BIOMASS: A WIN-WIN ENERGY SOURCE

By Mark Sommer and - - Reprint | | Print |

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ARCATA, CALIFORNIA, May 1 2006 (IPS) - Fully developed, biomass could reduce reliance on hydrocarbons of all kinds, foreign and domestic, not only as fuel for light-duty vehicles but as a raw material for biodegradable manufactured plastics. At the same time, rightly utilised, biomass could be harvested not from food crops but from the stalks and stover of grains that would otherwise go to waste. In the process, it could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel a rebirth of long languishing rural regions worldwide. Unlike oil, coal, uranium and other conventional fuels, the processes that produce biofuels are not intensely toxic to humans or the natural environment. Moreover, unlike fossil fuel and nuclear plants, biorefineries are most efficiently run when they are small-scale, decentralised, and locally-managed, with raw materials drawn from as little as a thirty-mile radius of the plant. One of the benefits of biofuels is that they offer the possibility of returning the sources of energy, income and political power to each locale. In an era when centralised power is revealing itself to be ever more inefficient and untrustworthy, an energy system of distributed power driven by biology rather than mineralogy might provide not only heat and light but, as a beneficial byproduct, a greater measure of democracy.

When President Bush cited switchgrass, the original tall grass that graced the Great Plains of pre-European North America, in his 2006 State of the Union Address, it left most listeners puzzled — not only those who’d never heard of it but the tiny minority who had but were astonished to hear it from a Texas oiligarch. Still more surprisingly, the president anointed alternative fuels like switchgrass-fueled ethanol as an essential element in America’s energy salvation, baptising biomass as a means to reduce the country’s dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Fully developed, biomass could reduce reliance on hydrocarbons of all kinds, foreign and domestic, not only as fuel for light-duty vehicles but as a raw material for biodegradable manufactured plastics. At the same time, rightly utilised, biomass could be harvested not from food crops but from the stalks and stover of grains that would otherwise go to waste. In the process, it could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel a rebirth of long languishing rural regions worldwide.

Cellulose ethanol is not the fuel derived from feed corn and wheat that is currently mixed in a 1-to-10 ratio with standard petroleum in some US gas stations, nor that derived from sugarcane and used on a broader scale in Brazil. Standard ethanol is drawn from products that would otherwise be used for food and is therefore a relatively costly fuel to produce. But a new process based on organic decomposition of plant fiber accelerated by biotech manipulation and a simple distillation of basic sugars converts the cellulose in the fibrous stalks of corn, wheat, rice, other agricultural crops and even small diameter trees and shrubs into a wide range of petroleum substitutes.

The story starts during World War II on the South Pacific island of Guam, where US soldiers found their canvas tents disintegrating at astonishing rates in the tropical jungle. The culprit, they eventually found, was a tiny microorganism with a prodigious appetite for cellulose fibers. Fast forward sixty years to the biotech laboratory in Ottawa, Canada, where an innovative company called Iogen has isolated the enzyme produced by this microorganism and accelerated the process of natural decomposition.

Having built and operated a prototype biofuel refinery in Ottawa, Iogen is now looking to the US state of Idaho to build the world’s first full-scale bio-refinery, which local ranchers have eagerly signed up to supply with wheat stalks and corn stover. Traditionally, at the end of the growing season, farmers set fire to their fields, filling the air with climate-changing smoke. But Idaho farmers now see potential to revive their depressed rural economy by using wheat and barley wastes to produce energy-rich cellulose ethanol.

Unlike oil, coal, uranium and other conventional fuels, the processes that produce biofuels are not intensely toxic to humans or the natural environment. Moreover, unlike fossil fuel and nuclear plants, biorefineries are most efficiently run when they are small-scale, decentralised, and locally-managed, with raw materials drawn from as little as a thirty-mile radius of the plant.

The raw materials for cellulose ethanol are not confined to agricultural crops. The selective thinning of woodlands that are currently choked with undergrowth from decades of forest fire suppression could yield raw materials for cellulose ethanol while returning the woods to something resembling their pre-European openness. For decades, environmentalists opposed to all logging have fought with timber companies seemingly fixated on cutting anything still standing. A false dichotomy had emerged between jobs and the environment. Meanwhile, the forests were either being clearcut or left to grow thick with highly flammable brush, only to burn in calamitous wildfires.

But many rural residents have grown weary of both unconstrained resource extraction and uncompromising environmentalism. Environmentalists formerly resistant to any logging in old growth forests are seeing the wisdom in the highly selective thinning of dense underbrush and small diameter trees, while loggers and the US Forest Service are seeing the value in replacing clearcuts with all-age stands that a generation down the line may begin to resemble the spacious ancient forests.

One of the benefits of biofuels is that they offer the possibility of returning the sources of energy, income and political power to each locale. In an era when centralised power is revealing itself to be ever more inefficient and untrustworthy, an energy system of distributed power driven by biology rather than mineralogy might provide not only heat and light but, as a beneficial byproduct, a greater measure of democracy. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)