MIT Technology Review has a three-part series on new approaches to biofuels, including Amyris Biotechnologies — whose fermenter is pictured at left. There is a suite of excellent graphics and multimedia associated with the series.
Ethanol, after all, is hardly an ideal fuel. A two-carbon molecule, it has only two-thirds the energy content of gasoline, which is a mix of long-chain hydrocarbons. Put another way, it would take about a gallon and a half of ethanol to yield the same mileage as a gallon of gasoline. And because ethanol mixes with water, a costly distillation step is required at the end of the fermentation process. What’s more, because ethanol is more easily contaminated with water than hydrocarbons are, it can’t be shipped in the petroleum pipelines used to cheaply distribute gasoline throughout the United States. Ethanol must be shipped in specialized rail cars (trucks, with their relatively small payloads, are usually far too expensive), adding to the cost of the fuel.
So instead of ethanol, the California startups are planning to produce novel hydrocarbons. Like ethanol, the new compounds are fermented from sugars, but they are designed to more closely resemble gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel. “We took a look at ethanol,” says Neil Renninger, senior vice president of development and cofounder of Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, CA, “and realized the limitations and the desire to make something that looked more like conventional fuels. Essentially, we wanted to make hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are what are currently in fuels, and hydrocarbons make the best fuels because we have designed our engines to work with them.” If the researchers can genetically engineer microbes that produce such compounds, it will completely change the economics of biofuels.
Of course Vinod Khosla is interviewed — he had some very sensible comments on scalability of transport solutions to China and India.
Khosla seems exasperated by the biofuels naysayers. Climate change, he says, is “by far the biggest issue” driving his interest in biofuels. If we want to head off climate change and decrease consumption of gasoline, “there are no alternatives” to using cellulosic biofuels for transportation. “Biomass is the only feedstock in sufficient quantities to cost-effectively replace oil,” he says. “Nothing else exists.” Hybrid and electric vehicles, he adds, are “just toys.”
In particular, argues Khosla, any transportation technology needs to compete in China and India, the fastest-growing automotive markets in the world. “It’s no big deal to sell a million plug-in electrics in a place like California,” he says. The difficulty is selling a $20,000 hybrid vehicle in India. “No friggin’ chance. And any technology not adoptable by China and India is irrelevant to climate change,” he says. “Environmentalists don’t focus on scalability. If you can’t scale it up, it is just a toy. Hence the need for biofuels. Hence biofuels from biomass.”
… “The reason that I like [corn ethanol] is that its trajectory leads to cellulosic ethanol,” he says. “Without corn ethanol, no one would be investing in cellulosics.”
I don’t understand the logic of that last statement. To me corn ethanol is just “liquid pork” — a scandalous waste of taxpayers hard-earned money.
If Khosla’s projections prove out, “then wonderful,” says the University of Minnesota’s Runge. “Meanwhile, we’re stuck in reality.” Perhaps the main point of contention, Runge suggests, is whether corn ethanol will in fact lead to new technologies–or stand in their way. “It is my opinion that corn ethanol is a barrier to converting to cellulosics,” he says, pointing to the inertia caused by political and business interests heavily invested in corn ethanol and its infrastructure.
Runge is not alone in his skepticism. “Unless the cost is reduced significantly, cellulosic ethanol is going nowhere,” says Wally Tyner, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. Making cellulosic ethanol viable will require either a “policy mechanism” to encourage investment in new technologies or a “phenomenal breakthrough”–and “the likelihood of that is not too high,” Tyner says.
Back in Part 1 of this series, there is a devastating critique of corn ethanol with predictions from 2007 of how the world’s poor were going to pay the price for the fat-farmer subsidies. Here is Dr. Runge
In the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, C. Ford Runge, a professor of applied economics and law at Minnesota, cowrote an article titled “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor,” which argued that “the enormous volume of corn required by the ethanol industry is sending shock waves through the food system.” Six months later, sitting in a large office from which he directs the university’s Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy, Runge seems bemused by the criticism that his article received from local politicians and those in the ethanol business. But he is steadfast in his argument: “It is clearly the case that milk prices, bread prices, are all rising at three times the average rate of increase of the last 10 years. It’s appreciable, and it is beginning to be appreciated.”
The recent OECD report, released in early September, is just the latest confirmation of his warnings, says Runge. And because a larger percentage of their income goes to food, he says, “this is really going to hit poor people.” Since the United States exports about 20 percent of its corn, the poor in the rest of the world are at particular risk. Runge cites the doubling in the price of tortillas in Mexico a year ago.
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