On July 17th I spent some time on the phone with POET's VP of Science and Technology Dr. Mark Stowers. (I was invited up for a visit, but I couldn't swing that just now). Dr. Stowers is in charge of company R&D, which includes corn and cellulose to ethanol, as well as the investigation of novel processes for utilizing waste to power their facilities.

Joining us on the call was Matt Merritt, POET's Media Relations Specialist. We covered a lot of ground on the call. Along with the environmental impact, key interests of mine in assessing fuels of any kind are the energy inputs – what kind, how much – and the related topic of logistics. I probed the energy inputs in some depth, as I consider that critical when considering long-term commercial feasibility.

Now is the time when everyone is writing letters to the new Obama administration. It seems like it might be worthwhile discussing a letter written by a group of organizations warning of the dangers of biofuels. The letter can be found at the site of the Global Justice Ecology Project. The statement on the website about this letter says:

Corn and sugar based agrofuels have already come under extreme scrutiny due to their documented contribution to the food crisis, with venture capital investment in these so-called 'first generation biofuels' dropping to zero. The open letter exposes the further problems that will result from the so-called 'second generation' of agrofuels. These problems range from wholesale destruction of the world's rainforests and other sensitive forests, to the forced displacement of entire communities to make way for agrofuel expansion, and the biosafety risks of gambling on novel technologies like Synthetic Biology and genetically engineered trees. The letter also makes clear that agrofuels made from inedible plant feedstocks (cellulosic fuels) will continue to exacerbate the food crisis by monopolizing additional agricultural lands for the growing of agrofuel crops such as grasses and trees, instead of food crops.

In case you are just venturing out of your cave for the first time in a week, you are probably aware that President-elect Obama has announced his new energy team:

Obama names energy team

The team includes Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy, former EPA head Carol Browner to fill the newly-created job of Energy Czar, and Lisa Jackson to head the EPA. The focus of this essay will be on Dr. Chu, but I will comment briefly on the others.

Lisa Jackson is trained as a chemical engineer (as was the outgoing Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman). It should go without saying that I like to see technical people in roles like this, where understanding science and data are both critical. Carol Browner, while not trained as a technical person, has a lot of administrative experience within the EPA. Incidentally, I once met Mrs. Browner, as she was the person who presented my research group with the 1996 Green Chemistry Challenge Award at the National Academy of Sciences for our work on biomass conversion to fuels.

A few days ago I participated in a conference call (recording available here) about biofuels with an organization called Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). In this article, I will discuss some things I found interesting, including a new technique for making biodiesel that involves feeding biomass to algae.

The call had three speakers. The first, Jim McMillan of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory gave an overview of the current US biofuel situation. According to him, a lot of current interest is in cellulosic ethanol, since corn ethanol doesn't scale up very well. At this point, the cost of cellulosic ethanol seems to be double or more that of corn ethanol. The economics are still being clarified by demonstration projects. Until there is some sort of climate legislation that raises the price of carbon, it will be difficult to overcome the price gap.