Cellulosic Ethanol Gets A $90 Million Boost From BP
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 08. 6.08
photo: Verenium
You may have read about cellulosic ethanol company Verenium opening up the first demonstration-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in the United States two months or so ago. Well, now the Massachusetts-based firm has announced a partnership with BP which it hopes will accelerate the commercialization of the second-generation biofuel.
Verenium Gets Money, BP Gets Intellectual Property Rights
Announced today, BP and Verenium will form a strategic partnership which will pump $90 million into Verenium’s coffers over the next 18 months. BP will gain “rights to current and future technology held withing the partnership.”
BP's First Foray Into Cellulosic Ethanol
Talking up the deal, Sue Ellerbusch, president of BP Biofuels North America said,
BP is very pleased to be entering this important relationship with Verenium. We believe energy crops like sugar cane, miscanthus and energy cane are the best feedstocks to deliver economic, sustainable and scaleable biofuels to the world. This deal puts us at the front of the cellulosic biofuels game. In partnering with Verenium, we now have the most advanced technology for transforming these energy grasses to biofuels, [...] Verenium has already demonstrated the technology, making this real and an appropriate fit with our commitment to bring more sustainable biofuels to the market more quickly.
In the past BP has formed alliances with other biofuels developers: Tropica BioEnergia in Brazil for ethanol, and D1 Oils for Jatropha-based biodiesel.
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LOL!
Goodbye Verenium!
Any kind is ethanol is obviously a step in the right direction, and I think corn ethanol is the smartest move at this point. We've invested the most money in corn ethanol and it has the greatest likelihood of paying off soon. America also has an abundance of corn -- as opposed to sugar cane -- so I think it's our best option.
you are so wrong about ethenol. It requires so much energy to produce. It requires an enormous amount of fresh water to produce. It yields very little energy when compared to the quantity required in corn to produce this ethenol.
It is easy for us to say this is the fuel we should be pushing. Think of how it is damaging soils and bio systems to plant and over work more land for this fuel. People all over the world are trying to grow it and are willing to deforest lands in order to grow corn. The costs of food for many 2nd and 3rd world countries has increase by 20% because of the demand for corn.
Not to mention our tax dollars are wasted on farming subsidies
Get a clue. There are many more layers to the issues that people "hear" a great ideas.
bighurt -- Talk about being a Debbie Downer. Ethanol is cleaner than oil, ethanol is more environmentally friendly than oil, ethanol is more sustainable in the long run than oil, and ethanol is domestic, unlike oil.
So, if I had a choice betwen our present-day situation, in which everyone is addicted to oil, or a world in which we run a sizable portion of our energy plan on clean, American ethanol, I'll take ethanol!
The point that bighurt was trying to get across was that ethanol made from corn requires an enormous amount of energy to produce. In fact, it uses almost as much oil to produce as it replaces when used in vehicles! If you include the nitrogen fertilizer (a potent source of greenhouse gases) corn based ethanol results in more greenhouse gas emissions than just burning the equivalent amount of gasoline would.
You are right that corn is grown locally, but if we continue to divert corn production from food to fuel, we may find ourselves inciting global unrest as food prices skyrocket, a problem that could well be worse than the effect oil has on foreign affairs.
Corn based ethanol is far from the answer to our problems. In fact, it is worse in almost every measurable way.
Whilst Ethanol is definite one of the solutions, 2nd generation feedstock that does not impinge on food crops is the only morally acceptable solution whilst waiting for the Algal Biofuels technology to mature and come online.
But no matter what, the American solution of using corn as a feedstock is both inefficient when compared to using sugar cane and totally immoral when rampant hunger is still being experienced and Third World populations are unable to meet the financial pressure placed on food grains.
As long as the US Government continues to subsidize corn biofuels, it is guilty of committing mass genocide on par with any weapon of mass destruction.
"Remove the plank from your own eyes before removing the splinter from your neighbor's!" Saddam Hussein was a Saint compared to your own Government' with its blind support of the corn lobby.