New Study: Cellulosic Ethanol Could Replace 30% of Gasoline by 2030
Sandia labs just released a report indicating that by 2030, the US could produce a total of 90 billion gallons of ethanol from plant waste and energy crops, including 75 billion gallons coming from switchgrass, corn stover, wheat straw and woody crops.
What’s the catch? For this fuel to be economically viable, oil will have to stay above $90 per barrel (oil is currently hovering around $42 / barrel).
Key points from the study include:
- Researchers picked middle range assumptions for their estimates. ”We didn’t pick the most optimistic assumptions or the most pessimistic.”
- The $90 per barrel figure is based on a few important assumptions: 91 gallons of ethanol can be produced from a dry ton of biomass, building a cellulosic ethanol plant would cost $3.60 per gallon of capacity, and plants would pay an average of $40 per dry ton of feedstock.
- 90 million gallons would surpass the federal mandate of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel be produced by 2022
Not everyone agrees with these numbers, including Cole Gustafson, a biofuels economist at North Dakota State University, who said that the “90 billion figure is the most aggressive he’s heard to date.” David Pimental, ethanol’s #1 critic, said a more reasonable goal would be 10 billion gallons a year from cellulosic ethanol within the next 10 years.
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What do we think?
If you’ve been following the development of cellulosic ethanol, this story is not as much of a breakthrough as it is underscoring earlier points, since back in January of last year, researchers from the USDA came to the same conclusion. Despite the predictions, there are two major stumbling blocks for cellulosic ethanol:
- Development is moving relatively quickly, but maybe not fast enough. If you think ’sustainable ethanol’ is a pipe dream, you may not know that some cellulosic ethanol facilities are already producing, and switchgrass is being prepared for farmers as we speak. But this industry is going to need some support (read more on switchgrass).
- Mainstream perception of ethanol has been horribly skewed against ethanol (rightly so when made from corn), and it’s going to take some serious PR for people to understand that these (cellulosic ethnaol vs. corn-based ethanol) are all completely different fuels.
Cellulosic ethanol still has a major role to play in weaning us off petroleum, considering that even a massive switch to plug-in hybrids and fully electric vehicles aren’t going to do much for the millions upon millions of cars already on the road.
[Via: Associated Press]
You wrote “What’s the catch? For this fuel to be economically viable, oil will have to stay above $90 per barrel (oil is currently hovering around $42 / barrel).”, but does that take into account the domestic jobs an ethanol economy might provide that the current oil economy does not? Surely that might skew the equation a bit more towards ethanol?
@Jo: Yeah I agree it wouldn’t be too hard to make a case for domestic fuel production.
Jo – you are absolutely right. Thus far, the ethanol industry has created 320,000 jobs. And Billions of dollars have been invested in the industry. There is a huge economic stimulus from the spin off.
In a recent article called “Ethanol Innovator Driven to Replace Oil”, Thom Gabrukiewicz quoted Jeff Broin, head of Poet, the largest ethanol producer in the world: “In 2007, the (ethanol) tax incentive, that tax break, was $3.3 billion, but the ethanol industry returned $4.6 billion in tax revenue to the Treasury,” Broin says. “We saved $8 billion in farm payments because we eliminated farm payments for the first time in almost 40 years. We saved the consumer $40 to $60 billion in gas prices with extra supplies that kept prices down. We added $47 billion to the Gross Domestic Product.” (Jeff Broin – Poet Ethanol). Imported oil does not do all this.
A fair comparison: There are two categories for crude oil: (1) domestically produced crude oil and (2) Imported crude oil. The costs and the economic impact of these two sources of oil are different. Imported oil has a HIDDEN COST. As long as the U.S. has a Foreign Oil Trade Deficit, imported oil will be paid for with American stocks and bonds, American real estate, and American debt instruments, $500 billion a year is leaving the country.
The debt instruments used to buy foreign oil are created by the Federal Reserve and added to the National Debt. As long as the National Debt remains unpaid, it’s like a revolving credit card. Year after year Americans are paying interest on the fuel they bought years ago, derived from foreign oil. And after 15 years, if the debt continues to be unpaid and continues to accrue interest, you will pay twice for that fuel. This is debt consumption. The cost of that $42 barrel of oil will actually cost you $84 or more. By the way, you pay little or no floating interest on domestically made biofuel.
Sandia’s estimate of 91 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass is too low. ZeaChem has advanced hybrid cellulose ethanol refining technology that gets 135 gallons per ton of biomass. So multiply that 90 billion gallons of ethanol by 150%. You’ll have 135 Billion gallons of ethanol, by 2030. ZeaChem is using fast growing biomass crops such as poplar trees and other types of biomass. They are funded with $34 million, and building a plant in Lakewood Colorado. This is real.
There’s one little thing missing from this study. That’s the ALGAE wild card. Algenol is producing ethanol from living algae. They don’t harvest the algae. Instead, they keep the algae alive, and the vapors given off are continuously distilled into ethanol. Algenal’s method makes 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. They are funded with $800 million and are building a large commercial project in Sonora Mexico. Algae is also being adapted to corn ethanol refineries by Green Plains and GreenShift, both funded. There’s another wild card. A 96% starch variety of algae is a perfect match for making more ethanol, from existing corn ethanol refinery waste products, CO2, waste heat, and waste effluent. Ethanol is not just going to come from cellulosic technology. Look to Algae to add another 50 Billion gallons a year or more within then next 20 years. That gives you 185 Billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2030.
Also consider that, in the same time frame, you will have emerging technologies such as these, effecting the demand for liquid fuels: (1) electric cars and plug-in electric hybrids (2) solar paint by 2015 which will cover entire vehicle bodies, truck trailers, trains, boats and planes. (3) Ricardo ethanol-optimized engine technology that gets more torque and better mileage on ethanol than gasoline (4) Other high efficiency engines emerging like the Scuderi split cycle engine and the Cyclone Green Revolution Engine (5) and also onboard ethanol-water reformed into hydrogen combined with non-precious-metal fuel cells, or the alternative direct ethanol fuel cells, at 2 to 3 times the efficiency of ICEs. And there will be numerous other domestic fuel technologies that significantly get more work out of the same amount of fuel. So the overall number of gallons of fuel required per vehicle will actually drop. There is also a movement converting existing vehicles to get better mileage.
I reviewed this report internally and it is, at best, optimistic.
At worst, it is junk science.
I am disappointed to see that nobody else on this website appears to have reviewed this impartially. Instead, we have some hyped up claims looking through rose colored glasses.
Phil, Could you provide some evidence as to why the report is overly optimistic and/or junk science?
Regardless of your take on the state of the science and the report, we should all take to heart Aureon’s discussion of the REAL cost of imported oil vs. domestic oil. And, of course, he didn’t even mention the national security implications, etc., etc.