Representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy and the USDA were present at the Platts Cellulosic Ethanol conference in Chicago last week and put the national government's biofuel efforts into perspective. Valri Lightner, of the Biomass Program at the DOE, and William Hagy III, deputy administrator of business programs USDA Rural Development, each spoke for about 20 minutes and

Lightner said the DOE's Biomass Program mission statement is to find ways to use biomass to produce fuel, products and power. The short term goal is to have cost-competitive cellulosic ethanol (i.e., a cost of $1.33 to make a gallon by 2012), while the mid-term goal is to have sustainable biofuel production by 2017. There are a lot of bioenergy crop trials going on right now – switchgrass, sorghum, and more – as you can see in the map above and in this map. The DOE plans to help push down the cost of feedstock logistics from $60/dry ton to $46/dry ton by 2012. Meanwhile, the DOE also wants to lower the cost of biochemical conversion from $1.60 a gallon in FY 2007 to $0.82 in 2012. The department also announced last week that it will soon focus on pyrolysis.

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