Investing in Biofuels

The BioWorld Biofuels Report price of gasoline has gone down. It’s very difficult when you’re in Congress to go to a town meeting and have people shaking their fists at you about the price of gasoline and try to have an answer for them. People expect a congressperson to have an answer to that, and cellulosic ethanol has given the recent Congress at least a rational response to what they’re going to do about these cycles of high gas prices. Based on your experience as a member of Congress, are there certain roadblocks that you think could prohibit enaction of legislation regarding biofuels?

No, I really don’t. Like I said, it’s a rare day when you get the environmentalists, the farmers, those who are interested in foreign policy, and the anti-war movement. … All of those groups have aligned themselves with this project, so it’s kind of a no-brainer politically.

Do you think the continued growth of the biofuels industry will eventually allow it to supplant the petroleum-based products industry, or do you think will they co-exist?

That’s very possible because the cellulose ethanol products can be used to replace fossil fuels not just in motor vehicles but also in production use, … petroleum in plastics for instance. There are a couple of other issues involved here. We’re not making any new oil, and we’re consuming it at a pretty [fast] rate and future generations, I think, will think poorly of us if we consume this very
versatile and precious commodity just to haul ourselves and our commodities around. Petroleum really has a lot of value as a chemical not just as a source of energy, so we’ll always be using petroleum, but it will last for centuries longer if we can replace it as a motor fuel.

The market opportunities are vast for a cleaner, more efficient fuel alternative. Do you think that biofuels can rival therapeutics in terms of revenue potential?

Yes — we have 700 members of BIO who are companies and only a handful are in the industrial and environmental section. That’s clearly the area of the greatest growth expectation in years to come because we’re just beginning to tap into various ways to bioengineer enzymes to change them and to alter their function. Nature spent 4 billion years evolving these extraordinarily smart, complex molecules, and cells and enzymes and proteins. Mankind is really just beginning
to understand how to utilize all of the ingenuity that’s built into those cells, and
so we’re just at the dawn of the industrial biotech age.

Do you think that corn ethanol is a viable fuel source?

The issue with regard to corn, when you’re talking about corn on the cob, talking about the starch, is that it has many other uses, not the least of which are for feeding cattle, pigs, chickens and so forth. So there’s clearly a limitation to how much you can lower the price of ethanol. … As the Chinese economy grows, they’re demanding to go up the protein ladder in their diet, so they want to move from rice and fish and they want to be eating meat like the developed world, and all of those cows and all of those pigs and all of those chickens in China eat corn,
and so the genius of the cellulosic ethanol project is to be able to not compete with the starch market portion of the plant and utilize the cellulose, and the more corn that is grown to feed more animals, the more byproduct will [be available] for energy.

How far away do you think cellulosic ethanol is from the fuel pumps?

We’ll have cellulosic ethanol fuel pumps within a year or two as a result of the appropriations this year. What we look forward to is vastly multiplying that so …we get to this 25/25 goal, where 25 percent of the fuel in the year 2025 [is biofuel].

In addition to the government, where do you think the capital will come from to build the needed biorefineries?

You’re already seeing the major oil companies, [such as] BP and Chevron, getting into this area. Recently they see themselves as being in the energy business and not just the oil business, and they know full well that if somebody’s selling motor vehicle fuel for $1/gallon and they’re sitting there with $3/gallon oil, ain’t nobody going to buy, so from a purely competitive standpoint they know they have to get into this fuel.

What were your reasons for voting yes on prohibiting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)?

Actually, I spent several days camping in ANWR, just a few of us and 8 zillion mosquitoes. I’m an avid birder and have been for the last 30 years or more, and ANWR has a very critical role to play for migrating bird species, and so we need to be very careful about treading in those sensitive areas. I am one who thinks that global warming is a real problem, and I am one who, when I was in Congress, felt that the kinds of things we’ve just been talking about, using
biofuels, as well as increasing efficiency in the way we use fuel, are more important than just going to another place to dig up some more fuel. It’s too easy for Congress to say that the solution to the energy problem is just to go find more oil. We owe it to future generations to force ourselves to be more efficient in the way we use fuel.

In addition to enzymes, are there any emerging areas of the industrial biotech industry that you think will contribute to an increased use in biofuels?