This would make the biofuel competitive with oil prices when oil is priced between $70 and $120 a barrel. The savings in CO2 emissions were calculated to be 250 million tons per 60 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol.

The big details missing from this study are how the fuel would be made and what exactly would be used to make it. There have been a lot of successful trial runs of biofuels and biofuel-blends, but no company has reached a point where they could manufacture cellulosic ethanol at a commercial level.

If you'd like to read more about this study, click here for the executive summary.

via Green Inc.

Comments (10)

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OR....
written by ben, February 10, 2009

The land could be used to produce food and to replant the worlds lost forests.
Out of interest who here is Pro bio fuel and who Anti?

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Well -
written by Gogo, February 10, 2009

fuel is interesting but probably just a paranthesis in the long run , more important is materials used for clothes, it is vital to support ecological materials, such as bamboo and hemp, it is also more healthy for you not to wear poisonous materials

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written by Katherine, February 11, 2009

Is biofuel really a good option? It affects our food supply, our textile supple, etc! I think spending money on biofuel technology is just putting a bandage on the ultimately problem - that more money needs to be spent on researching things like solar power. I think the study did a good thing though in assuming that it would focus on fast growing crops and won't use land that is reserved for our food supply. But corn based ethanol production has already affected our food supply so it's hard to take the study's assumption seriously.

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Let's pull the plug on BURNING stuff for
written by Julian, February 11, 2009

To begin with, the whole "burning of food" issue. Then, I wonder what's the long range, true, ultimate impact of biofuels on the development of new energy technologies. We keep searching for ways to perpetuate the internal combustion engine instead of researching new technologies that are cleaner and more efficient.

We all know that plants are inefficient solar collectors, and we'll then consume energy to convert the plants into oil and into fuel, and then we'll waste energy converting that chemical energy into mechanical energy at the engine by burning, etc.

Please, can't we move forward instead of sideways like a crab????

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biofuel is an imperfect solution
written by Roy, February 11, 2009

So... the plan is then to burn a hydrocarbon, producing carbon dioxide as a result, in order to drive cars and ...

Doesn't sound all that different to me. Hydrocarbons are a bad plan. Hydrogen, which burns with a byproduct of water, seems better. You can even use bio-solar to produce it!

Oil bad. Agreed. But seriously, this is only a step sideways.

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Why not use "waste" cellulose
written by Use it or lose it, February 11, 2009

It seems that not so long ago there was a lot of talk about China cutting back on the waste paper they were importing, resulting in warehouses full of low-grade waste paper. Why don't we start by seeing how far we can get making cellulosic ethanol with that stuff before we go down that path of "energy crops" again.

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written by Luke, February 11, 2009

Katherine,

The point of cellulosic Ethanol is avoid burning food. It's more like burning hay, or something like that. Not entirely unrelated, but it's not quite the same thing.

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written by CNCMike, February 11, 2009

I really wish people would stop repeating all the oil company sponsored, right wing propagated lies about ethanol and educate themselves. Ethanol does not interfere with food production. If cellulosic is what you want to make, just the clippings from every lawn in America could replace all the gasoline we use in this country every day.
There are energy crops that grow on land that will not support food crops, arid land, marshy land etc, etc...Even using corn is sensible. Only 1% of all the corn in this country is used as food for humans. 80% is used as animal feed. 20% of that goes overseas as animal feed. If we make ethatnol from that 80% we not only get a superior fuel we get much higher quality animal feed and eliminate the need for pertoleum fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides.
I we just collect the seed pods from Mesquite trees that grow wild we could procuce 30 BILLION gallons of ethanol a year with no planting, irrigating or fertilizing.
I we use cattails to further clean the discharge water from waste water treatment facilities we could replace all the 200 million plus gallons of daily gasoline used in this country with ethanol made from the startch of the cattail. Even that route would use a whopping 1.46% off all the agricultural land in this country.

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A bit of both is needed
written by AlB, February 11, 2009

I fully agree with those who state that burning stuff is so “last century”, and agree we should be using a mix of solar thermal, wind and PV to supply most of our energy needs.
However there are some applications such as flying airplanes which are not likely to work well on batteries or fuel cells etc (at least not in the medium term) and for these cellulosic ethanol is probably the best current solution. Note also that we do throw away a lot of bio-waste which could be used for this rather than just being allowed to rot (and produce CO2)

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Algae is showing potential for biofuels
written by PlanMyGreen, February 14, 2009

Many studies are showing much higher yields with using algae as a biofuel source. If we can manage to find a manageable way to harvest mass quantities of algae, we could solve the problem of using farmland that could be growing food crops.

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