Investors keep pouring money into ethanol plants. They continue to test new, promising sources of fuel: switchgrass, jatropha, Giant Miscanthus.
But their efforts might be little more than a fool’s errand. To replace oil as a source of transportation fuel, the world will need to cultivate a landmass the size of Russia, calculates Lux Research.
Forest waste may hold out the greatest hope for large scale biofuel production
Biofuels are not far from matching the price of gasoline. But producing the equivalent of the 30 billion barrels of oil consumed annually is another question.
Lux says the most promising sources of fuel for accomplishing this are not crops, such as corn, soybeans or sugar cane, or algae, which many scientists think may someday be the biofuel homerun, but lowly forest and farmland wastes.
Forests generate 315 million tons of waste each year and farmlands, 534 million. The cost of processing them would be equivalent to a $40 barrel of oil – well under today’s petroleum price.
Ethanol makers need to integrate with, or retrofit, existing pulp, paper and food processing plants, which use some of the same techniques necessary for biofuel. This will save time and money, and make transportation easier.
Then they might stand a fighting chance. It will be far easier than plowing Russia.
