Study Touts Biofuels Despite High Cost of Production

Reno, NV - In the latest issue of the Journal Science, researchers report that biofuel manufactured from corn and other plants is more energy-efficient than some experts had realized and it is time to start developing it as an alternative to fossil fuels.

The researchers said that most ethanol production is from corn crops, which use lots of petroleum based fuel and fertilizers and so its environmental benefits are not that great. The scientists suggested that alternative crops need to be considered for biofuel production that uses less fertilizer. Critics say biofuels like ethanol benefit the farm lobby more than it does the environment.

"We find that ethanol can, if it is made correctly, contribute significantly to both energy and environmental goals. However, the current way of producing ethanol with corn probably only meets energy goals," Alexander Farrell, a University of California Berkeley energy researcher said. Farrell and his associates conducted the study on biofuels and found that there are ways manufacture ethanol fuel more efficiently.

In 2004, Farrell said that the amount of ethanol fuel manufactured and blended into gasoline in the United States equaled only 2 percent of the nation's total gasoline consumption and about 1.3 percent of its energy content. Farrell said it was possible to run a car on pure ethanol, that the technology exists but that making ethanol using current technology is expensive and contributes to pollution and greenhouse gases.

"The environmental cost comes entirely from making fertilizer, running the tractors over the farm and operating the biorefinery," Farrell said. Farrell and colleagues looked at six studies used to argue for and against the development of ethanol as an energy source.

He said that using cellulosic technology to break down the woody fiber parts of plants could in about five-years from now be applied commercially in a more effective manner than using corn. That it was a matter of the technology developing sufficiently to warrant its commercial viability.

Scientists from Imperial College London, Georgia Tech and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee said they had teamed up to find ways to make a facility to do that.

Their facility would make a range of fuels, foods, chemicals, animal feeds, materials, heat and power using what is known as biomass -- a collection of renewable plant matter and biological material such as trees, grasses and agricultural crops.

"We're looking at a future for biomass where we use the entire plant and produce a range of different materials from it," Charlotte Williams of Imperial's Department of Chemistry said in a statement.

"Before we freeze in the dark, we must prepare to make the transition from nonrenewable carbon resources to renewable bioresources," her team wrote.

Even a British Petroleum (BP) scientist agreed with biofuel's potential saying that it had the capacity to generate as much as 30 percent of the world's fuel needs if it could be harnessed efficiently and the right crops were grown for energy production. The BP scientist even said that it would not interfere with the world's food crop production either.