November 26, 2012 - Making fuel from trash has been a kind
of holy grail – long sought after, much desired. Many have cried “Eureka,” only to find that
either money or interest had dried up. I
suspect lack of interest was frequently the culprit, when energy companies were
the source of funds. Now, however, we
have two companies that have built multimillion-dollar factories for the
purpose of large-scale, commercial production of cellulosic biofuel. One will, in fact, be shipping product by the
end of this month.
KiOR has built their plant in Columbus, Mississippi, at a
cost of $200 million. Its goal is the
manufacture of 13 million gallons of fuel annually from wood waste. How can they already be shipping
fuel? They have customers! FedEx, Weyerhauser and Chevron, to be exact. This sounds serious, for which we can all be
grateful. Here’s why: No. 1 - KiOR’s fuel isn’t made from an edible
crop, like corn. All of us have heard of
food riots in various parts of the world, and have heard the warnings of more
to come. The shortage of food can be, at
least partly, directly attributed to substituting corn ethanol for fuel. If more corn can be grown as food, fewer
children will suffer and die from malnutrition.
No. 2 - Because KiOR converts
wood waste to fuel, its fuel will release one-sixth the amount of carbon
dioxide released by fossil fuels. Every
woody plant used to produce biofuel will be replaced with another tree or plant,
which will remove CO2 from the air. No.
3 - Even better, a byproduct of KiOR’s factory will be surplus electricity,
ready for export to the grid. It will
replace electricity produced with fossil fuels.As I mentioned, there are two companies taking aim at cellulosic biofuel. The second is Ineos, a European oil and chemical company. Their $130 million facility, almost finished, is being erected in Vero Beach, Fla., where it will produce eight million gallons of biofuel annually. I was impressed to learn that this will satisfy only 1 percent of Florida’s demand for biofuel. Lots of room for competition here! Ineos has claimed a much-coveted property next to the county landfill, with access to garbage galore.
In order for these two pioneering companies to be
successful, high prices for oil must not fall.
In addition, the federal government policy that mandates biofuel
constitute a portion of all fuel blends must remain in place. If these two contingencies are met, energy
experts maintain that renewable motor fuel could eventually have a much bigger
impact on the U.S. economy than renewable electricity from wind farms or solar
cells. Renewable electricity saves on
coal, which, though cheap and domestically plentiful, is a polluter of the
first rank. Renewable motor fuel that
displaces oil makes a significant contribution to the solving of national
security and trade problems.
As you might by now have imagined, KiOR and Ineos are not the
only two contenders; they’re just first in line. POET, a major producer of ethanol by
conventional means, is building a plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa. The surrounding farms will provide it with
700 tons of corn cobs a day (with the corn having been stripped off by a food
manufacturer, presumably) that will yield sugars for the production of
ethanol. POET’s plant will be ready for
launch in late 2013. It will produce 20
million gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year.
Then there’s Abengoa, a Spanish firm. They’ve been operating a pilot plant in
Salamanca, Spain, and gave the go-ahead to construction of a $350 million
commercial plant in Hugotan, Kansas back in 2011. Slated to begin production in the third
quarter of next year, the Hugotan facility will process 25 million gallons of
cellulosic ethanol each year from agricultural waste, wood waste, and nonfood
crops. Holy Grail no more, it looks like
cellulosic biofuel’s time has come, and certainly not a moment too soon. Bring it!
With thanks to the New York Times for the information in this article.
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