My latest feature for Wired, about the science of cellulosic ethanol, begins its run on newsstands this week. The full story is also online, here. That’s a stalk of switchgrass adorning the cover, but the cellulosic ethanol described in the story actually involves making fuel from a wide variety of different plants—e.g. poplar trees, wood chips, other grasses. (Call it editorial discretion, but illustrating the cover line “THESE PLANTS ARE THE FUTURE OF ENERGY” might have cluttered things.)
The current method of producing ethanol (in the U.S.), from corn kernels, has been much castigated in the news lately. Although it seems a lot of the ethanol backlash is only tenuously based on actual research (especially when it comes to the energy balance of what goes into corn ethanol versus what you get out), there’s little doubt that corn ethanol has serious problems, enough to at least call its massive subsidies into question.
There is, however, another way of making ethanol, using a biological or chemical process to extract the cellulose, or “structural” part, from plants (rather than the starch, as in the case of corn ethanol, or the sugar, as in the case of the sugarcane ethanol in Brazil). Cellulosic ethanol usually makes the last couple paragraphs of ethanol stories; it’s declared to be some indeterminate number of years off, a biofuel holy grail awaiting a scientific breakthrough. There is general agreement that if we could make it, cellulosic fuel avoids most if not all of the problems of corn ethanol. Meanwhile, our federal energy targets (which are closer to hopes than targets, really) essentially assume that hundreds of millions of gallons cellulosic ethanol will soon be arriving. So, what gives?
My piece tries to lay out the history of the field (which actually dates to the 1970s), explain just what science needs to be done make it a reality, and profile some of the people doing that science. Some of the most fascinating work, to me at least, involves scientists scouting the world examining the excrement of rhinos and the stomachs of termites, looking for cellulose-digesting enzymes they can harness to make fuel.
The definitive-sounding take of the headline and cover undoubtedly give the piece a tint of undue optimism, but hopefully a closer read of the story itself reveals a careful effort to explain the state of affairs. In the end it’s tough to come to a conclusion beyond….cellulosic ethanol is some years off; but we try to make the case that the funding and research is now in place, for the first time, to determine whether cellulosic ethanol can become a commercial reality. Dozens of bio-refineries in the works, and hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in research, are about to answer that question.
Personally, as is mentioned in the story, I don’t believe alternative fuels of any kind can make much of a climate change dent alone, without higher fuel economy standards, conservation, and maybe (I’m still undecided on this) a carbon tax. Cellulosic ethanol, however, could be a huge factor on the fuel replacement side of things.
Posted at 3:43 pm | Filed under Environment/Energy, Recent stories, Science, Technology, Wired | del.icio.us Digg Reddit
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