A massive biofuels development effort costing billions of dollars and requiring the erection of 400 refining plants won’t wean the United States off its addiction to gasoline.
That is the conclusion of a National Academy of Sciences study finished earlier the year and presented at Stanford University late Wednesday. The study, which examined the growth of the biofuels and liquid-coal industries over the next 25 years, said at best they could supply a quarter of the country’s transportation needs by 2035.
Biofuels and liquid coal could produce a quarter of the nation's transportation fuels, says Michael Ramage
By that time, the nation would be producing 2 to 3 million barrels of bio- and liquid-coal fuels a day. The country presently consumes 12 million barrels of oil a day for transportation.
“It may not sounds like a lot, but it is a lot,” said Michael Ramage, a retired ExxonMobile executive and chair of the committee producing the report. But “biomass is no panacea,” adds fellow committee member James Sweeney, director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford.
The study’s sobering message comes as something of a surprise. Earlier examinations of the biofuels industry projected the supply of raw biomass, from which the fuel is fermented, to be roughly twice as large as the National Academy of Science’s estimate. The new work also anticipates much higher costs than previously expected.
Perhaps more than anything, the report highlights the enormity of task ahead of the nation as it remakes the carbon economy. Its conclusions add evidence to the belief that substantial efforts on many parallel technologies will be necessary to promote renewable fuel and combat global warming.
It also suggests that the transportation market place in the U.S. will get substantially more complex – with competing technologies and delivery infrastructures – leaving behind the “quaint” old days of a single gasoline-driven distribution network.
The study found that by 2035, biofuels still will be an expensive option – roughly equivalent to a $100 a barrel oil. Oil is selling at $68 a barrel or so today.
But the fuels would – assuming a project 30 percent improvement in the efficiency of the internal combustion engine – reduce CO2 emissions and cut America’s demand for imported oil in half.
Despite its reservations, the study ignores one potential wildcard. It does not consider the possibility that biofuel can be economically and efficiently developed from algae, which some scientists say is the nation’s best hope.
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