The mountain pine beetle is devastating Colorado’s lodgepole pine forests
Now a California company hopes to put these millions of acres of dead and dying trees to good use. Cobalt Technologies of Mountain View says it has come up with a way to turn the tattered forests to biofuel.
The mountain pine beetle has killed millions of trees. Cobalt Technologies wants to turn them into fuel.
The mountain pine beetle, native to North America, has killed millions of trees in northern Colorado, and its infestation has spread to other western states and to other pines, including the ponderosa pine. It is estimated as many as 40 million acres could be infested in British Colmbia.
“If we use only half of the 2.3 million acres currently affected in Colorado alone, we could produce over two billion gallons of bio-butanol — enough to blend into all the gasoline used in Colorado for six years,” claims Cobalt CEO Rick Wilson.
Colorado State University will begin testing whether Cobalt’s bio-butanol, when mixed with gasoline, will be suitable for use in commercial engines.
“Converting beetle-killed pine for biofuels is an extremely difficult process,” says Colorado State University chemical and biological engineering professor Ken Reardon in a Cobalt press release.
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