BP says biofuels face drawbacks

Source:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/29/news/international/bc.biofuels.bp.reut/?postversion=2007012910
BP says biofuels face drawbacks

Production growth will have to depend on new technology to supply
transport fuels.
January 29 2007: 10:51 AM EST

LONDON (Reuters) -- Biofuels could supply up to 30 percent of the
world's transport fuels by 2030 but the scope for major growth will
depend on new technologies, the head of BP's biofuels business said Monday.

"The future of this industry is going to be driven by innovation in
technology," Phil New, president of BP Global Biofuels, said at a
conference organized by Euromoney.

New said there were major drawbacks with current biofuel technologies
related to their cost and performance as well as competition between
food and fuel uses of crops.

He said BP believes that these problems could be solved, with the
eventual solution likely to involve ligno-cellulosic technologies
combined with more advanced biomolecules.

Scientists have been working on a process known as ligno-cellulosis
which would enable non-food crops and plant waste to be used to produce
biofuels.

Food versus fuel

Biofuels are currently produced mainly from food crops such as sugar
cane, grains and oilseeds, raising fears that the industry's expansion
could increase food prices and possibly even spark food shortages.

"There is a very real prospect that biofuels could amount to up to 30
percent of the world's road transport fuels," New said.

New said there were significant concerns about the performance of
ethanol which can be substituted for petrol.

"Ethanol is a reasonable start but it is a poor fuel molecule compared
with either the fossil fuels it is seeking to replace or the potential
for advanced, more complex alcohol molecules in the future," he said.

"It can't be transported, it's got lousy fuel efficiency
characteristics, it is in many applications potentially quite unsafe and
explosive and of course it can be very corrosive," he said.

Last year, BP announced it was partnering with DuPont Co. to develop an
alternative to ethanol, biobutanol, which would be produced at a British
Sugar plant in eastern England. British Sugar is a unit of Associated
British Foods.

"We will be putting in some pilot capacity we hope in the quite near
future," he said, adding that development of the necessary technology
was "going well."

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