Will Biofuels Join the War Against Oil?

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty
of the War Against Oil here in some time.

For those who need a quick refresher,
the War Against Oil is the chief economic necessity of our time. The
Sun shines, the wind blows, we live on a molten rock, yet we still
power our world like cavemen did, by digging up shit we can burn and
burning it. As a result we're burning up our planet.

There are still (believe it or not)
idiots who deny that methane and carbon dioxide are responsible for
increased global temperatures, for more extreme weather, and for the
melting of ice caps around the world. Some are paid shills for folks
who want to dig shit up and burn it. Others are ideologues who scream
“no” at anyone saying yes. And some are indeed idiots.

The political winds toward burning shit
grew to hurricane force during the Bush years, with the wholesale
takeover of the country by the fossil fuel industry. The results were
war and (ta da) rising fossil fuel prices. We're now accustomed to
paying $4/gallon for gasoline, just as the “boiling frog” got
used to hot water, and the industry wants to apply more pressure.

All the fracking in the U.S. is not
going to drop gas prices one dime. It's not in the frackers' interest
to do it, they control the process of getting fracked oil to market,
it's just not going to happen. Besides, fracking costs big money.
Margins are thinner from fracking than they are from sticking a straw
into the ground and sucking.

The only way we're going to get a thumb
down on prices is with an alternative to fracking. And right now,
that means biofuels.

Trouble is, biofuels are being
strangled in their crib by both their friends and their enemies.
BioFuelsDigest has a fascinating good-bye this week to Energy
Secretary Stephen Chu,
which accuses him of dismissing the industry in favor of electric
cars powered by solar cells or natural gas vehicles.

Chu is a Nobel Prize winner, but he
didn't win his prize for anything related to biofuels. It was for
cooling and trapping atoms with laser light.  That's different. Basically, the industry is accusing Chu of making
choices on which renewable resources would be developed, choices that
played into the hands of fossil fuel advocates. The result is that
the biofuel component of renewable energy standards is being cut, and
the industry is working hard, with some success, to kill even that. 

The problem for biofuels is that the
easiest path to success is with food crops, turning corn or sugar
cane to ethanol. When the cost of the feedstock rises, as it has for
corn, you are competing with food needs for fuel, and you're going to
lose. Corn ethanol plants have been closing all over the country in
the last year due to last year's drought and bad harvest.

The promise for biofuels has been
cellulosic alcohol, produced from non-food crops. Things like
switchgrass, algae, and wood chips all hold promise. But progress has
been slow, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the
nation's second-highest court, ruled last week the mandate on
cellulosic alcohol illegal because there isn't enough product to meet the mandate.

Right now, in fact, there is only one
commercial-grade cellulosic plant operating in the U.S., a wood chip
plant owned by KiOR,
a public company backed by Vinod Khosla. It's in Columbus,
Mississippi, and its current costs are $7/gallon. That's not going to
get it done.

Cellulosic alcohol research is still
being done. University of Illinois scientists have found a bacterium
that might help. German researchers have found a way to break wood down into its
components, making them better plastics feedstocks. There's a company called Incitor that claims its process can get
costs down to $2.25/gallon but that's a speculation.

Progress has also been limited on the
battery front, which was Chu's favored path. Electric cars still cost
too much because batteries cost too much, and are too limited. We've
seen the headlines from Boeing, which decided to rely on lithium-ion
technology for its new planes and was burned.

Just because something isn't happening
yet doesn't mean it won't happen. Every wildcatter knows there are
going to be dry holes, and dry holes in science always precede
breakthroughs. That's just the way it is. Jim Lane of BiofuelsDigest
is proposing a giant “lend-lease” program of federal lands,
converted to use by the biofuel industry for supplying military needs
for fuel. But what technology will be used – what will the land be planted
in? In his article Lane uses KiOR's numbers, but does that mean we
grow pine forests?

The case for biofuels is being hampered
by a lack of truth on both sides, and low priorities from the
Administration. That needs to change. Otherwise America's
competitors, like Brazil, are going to define the biofuel future.
That's the risk that needs to be acknowledged, not the risk that
biofuels are “impossible,” as those who don't want competition
claim, but the risk that we'll lose the future of this important
technology to other countries, and thus our autonomy.

The place to do that is from the top,
in the announcement of a new secretary and an acknowledgement by the
President of what we're facing and what we need to do in the War
Against Oil. The war, in short, needs leadership. The time for that
leadership is now. We can no longer afford a policy of lip service to
climate change with no forward motion.

Or to put it in historic
terms, you've had your McClellan, Mr. President. Time to find a
General Grant.