Pacific Biofuel: Biotech a key to ethanol future

Source:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/energywatch/renewables/features/article_1246667.php/Biotech_a_key_to_ethanol_future

Biotech a key to ethanol future

By Hil Anderson Jan 15, 2007, 15:27 GMT

LOS ANGELES, CA, United States (UPI) -- After a high-profile report
warned that the booming ethanol industry in the United States could lead
to sharply higher grain prices and perhaps even food riots around the
world, the biotechnology industry came riding over the hill with a vow
that science would make it possible to fill the need for both fuel and food.

The biotech sector has been hard at work looking for the means of not
only growing more corn per acre but also making it economically possible
to turn other more-complex non-food plant materials into ethanol as well.

If all goes according to plan, the United States will be able to churn
out enough ethanol to make it a long-term staple of the gasoline market
without causing an increase in food prices that would be a burden to
U.S. consumers and a potential disaster to low-income nations that rely
on grain imports to feed their populations.

'Industrial biotech companies are developing new enzymes that make
current ethanol processes more efficient and will soon allow the
economical conversion of cellulosic crop residues to fuel,' said Jim
Geeenwood, president and chief executive officer of the Biotechnology
Industry Organization in a statement. 'With ongoing advances in
biotechnology, biofuels can help America meet nearly half its
transportation-fuel needs by the middle of this century.'

The report proffered by the Earth Policy Institute last week posed the
simple economic scenario of so much corn going into the U.S. motor-fuel
mix that corn prices would not only rise, but would take on a symbiotic
relationship with the price of petroleum -- moving up and down with the
same world events that have pumped-up crude prices for the long term.

'This issue is going to be with us for some time,' said Lester Brown,
the president of Earth Policy Institute and an author on the prospects
for the future, in a conference call. 'The price of grain is moving
toward its oil-equivalent price; oil is becoming a support price for grain.'

In other words, world commodity markets have factored the value of corn
as a source of energy into its supply-and-demand scenarios, which
translates to not only another reliable market for farmers but
competition for the annual harvest between the food and energy sectors.

Brown went so far as to call for a temporary halt in the construction of
distilleries that produce ethanol before the industry`s demand for corn
throws the entire world food complex into the same turmoil witnessed in
the energy sector in recent years.

'I think its time to ... have a moratorium on licensing new (ethanol)
distilleries so we can decide how much of our corn harvest we want to
turn into ethanol and how much we want to save for food, (animal) feed
and exports,' Brown said.

His idea likely won`t gain much traction in Washington where virtually
every lawmaker is a friend of the farmer. The next Farm Bill will no
doubt be filled with encouragement for ethanol crops, and Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, the incoming chairman of the Senate Agriculture
Committee, co-sponsored a bill just this month to increase the
production and consumption of ethanol as a 'matter of national security.'

'I believe we must wean ourselves off our dependence on foreign oil,'
Harkin said. 'We as a nation should be doing more to accelerate the
development and use of clean, domestic renewable energy.'

Brown`s economic logic is basic: Tighter supplies mean higher prices, as
American consumers have learned in the tightening energy markets. Corn
futures have, in fact, been trading at solid $3.50 per-bushel levels
that are within shouting distance of the $4 per bushel some economists
peg as the ceiling price that ethanol distilleries can pay based on $60
per barrel for crude.

To some, it may sound confusing, but it well illustrates Brown`s point
that corn now has a symbiotic relationship with crude that cannot be
broken up unless science should come through with the brass ring of an
economical process for producing cellulosic ethanol -- the kind produced
from non-food plant material such as wood chips and the hearty weed
known as switchgrass.

Producing cellulosic ethanol, however, requires additional steps than
making it from the simpler corn, which makes it more expensive.

Analysts say it will be a few more years until cellulosic ethanol is
perfected, but it is not impossible. The situation is comparable to the
growing number of more sophisticated electric hybrid cars being turned
out by the auto industry and on display at the recent auto show in Detroit.

Meanwhile, President Bush`s 2007 budget included some $150 million for
research into biomass fuels such as cellulosic ethanol, and advances are
being steadily being announced.

For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced in the
Dec. 8 issue of Science that it was working on a new strain of yeast
that can better withstand the ethanol distillation process, resulting in
faster production of ethanol.

'The technology for production of ethanol from cellulose is ready
today,' BIO Executive Vice President Brent Erickson said in a statement.
'With industrial biotech processes ready for deployment...and currently
available feedstock from agricultural residues such as corn stalks,
ethanol production could reach three times current levels within
three-to-five years as ethanol from cellulose is added to the current
biofuel technology mix.'

The biotech industry smells a bonanza in ethanol and is responding
accordingly, which its proponents say will lead to the breakthroughs
that will make ethanol something that will keep gasoline and food
plentiful and affordable in the not-too-distant future.

(Comments to energy@upi.com)