Sugar, Sugar: The transformation of cellulosic ethanol

“Honey, aw Sugar, Sugar,
You are my candy girl, and you’ve got me wanting you.”
The Archies, “Sugar, Sugar”

From the 2008-09 “winter of our discontent” to 2009’s “Summer of Algae,” biofuels have made a remarkable journey in the past six months. But what has become of the former darling of industry dreams — cellulosic ethanol — a fuel and processing technology that one wag said “always was, and always will be five years away”?

While attention this year has been justly diverted to the entry of ExxonMobil into the algae race, not to mention the heady progress towards commercialization at PetroAlgae, Solazyme, Algenol, Sapphire Energy, Aurora and Solix just to name a few, the industry formerly known as “cellulosic ethanol” has been quietly transformed into something that is just as much about cellulose, but not nearly as much about ethanol.

Cellulosic ethanol was promoted as “not your Dad’s ethanol,” but the leading companies today are not producing “your Dad’s cellulosic ethanol” either.

The proposition of cellulosic ethanol began with the observation that, for every four tons or so of corn that was extracted from an acre of farmland, another ton and a half of corn stalks and cobs were left behind. Those stalks and cobs contained cellulose that could be converted into simple sugars, went the theory, if conversion could only be affordably achieved. It was hard science but the added value opportunity made it an easy sell as a topic of investigation.

Later, cellulosic ethanol gained even more urgency when ethanol production for reasons of energy independence and carbon emissions reduction gained substantial traction in the mid-2000s, although it wasn’t until Iogen got a pilot running in 2003 that cellulosic ethanol first left the lab.

Even as corn ethanol became everyone’s favorite punching bag in 2008 over questions of emissions, concerns over the diversion of the global food supply, and the dearth of cheap feed for the dairy and cattle industries, cellulosic ethanol has remained popular as an idea. Cellulosic ethanol had the promise of providing renewable fuel without tears, and farm income that can help ease rural America out of a long-term stagnation caused by cheap corn.

Cellulosic ethanol will continue to develop as a strong component of  the renewable fuels industry, but as a savior of farms and the Jolly Green Giant of carbon-friendly fuels it died with the failure of E85 ethanol. As I write that last sentence I can already hear the indignant jeers of those who labor so hard to expand the availability of E85. But we have to face facts: in the United States, and in the foreseeable future, E85 is a boutique fuel with an uncertain value proposition except in times of exceedingly high oil prices and affordable corn — a combination of circumstances that is hard to come by.

Ethanol remains an important component of the national energy solution, and affordable cellulosic ethanol is the best kind of ethanol there is, but 36 billion gallons of cellulosic and conventional ethanol by 2022 appears to have become pure fantasy. The modest 100 million gallon target offered by the US government for 2010 included 75 million gallons from Cello Energy, whose projected output is in the 25 Mgy range when the plant is fully operational, an issue in doubt after the developer was slapped with a $10 million judgment in a suit brought by an investor alleging fraud.

But what has risen in its place is far more interesting — the cellulose as a source of cheap simple sugars, and an army of underpaid microbes that convert simple sugars into green gasoline, green diesel — the drop-in fuels — as well as a base for a dizzying array of renewable chemicals. God bless Joe VC, Martha VC, and Uncle Sam who put up the money for the first wave of cellulosic conversion. The second wave has hit the beach, in the guise of ExxonMobil, Dow, BP, and DuPont, and with them comes the heavy artillery that will get the job done.

Here are some trends as cellulosic ethanol gives way to a broader, deeper offering of bio-based fuels and chemicals, made from simple sugars obtained from biomass, that will occupy the headlines of Biofuels Digest and many other publications for some time to come.

It’s the cheap sugars, stupid. No matter what anyone describes as the “Holy Grail of Biofuels” or “the mother of all biofuels challenges,” they are the same thing. Sugar, sugar. Whether it is tricking algae to convert sunlight and CO2 into sugars that it will later convert to oils, or making fermentable simple sugars from landfill waste or switchgrass, the key to making fuels affordable is the total cost of the simple sugar.

Sustainable, affordable, reliable, available. SARA is the remarkable acronym coined by Tom Murphy of Woodland Natural Resources for what biomass must be if it to be useful as a feedstock for the new fuels and chemicals.

Drop-in fuels. The Digest has been drumming this beat for some time, but companies like Amyris, Virent, Sapphire Energy, Synthetic Genomics, PetroAlgae and others who are formulating fuels the drop-in to the fuel supply, have a larger playing field and fewer barriers to scale. It is worth remembering the hoots and hollers when companies like Dynamotive and US Sustainable Energy were touting “biocrude” and drop-in fuels just two years ago. What was a controversial trickle has become a firehose of companies focused on drop-in replacement fuels.

“One word: Plastics”. Whatever methanol’s or ethanol’s shortcomings as a fuel, they are a remarkable platform for chemicals. Upgrading from a base, options like propylene and polyethylene come on to the table, once the simple sugars of biomass have been converted into a simple alcohol. Companies like ZeaChem and LS9 have increasing focus on renewable chemicals, and are finding backers like Dow Chemical who are looking for sustainable sources   far away from the Middle East and other hotspots where manufacturing is based to be close to the feedstocks. Paul Winters of BIO warns, “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which passed the U.S. House by a narrow vote in June, currently does not include biofuels and biobased products in the system of carbon credits (even though petroleum transportation fuels are capped). Biobased products currently make up 5 to 7 percent of the worldwide market for chemicals and plastics. If incentivized through the carbon market, they have plenty of potential to grow and displace petroleum-based products.”

Ethanol extender, bagasse bonanza. Companies like Poet will add value to their considerable holdings in first-generation ethanol by adding cellulosic ethanol capabilities to their existing fleet. Projects like the 25 Mgy Emmitsburg cellulosic ethanol facility are just the start of something that will add up to $100 per acre to farm income, add value and reduce average emissions at ethanol plants, and just about in every way make a solid contribution to a national energy solution. Look for Petrobras and other companies in Brazil to discover over the long term that converting leftover bagasse to ethanol is a better solution than burning it for power generation. For companies like Coskata and that can transform sugarcane waste into fuel at affordable prices, the future looks mighty bright, although it looks mighty Brazilian and Indian, because that’s where the sugar is.

Make haste for waste. The best economics for celluosic conversion are found in waste, where feedstocks are better than free, they come with tipping fees (the money paid by companies to dump trash at landfills). Sandia National Laboratory has estimated that the US has the resources to sustainable produce 90 billion gallons of renewable fuel per year. Key to this is capturing residues – forest, agricultural, animal and municipal. Of all these, municipal is the kind of trash that comes the cheapest. Companies like InEnTec, BlueFire Ethanol, and Agresti that focus on waste will have a formidable value proposition in a country where the average US resident produces 5-6 pounds of waste per day. That’s 300 million tons per year – or 20 billion gallons of fuel at a touch under 70 gallons per ton.

Less is more. Companies like KL Energy – which pioneered the first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant last year — have been saying for some time that the lower yields per ton from cellulose dictate a “small is beautiful” approach to building community-based plants. Lower yields mean a higher transport cost for biomass per mile from field to factory. Besides, communities of the future like Destiny, Florida are embracing a philosophy of home-grown fuels that are made “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Communities that use the fuels they make are more engaged to use them – just look at the concentration of E85 stations in the Midwest in the heart of corn country.

Pilots, start your engines. Paul Winters of BIO reports, “Right now, there are three dozen or so cellulosic ethanol biorefineries in the planning, construction or initial operating stage across the United States, and at least six more in Canada, including Iogen’s facility in Ottawa, the world’s first operating cellulosic ethanol biorefinery. Most of these projects are pilot-scale facilities designed to test and prove a wide variety of technological solutions for turning cellulosic crops and waste streams into fuels, but each producing fewer than 2 million gallons annually.”

Beneficial Biofuels. “Beneficial Biofuels—The Food, Energy and Environment Trilemma,” will appear in the July 17 issue of Science. David Tilman, a resident fellow of the U of M’s Institute on the Environment, said the paper resulted from a year of conversations and debate among some of the nation’s leading biofuel experts. The writers include some of the leading lights in cellulosic conversion, and the critique of first-generation fuels. In addition to Tilman, the article contributors include the U of M’s Jonathan Foley and Jason Hill; Princeton’s Robert Socolow, Eric Larson, Stephen Pacala, Tim Searchinger and Robert Williams; Dartmouth’s Lee Lynd; MIT’s John Reilly; and the University of California, Berkeley’s Chris Somerville.

“The world needs to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but recent findings have thrown the emerging biofuels industry into a quandary. We met to seek solutions,” said the U of M’s David Tilman, a noted ecologist and lead author of the paper. “We found that the next generation of biofuels can be highly beneficial if produced properly.”

A release by Science Daily said that “to balance biofuel production, food security and emissions reduction, the authors conclude that the global biofuels industry must focus on five major sources of renewable biomass: Perennial plants grown on degraded lands abandoned from agricultural use; crop residues; sustainably harvested wood and forest residues; double crops and mixed cropping systems; and unicipal and industrial wastes”

To see Chris Somerville and Lee Lynd (the co-founders, respectively, of LS9 and Mascoma) co-authoring with Tim Searchinger and David Tillman, whose work on indirect land use change and biofuels sustainability did so much to cause the biofuels implosion of 2008, is a remarkable thing.

Last year, when the benefits of biofuels were touted, they were often derided as “junk science”. But now we see some initial signs of a change of outlook by examining the possibilities of unwanted residues. Junk science has been replaced by the science of junk.

It reignites the hope of a peace treaty between the environmental movement and the biofuels industry, and to see the petrochemical industry becoming increasingly committed to the platform, provides the hint of a Grand Alliance that might – just might – bring biofuels into that modest but respected corner of a national energy solution that the molecules deserve.

The B-Train is, perhaps, at long last readying to leave the station. All aboard, next stop a better world.

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