Virent Energy Systems, a biofuel company based in Madison, Wisconsin, has received a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award for its low-energy water-based process for producing fuels. Using its proprietary BioForming process that uses nearly zero outside energy other than what's generated by the fermentation process, Virent's can generate the same range of hydrocarbon molecules now refined from petroleum. That means the same process can create gasoline, diesel or jet fuel from nearly any cellulosic biomass, including those not typically used for food. Further, the BioForming process can be quickly modified to produce fuel without altering the feedstock.

Due to the low power requirements for the production of Virent's biofuels, the firm boasts a 20- to 30-percent cost advantage over today's ethanol. Soon, the company plans to compete directly with petroleum-based fuels on the open market with a 10,000-gallon-per-year pilot plant. If Virent's analysis is correct, the company's fuel will be competitive as long as fossil fuels hover around $60 per barrel.

[Source: US EPA via Green Car Advisor]

We recently heard that, according to one group of researchers at Environmental Science & Technology magazine, corn ethanol has a water cost of 50 gallons per mile. Now, a team working from the University of Twente in the Netherlands has calculated the water cost of ethanol and other biofuels and to make bioelectricity. The results are not pretty. The researchers looked at 13 crops and tried to calculate the most efficient way to turn them into energy depending on where the crops were grown, and which process was used to turn the biomass into either biofuel or electricity. The worst offenders included making biodiesel from rapeseed or soya (14,000 liters of water to make just one liter of biodiesel) and jathropha (20,000 liters of water), according to the abbreviated description we found at Alpha Galileo. The researchers found that the most efficient crop-to-energy ratio came from turning whole sugar beet plants into electricity. If you're just interested in making biofuels, then sugar beets are still your best bet. A liter of ethanol made from sugar beets uses "just" 1,400 litres of water, the Twente researchers found. Second and third generation biofuels made form algae or advanced cellulosic processes were not included. Coskata, for example, says their process uses less than a gallon of water to make a gallon of ethanol.

[Source: Twente (in Dutch), Alpha Galileo via Greenbang]
Photo by D Sharon Pruitt. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

Presidents and biofuels. Seems to be a theme today. Back in February, the Governors' Biofuels Coalition sent a letter to President Obama asking for a stronger ethanol position, specifically asking that the national blend be increased to E13 and that the government consider promoting the sustainability of biofuel feedstocks and making sure there is a market for the finished product (it's something they've called for before). Obama has now responded, saying that the administartion's pro-biofuel stance takend in early May was made with the coalition's letter in mind. In a speech given at that time, Obama talked about a new Presidential Biofuels Directive, the establishment of a Biofuels Interagency Working Group, and how more Recovery Act funds could be used for renewable fuel projects. In the letter to the coalition Obama did not address the E13 suggestion, but did write:

Advanced renewable transportation fuels will be one of the nation's most important industries in the 21st Century. As you well know, the nation's biofuels industry today uses the starch portion of feedgrains as its primary feedstock, which has focused debate on how to accurately measure the greenhouse gas effect of corn-based ethanol. What is often underappreciated in this debate is that the industry is moving toward the utilization of a wide variety of non-grain feedstocks for biofuels.

Does anyone else think he sounds a bit like a condescending science teacher here? I'm sure it sounded better in person.

[Source: Ethanol Producer]

Corn ethanol promoters, get out your keyboards. You've got another dragon to slay. A new study has found that it is more efficient to straight-up burn plant material to generate electricity and then charge up electric vehicles than to make ethanol for those vehicles. Professor Elliot Campbell at the University of California Merced was lead author of a study that looked at the most efficient way to power transportation vehicles from biomass. The headline numbers: "biomass converted into electricity produced 81 percent more transportation miles and 108 percent more emissions offsets compared to ethanol."

"If you have a limited amount of land you're working with, and you want to squeeze the most transportation off that limited amount of land, then the electricity route makes the most sense," Campbell told NPR.

No one questions that an electric motor is way more efficient than an ICE for purposes of in-vehicle efficiency comparisons, but this study is not as cut and dried. Campbell and his co-authors did not look at the complete ecosystem (both natural and political) for ethanol and EVs; they simply tried to calculate "miles per area cropland" and greenhouse gas offsets when starting with both corn and switchgrass and ending with vehicles moving down the road. In this calculation, electric vehicles win.

Listen to a two-minute audio clip over on NPR and download the paper in PDF. Thanks to Bryant and Jason for the tips.

[Source: NPR, UC Merced]
Photo by net_efekt. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

GM has long been a proponent of using high-level ethanol blend, E85, in motor vehicles. But, with all of the talk of putting E15 or E20 (gasoline with 15 or 20 percent ethanol blended in) into the national supply - see these earlier posts about the EPA, the Minnesota Ag Department, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Underwriters Laboratories on the topic - GM's Biofuels Implementation Manager, Coleman Jones, has found "Seven Reasons Why Testing Mid-level Ethanol Blends Matters." The short version: E10 is working well, and we'd like to see more biofuels used, so let's test E15 before widespread introduction. The seven things that need to be tested:

• Catalyst durability
• Engine and fuel system durability
• On-board diagnostics
• Tailpipe emissions
• Evaporative emissions system durability.
• Emissions inventory and air quality modeling.
• Operability

Get the full details over at the Fastlane Blog.

[Source: GM]

Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, is nervous. Speaking earlier this month, he said that alternative fuels should be called "supplemental" and that "These sources cannot contribute meaningfully to the world's energy mix until they have attained levels of affordability, accessibility, acceptance and sustainability." So far, so good. Kind of dismissive of the biofuels' potential, kind of realistic. But, he went on:

We frankly court disaster if these supplemental resources on which such high hopes for energy security and sustainability are pinned do not fulfill the high expectations. While all viable energies will ultimately have a role in meeting world demand, many of these sources are either in their infancy or face too many unresolved sustainability issues to serve as more than supplemental resources for some time. Just as the oil industry needs a long-term horizon, so do many alternatives.
In years to come, if traditional energy supplies should prove inadequate because capital expenditure was curtailed due to unsustainable prices, unreliable indications of future demand, or hopes for a substitute for oil cannot deliver, such a supply crunch would be catastrophic.

"Court disaster." "Catastrophic." "In their infancy." These are logical statements for someone who represents the Saudi oil industry, but it sure sounds like someone is working hard to dial down expectations for anything that threatens the dominance of oil. You can watch Al-Naimi's comments here (starting at minute 9 in the video).

[Source: New York Times via Domestic Fuel]
Photo by nightthree. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

I had no idea what would pop up when I typed in "ethanol sin" into the search box over at Flickr. Turns out, you get the image above, which was created for the Pope's visit to the U.S. back in early 2008. It's a good reminder that the debate over biofuels has donned religious clothing before. There a new twist to the discussion, though, following a recent statement from Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, who said that using biofuels might be a sin because they go against the Islamic rule forbidding alcohol. This opinion, issued as a personal opinion and not an official fatwa, according to Al Arabiya, would apply to ethanol and methanol, and biodiesel made using methanol. SVO users, you're off the hook, here.

Related stories:

• Could the Pope make 15 mpg a sin?
• Can driving greener get you into heaven? Vatican says sure
• Another thing to worry about gas guzzlers: the sin factor

Note: we've had a little too much name-calling in the comments recently and have needed to ban some people from writing more. Feel free to write what you think about this particular issue, but stay away from name calling and broad generalizations about religion or ethnic groups, ok? No more warnings, just bannings if you can't be civil.

[Source: Cleantech via Green Daily, Al Arabiya]
Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

While the general consensus is clear that corn ethanol isn't as great as once proclaimed, biodiesel has somewhat escaped the criticism swarm (palm plantation biodiesel being the big exception). That may change now that a new study from the Woods Institute for the Environment has found that crop-based biofuels, any of them, will likely speed up global warming rates. The study found that, overall, biofuels pump "far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than they could possibly save as a replacement for fossil fuels," according to the AFP. The study authors looked at 20 years' worth (1980-2000) of satellite photos of tropical areas and discovered that half of the biofuel cropland came from virgin rainforests. The imbalance of this deforestation means that it'll take somewhere between 40 and 120 years to pay back the "carbon debt." Algae and cellulosic biofuel sources can not get here soon enough.

[Source: AFP]

When the curtain rises on the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, Bentley will take a large share of the spotlight with the vehicle you see above. It has no name yet, and no technical specifics have been released, but what Bentley has revealed is that this will be the marque's fastest, most powerful production car yet, and that it'll run on biofuel. Visually, the grilles all have a blackout treatment, and sizable vertical intakes occupy the front bumper's outer edges. The hood also sports a pair of vents, presumably to help extract engine heat.

Given that the 600-horsepower/553-lb-ft Continental GT Speed currently owns the "most powerful production Bentley" title, look for more extreme ratings on this new, obviously Continental-based monster. As for the biofuel half of the equation, we expect to see an ethanol-drinking version of the twin-turbocharged 12-cylinder that propels the rest of the Continental range. In any case, a new Bentley's coming, and it's fixin' to open up a plus-sized can of whoop-ass. We'll learn more closer to the Geneva festivities.

[Source: Bentley]

As anyone who has seen episode 2F13 of The Simpsons (aka Bart vs. Australia) knows, introducing foreign species into an environment can have dangerous effects. A real-world situation - not really all that similar, but I like to reference the Simpsons whenever possible - in Australia shows the sad connection between environmental destruction and the way some biofuels are produced.

The Australian reports that Australia's large-scale biofuel imports are exacerbating the "widespread destruction of tropical rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia." Orangutans and other endangered species are directly affected by the deforestation, but cheap biodiesel from Southeast Asia remains popular Down Under. Australia has dealt with the negative effects of growing crops for biofuels by banning two types of plants that had been intended for biofuel production in 2006 because of fears they would turn invasive. Therefore, domestic production is now mostly limited to companies that use tallow and recycled cooking oil as the feedstock. For now, according to one source, Australia remains the "dumping ground for palm oil-based biodiesel." Looks like Better Place, the evMe and the Holden Volt can't come soon enough.

[Source: The Australian]