Earth Equity News

Betting on Biofuel. By Andrew Welsh-Huggins, AP, October 20, 2008. "It may be one of the biggest green gambles of the century: a national goal of converting wood, grass, corn stalks and garbage into 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels annually by 2022. No commercial-scale refineries exist, researchers have yet to agree on the best technology for fuel conversion and there is no distribution network to handle fuel once it is made. Add it all up and the country's not even close to meeting the EPA's renewable fuel standards a mere 14 years from now... The government has ordered that 36 billion gallons of biofuel be blended into the fuel supply by 2022. Of that, 16 billion must be cellulosic ethanol. No more than 15 billion can be corn ethanol, with the rest coming from other biofuel sources, such as the residue left from sugar production. Increased use of renewable fuel is one of the major roads to the country's new energy goals, which include reducing reliance on foreign oil, shrinking greenhouse gas emissions and keeping basic transportation affordable. An estimated 200-plus large-scale facilities are needed to meet the Environmental Protection Agency's standards -- each capable of producing about 100 million gallons a year. A few dozen [cellulosic] biofuel projects are on the drawing table across the country... [13 or which are] funded by the Department of Energy, and only four are commercial scale."