Rising oil prices and Middle East instability are elevating the profile of industrial and environmental biotechnology, which offers the potential of turning cellulose-containing agricultural waste, such as wheat straw and corn stalks and stovers, into ethanol using biotech enzymes.
Congress recognized that potential in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPA), which incorporated a slate of BIO-advocated incentives to develop biorefineries, boost demand for bioenergy and other biobased products and educate the public about this technology.
President Bush followed up by putting cellulosic ethanol in the national spotlight in his January 200 State of the Union address, during which he announced a major push to commercialize the promising petroleum alternative.
"We must change how we power our automobiles," the President said. "We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars, and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen. We’ll also fund additional research in cuttingedge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."
President Bush pledged to increase spending on clean energy programs at the Department of Energy by 22 percent and vowed to replace more than 75 percent of the nation’s oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.
Those goals sound ambitious, but, unlike other energy technologies, bioethanol is not a distant solution. Costs are rapidly declining for the enzymes needed to make bioethanol from crop waste. The first commercial shipment of bioethanol took place in April 200 , and a year later, the biotech companies Genencor and Novozymes and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory announced success in projects that have slashed the cost of enzymes for bioethanol 30-fold, to 10 to 18 cents a gallon. According to the National Commission on Energy Policy, the total cost of producing bioethanol could fall to 80 cents per gallon by 2020.
Environmentalists are excited about this technology as well, because it produces zero net carbon dioxide emissions. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, if we adopt an aggressive plan to develop cellulosic biofuels, the United States could produce an amount equal to more than 50 percent of current total oil used for transportation.
An added benefit of bioethanol is that it is “home-grown” energy, produced using agricultural waste materials that are found worldwide. In the United States, this technology offers farmers a second source of income and Midwestern manufacturing communities the possibility of new jobs in biorefining. For the developing world, it offers the potential to help meet growing demands for fuel with a stable, clean source of energy.
Although the technology appears to be a viable solution to surging energy demands around the world, many challenges remain in raising it to commercial scale. Current
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