22 February 2012 | Alan Bouquet
Biofuel, Energy, Food and agriculture

 

Corn biofuels are becoming uncompetitive due to increasing food prices.

Novozymes, a biofuel company, is today launching an enzyme that is said to revolutionise the industry. The new enzyme claims to be five times more efficient in converting waste biomass into ethanol, which would make the cost similar to corn ethanol and petroleum.

The enzyme is called Cellic CTec3 and is two times more effective than the previous product, CTec2. The efficiency should lead to a production cost of around $2 to $2.50 per gallon, whereas corn ethanol costs are around $2.20 and increasing due to record corn prices.

The advantage of 2nd generation biofuels over first generation biofuels like corn is that they do not use up valuable food resources nor increase deforestation. The increasing concern over the cost of food around the world means an alternative to traditional biofuels needs to be found.

And indeed, the market for 2nd generation biofuels is expanding dramatically. This year Bloomberg predict a production of 15 million gallons, but by 2014 this could reach 250 million gallons, a huge increase over just a few years. The potential for the technology is staggering, with agricultural waste able to replace around 16% of US petroleum consumption by 2030, reducing carbon emissions substantially.

The future for biofuels is certainly tantalising, and it is hoped development of biobutanol will help replace other fossil fuels in the near future too. In a similar way to the solar and wind energy industries, biofuels are now coming close to competing with conventional sources of energy, which can only be a good thing for the planet.

Efficiencies in the fossil fuel industry have taken around a century to develop, whereas these new emerging technologies have huge opportunities for cost reduction, in effect playing catch-up on the more established technologies, so that in the near future they could overtake coal, oil and gas as the key energy source.

Biofuels are especially well placed to do this, as there are fewer changes in infrastructure required for them to be widely used. Other renewables suffer from the huge changes in infrastructure required to make them effective; for example, biofuels can be used in petrol engines without any costly conversions to the vehicle, whereas to use electricity to power a car, one needs to buy a new car, and have the technology available to charge it. It is for this reason that biofuels can be considered an exciting development for the future of sustainability.
 

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