Poet, a biorefiner located in Hanlontown, Iowa broke ground on an expansion of their existing facilities to include the companies first cellulosic ethanol plant August 17th.[1] Hailed as “a new cash crop”,[2] some hope that ethanol will provide jobs for American companies and reduce dependence on foreign oil. The Daily Reporter quoted Scott Weishaar, the Vice President of Communications as saying “What we're looking at is a brand new revenue stream for something that's already done today.”[3] Iowa’s governor, Chet Culver, was also on hand for the groundbreaking. Ethanol has a significant position to stump on for many of the same reasons that Mr. Weishaar finds it an attractive business venture. Mr. Culver “commending Poet for pursuing their vision for alternative energy” and improving the competitiveness of Iowa around the world.[4] Despite the growing popularity of ethanol, is it a viable solution for America’s energy problems?
Poet hopes that cellulosic ethanol production will assuage many of the concerns that have been raised by creating ethanol from food stuffs. Additional concerns involve net energy produced, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), as well as the effect on food and food pricing through the use of food stock. “Sugarcane and Miscanthus top the list of bioenergy crops that could produce enough ethanol to replace the United States’ use of petroleum and escape U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, said Stephen P. Long, Deputy Director of the EBI at the U of I and Gutsgell Professor of Crop Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.”[5] Such diversity is what companies like Poet and other are hoping for. As new technologies increase the “efficiency and cost of ethanol production, possibilities are opening up to use a wider range of plants to create a larger renewable fuel supply”[6] stated Mr. Long “Instead of repurposing food and feed crops, we are looking for dedicated energy crops with high production and low inputs to develop a system that’s environmentally and economically sustainable.”[7] This is the theoretical advantage of cellulosic ethanol production.
Cellulosic ethanol production allows for a significantly more “diverse raw material compared to sources like corn and cane sugars, but requires a greater amount of processing to make the sugar monomers available to the microorganisms that are typically used to produce ethanol by fermentation.”[8] According to a U.S. Department of Energy study conducted by Argonne National Laboratory of the University of Chicago, one of the benefits of cellulosic ethanol is that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 85% over reformulated gasoline.[9] This is in contrast to traditional corn ethanol that also reduces greenhouse gases, when compared to reformulated gasoline, by only 18-29%.[10]
Cellulosic ethanol is not without its own problems, however researchers believe they may have an solution. The August 13th edition of the journal Science claims that “researchers from the Energy Biosciences Institute suggest that a diversity of plant species, adaptable to the climate and soil conditions of specific regions of the world, can be used to develop agroecosystems for fuel production that are compatible with contemporary environmental goals.”[11] According to the researchers of the article “Feedstocks for Lignocellulosic Biofuels,” “"The ability to produce lignocellulosic fuels sustainably is of paramount importance," the authors write. "Because the use of groundwater is generally not sustainable, we envision that the type of energy crop grown in a given region will be primarily related to water-use efficiency."[12]
The report concludes that “By focusing on the use of dedicated energy crops – rather than on repurposing food and feed crops – it should be possible to overcome many of the problematic constraints associated with our narrow dependence on a relatively small number of food crops and to develop agroecosystems for fuel production that are compatible with contemporary environmental goals,”[13] If these researchers efforts prove to be true, this could mark an important step toward resolving energy concerns across the US and perhaps around the world. Who knows the future may see the growth of such systems to more and more types of waste used for energy. Biofuels have a long and powerful future.[14] A great deal of research still needs to be done for increasing the efficiency of ethanol production, as well as resolving problems with land and water sustainability and greenhouse gas concerns. The verdict is still out on the long-term sustainability of ethanol but the outlook is promising.
[1] http://www.spencerdailyreporter.com/story/1657818.html , http://www.poet.com/inspiration/showPlant_Page.asp?id=34 [2] http://www.spencerdailyreporter.com/story/1657818.html [3] Ibid. [4] Ibid. [5] http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=6891 [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/354.pdf [9] Ibid. [10] Ibid. [11] http://www.azom.com/news.asp?NewsID=23584 [12] Ibid. [13] Ibid. [14] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/17/whisky-biobuel-scotland
Photo Taken by Grabiel Diaz
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