Don’t Get Slimed by Ethanol From Algae Hype
Posted: February 8, 2010
To read the popular press you would think second generation biofuels like ethanol made from switchgrass or algae are the answer to our search for a green alternative to gasoline. The reality is ethanol made from corn may continue to be the solution for years to come.
Algae – and to a lesser degree switchgrass, crop residue, and lumber waste – are widely considered to have great potential, since they can be grown in marginal areas that don’t compete with prime food-growing farmlands. Or so goes the thinking of the less informed who don’t understand the growing corn supply and the minimal impact corn-based ethanol has on food production.
But there’s a problem with algae which is thought by many second-generation feedstock advocates to be the next big thing…or, rather, several problems, according to a team of researchers from the University of Virginia. Their new study finds that growing algae for fuel is more energy- and water-intensive than other biofuel crops, including switchgrass, canola and corn. Oh, and it also produces more greenhouse gas emissions than those other sources.
Algae advocates contend algae tend to yield more energy than other biofuel crops like corn or switchgrass and their high fat content also promises to make refining more efficient than with other fuel stocks.
Still, significant hurdles stand in the way of algae becoming a cheap and easy source of fuel. And those hurdles need to be removed soon before we put too many eggs in algae’s basket.
Government and energy companies are already spending hundreds of millions of dollars for algae research. Last year, for example, ExxonMobil said it was investing $600 million into the quest for algal biofuels. And recently, the US Department of Energy announced it was directing $78 million in economic stimulus funds into algae fuel research.
All of which begs the questions, how much more efficient would corn conversion to ethanol be if corporations and government had not bought into the anti-ethanol food vs. fuel rhetoric and invested more research funds in the emerging and already increasingly efficient corn ethanol industry?
Tim Said,
February 9, 2010 @ 4:58 pm
Mark, and this is the sad commentary of todays poilitical correct science world where research funds have been commandered by enviros and directed for the last few years in a direction that continues to promise sometime in just 5 more years we will be successful. i heard 10 years ago that cellulose was just around the corner. it is so sad to think of the efficiencies and new co-products we could have generated by now had the billions of dollars been directed toward corn based biofuels.
aaron Said,
February 12, 2010 @ 3:22 pm
The EPA’s new regulations are a step in the right direction, but the problem is that there are thousands of miles to go. Corn ethanol is not a solution and anyone should be able to see that from looking at the EPA’s own calculations about Ethanol’s green house gas reductions. After all, it takes 33 years just to break even on emissions when you take the entire life cycle into account. Here is a good article that talks about it from The Greener Truth
http://thegreenertruth.com/2010/02/the-ethanol-life-cycle/