Biofuels will play a crucial role in America’s energy future, researchers and energy industry officials said at a conference Tuesday in Grand Forks.
But there’s disagreement over what role, if any, ethanol made from corn should play.
“Don’t try to trash ethanol made from corn,” Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based American Coalition for Ethanol, said to those whose think the future belongs to biofuels other than corn ethanol.
Unless corn ethanol succeeds on a broad scale, other biofuels will struggle to catch on, he said.
About 300 people are attending the two-day Biomass ’10 at the Alerus Center. The event, which ends today has attracted scientists, engineers, businesspeople and government officials from around the country and overseas.
A little background:
Biomass is organic material made from plants and microorganisms. Biomass fuels, or biofuels, can come from a wide range of materials, including corn and other crops, wood and garbage.
Biofuel consumption in the United States is expected to increase, in part because of government mandates.
“We’re in good shape to see growth,” said Chris Zygarlicke, deputy associate director for research at the Energy & Environmental Research Center on the UND campus.
America’s most prominent biofuel today is ethanol, virtually all of which comes from corn grown in the Midwest.
Biodiesel, which derives from vegetable oils such as soybean oil, also are a major biofuel.
But there are major problems with ethanol and biodiesel, said Christopher Marshall, director for the Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations, Chemical and Engineering Division, Argonne (Ill.) National Laboratory.
Those problems include the “food versus fuel issue” — using corn and vegetable oils for fuel instead of food, he said.
America needs to turn to other, still-being-developed biofuels instead, he said.
Sources of those other biofuels could include switchgrass and hybrid poplars, Marshall said.
People who want to advance the next generation of biofuels, or the fuels that will follow ethanol and biodiesel, are hurting their cause by criticizing those two fuels, Jennings said.
“Guess what? Corn ethanol is going to pave the way for you to succeed,” he said.
Americans, long accustomed to petroleum, can be reluctant to use other fuels, he said.
Unless a viable market for ethanol is established, the next generation of biofuels won’t succeed, he said.
Jennings said the ethanol industry “spent way too much time and attention and resources on trying to figure out how to improve the production side of the process, and we neglected to work on the market access side and the demand for the product.
“If you want to learn a lesson from the ‘inferior’ ethanol industry,” he said, “pay attention to the market. Pay attention to who’s going to use your product and how they’re going to use your product.”
The ethanol industry hopes the next generation of biofuels is successful, Jennings said.
“We don’t want to fight you. We want to work with you. But we need you to work with us, too,” he said.
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