Nathanael Greene's Blog
More money for biofuels conversion, more needed for feedstocks
July 18, 2008
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
The perennial question about cellulosic biofuels has been will they always be 5 years in the future. I've written about how there has been an explosion in private sector efforts to develop a wide range of technologies to convert biomass to a wide range of different types of biofuels. This week further evidence that this explosion is alive and well comes from a number of reports about investments and partnerships to develop conversion technologies. I believe that this sort of shotgun approach greatly increases the chances that at least one of these different technologies will work and that 5 years from now, the question of economic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to liquid fuels will be solved.
But that's only part of the story, for the industry to succeed we also need a lot of sustainable and truly low-carbon biomass. And this is where I think research efforts really need to be stepped up. We need to find alternative crops, crop rotations, and management practices so that we're getting more food, more ecosystem services, and more biomass from the land. It doesn't all have to happen overnight--there is more than enough pure waste materials to launch the industry--but ultimately the trends of population growth, global warming, and the need to protect and restore our ecosystems so that we don't drown in our own pollution require across the board improvements. And I am optimistic that we can achieve triple baseline wins. To date there have either been no financial incentives (think carbon) or only weak incentives (think farm bill conservation programs) for farmers to manage our land for anything other than high yields of commodity crops.
We need to create performance incentives and markets for truly sustainable products and ecosystem services and then we need to help farmers figure out how to manage for these multiple goals. Both structuring those incentives and markets and developing and deploying innovative agricultural practices starts with dramatically increased research and development. The government needs to step up, but I hope that some far sighted companies will also see the demand for this sort of management coming. Then we can round out the picture of development in the advanced biofuels world.
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Comments
Earl Killian — Jul 20 2008 12:25 PM
Nathanael wrote, "We need to find alternative crops, crop rotations, and management practices so that we're getting more food, more ecosystem services, and more biomass from the land."
Isn't growing crops specifically for biofuels a bad idea (e.g. Searchinger etc.)? Why isn't agricultural residue (which doesn't compete with food) the right feedstock for cellulosic ethanol plants? How about blogging on this?
ORNL suggests 170 million tons (154 million tonnes) of corn stover is possible. If one assumes 0.38 L ethanol per kg for cellulosic conversion, then you get 58 billion liters or 15 billion gallons, which would make 18 billion gallons of E85. Using 86.4 MJ/gal for the LHV of E85, and 121.3 MJ/gal for the LHV of gasoline, this means the E85 is the equivalent of 13 billion gallons of gasoline. If we assume a fleet average of 60 MPG in 2050, this represents 778 billion miles of VMT. For 420 million people at the current VMT per capita of 9300, we will want to drive 3.9 trillion miles, so this is 20% of US 2050 VMT. If we are getting 80% of our miles from electricity in PHEV-60s, then this is just about right for the liquid backup fuel in the tank.
To make 18 billion gallons of E85 we would need only 2.7 billion gallons of gasoline. Compared to the 135 billion gallons we use today for passenger transportation, that is just 2%. Even without new drilling, the U.S. could become an oil exporting country with PHEVs and corn stover E85. Why would we grow switchgrass instead of using Ag residue?
One issue is that I doubt ORNL properly allowed for soil health in their corn stover estimate. What do you think Nathanael?
Stephanie Phillips — Jul 21 2008 02:34 PM
Hi Nathanael,
I've really enjoyed reading your blog posts on biofuels. You seem to be really interested in the subject.
Here's some news you might be interested in. OPEC recently came out claiming that ethanol is responsible for rising gas prices. While I'm not sure how many people actually believe this claim, the biofuels industry decided to fight back with a statement of their own. A global group of biofuels associations placed an ad in the Financial Times asserting that OPEC is "misleading" the public. If you missed the ad you can look at it here: http://www.goodfuels.org/opec
Ethan Davis — Jul 31 2008 03:05 AM
Nathanael wrote, "We need to find alternative crops, crop rotations, and management practices so that we're getting more food, more ecosystem services, and more biomass from the land."
Earl wrote "Isn't growing crops specifically for biofuels a bad idea (e.g. Searchinger etc.)? Why isn't agricultural residue (which doesn't compete with food) the right feedstock for cellulosic ethanol plants?"
Searchinger assumed that energy crops would be grown on Iowa corn land, failed to credit for protein recovery which could be used as animal feed, and didn't include soil C storage that would result from root biomass (not aboveground biomass as someone thought from another blog Nathanael wrote). This means that if energy crops were grown on non ag land there would be no indirect land use change emissions, and if there were these emissions, they could substantively be off set from protein recovery and soil C storage. But more importantly, if we co-produce food and fuel from the same unit of land, we have no reductions in food supply, an increase in our fuel supply, and none of Searchinger's indirect land use change emissions. Lastly, ORNL and Bob Perlack did account for soil erosion prevention, but some experts feel that this was an under estimation and more stover should be remain in place. Moreover, not all the feedstocks listed in the Billion Ton study are economically viable. This might result in an overestimation of sustainable waste streams, and some energy cropping systems like the ones Nathanael was describing will likely become necessary. But as Nathanael wrote, we need to be sure that the carbon content of these fuels really is sustainable, and that biofuels make good on their potential. Eventually, once the conversion technologies mature, this will be determined by feedstock dynamics and the biomass supply. Open loop sources as listed in the Billion Ton study will be needed, as will closed loop energy crops.