Alabama's Bright Future in Biofuels

“How does a comparatively poor developing nation trump the United States and other wealthy Western countries?” asks Mark Hall. “By creating a blueprint to attain energy efficiency and sticking to it through thick and thin.”

Hall, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System regional agent with statewide responsibility for educating Alabamians about the merits of renewable energy, believes U.S. policymakers would be smart to do likewise.

Writing in yesterday’s Birmingham News, Hall believes President Bush’s energy bill, which calls for 7.5 billion gallons of renewable energy each year, is a good start. Nevertheless, he believes more is needed --- “particularly more measures designed to protect the biofuels industry while it is still in its vulnerable infancy.”

Brazil determined 30 years ago to protect it fledgling renewable energy sector while it was still in this vulnerable infancy, and it has much to show for its efforts, Hall says.

Brazil is now one of the world's leaders in renewable energy resources, with roughly 60 percent of its sugar production invested in ethanol. While renewable energy supplies only 6 percent of the national energy demand in the United States, ethanol alone accounts for 13.5 percent of Brazil's energy use. Ethanol fuels nearly half of Brazil's automobiles --- a share that is increasing steadily, thanks to the advent of flex-fuel vehicles, which run on gasoline, ethanol or a mixture of both.

Also writing in the Birmingham News yesterday, Dr. David Bransby, an Auburn University professor and researcher and nationally renowned bioenergy expert, perceives that two factors --- Alabama’s vast biomass resources, coupled with the bioenergy expertise at Auburn University --- may position the state to become a “national leader in developing alternative fuels.”

These include development of forest resources for energy; conversion of pulp and paper mills to biorefineries that produce fuels and chemicals; genetic improvement of switchgrass; development of technologies to produce ethanol from biomass; and farm production of heat and electricity from broiler litter.

Still, Hall contends, one critical ingredient remains --- government incentives that “will put the nation's growing biofuels industry squarely on the path toward energy independence.”

Posted by Jim Langcuster at October 9, 2006 09:19 AM | TrackBack