By MATT McKINNEY
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Corn is the star of the ethanol party for now, but it soon may have to share the limelight. The president's State of the Union address Tuesday night made it clear that the nation is headed toward a future of cellulosic ethanol, something that someday will overshadow the 5 billion-gallon corn ethanol industry in place today.
The path to get there is anything but certain. It's hard to know when ethanol plants using cellulosic fibers such as switch grass and wood chips might prove economical; one analyst said it could be three years or it could be 20. The main problem is price: The yeasts and chemicals needed to break down the fibers into ethanol are too expensive to make the economics work.
But there's no other way to achieve Bush's goal of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017, enough to replace 15 percent of our gasoline consumption.
"It's not achievable from corn," said Bob Elde, dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota and chairman of the executive committee of the university's Initiative in Renewable Energy and the Environment.
The National Corn Growers Association estimates that the nation's corn crop could produce 15 billion gallons of ethanol, at maximum. If the entire U.S. corn crop were processed into ethanol it would replace only 12 percent of annual U.S. gasoline consumption, a figure pegged at around 140 billion gallons, according to research from Dave Tilman at the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences.
There's not enough land (80 million acres last year, with the expectation of 8 million more in the coming growing season) for corn crops, Elde said. Nor could farmers improve corn yields sufficiently to make up the gap.
The president's announcement will accelerate a chain of events already under way as the nation turns to farms for energy: Developing seeds for higher yields and investment in cellulosic ethanol plants.
And cellulosic ethanol will have to be made to work. Corn supplies will keep pace with ethanol demand for another five years, said David Morris of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a Minneapolis nonprofit that promotes sustainable communities. "That means we've got a five-year head start to produce and deliver the cellulosic ethanol," he said.
The White House said the president's farm-bill proposal will include $2 billion in loans for cellulosic ethanol plants and $1.6 billion over 10 years for bioenergy research. That might be just a start. The push for cellulosic ethanol will require a scientific effort on par with the nation's race to the moon in the 1960s, said biological sciences dean Elde.
"Unless this is accompanied by a dramatic infusion of resources, it's hard to imagine how we could bring cellulosic ethanol along in time to meet this 10-year goal," he said.
The president's mandate is more than four times the Renewable Fuels Standard of the Energy Act of 2005, which called for 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel by 2012.
Yet the nation is already headed past that number: about 320 ethanol plants are in production, under construction or in planning, said Rick Kment, an ethanol analyst with DTN, a market news and weather information company. The plants would create 20 billion to 25 billion gallons of fuel _ more than deemed possible from corn alone by some research.
Reach Matt McKinney at mckinney(at)startribune. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
