Cellulosic Ethanol

Cel­lu­losic Ethanol Factsheet

Addi­tion­al Resources on Cel­lu­losic Ethanol, Agro­fu­els, and Relat­ed Topics:

“Next Gen­er­a­tion Bio­fu­els”: Burst­ing the New “Green” Bub­ble (2009)

The let­ter explains why large-scale indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of trans­port fuels and oth­er ener­gy from plants such as corn, sug­ar cane, oilseeds, trees, grass­es, or so-called agri­cul­tur­al and wood­land waste threat­ens forests, bio­di­ver­si­ty, food sov­er­eign­ty, com­mu­ni­ty-based land rights and will wors­en cli­mate change. The let­ter’s orig­i­na­tors warn that if Oba­ma’s “New Green Econ­o­my” runs on agro­fu­els it may trap the U.S. in a dan­ger­ous “Green Bub­ble” of unre­al­is­tic promis­es from an unsus­tain­able industry.

The True Cost of Agro­fu­els: Impacts on Food, Forests, Peo­ple and Cli­mate (2008)
This report is a com­pre­hen­sive analy­sis of the many facets of the Agro­fu­els agen­da cov­er­ing issues of soil, cor­po­rate con­trol and con­sol­i­da­tion, water, plan­ta­tions and pulp mills, fer­til­iz­er usage, Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing, trans­porta­tion, and cli­mate change. The con­clu­sion flesh­es out path­ways and solu­tions to meet­ing the chal­lenges for which agro­fu­els are a false solution.

From 1st- to 2nd-Gen­er­a­tion Bio­fu­el Tech­nolo­gies (Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency, 2008) (Extend­ed Exec­u­tive Sum­ma­ry)
A pil­lar of ener­gy ortho­doxy, the IEA, has all but writ­ten off the poten­tial for sec­ond gen­er­a­tion bio­fu­els in the next decade, and sug­gests the breakeven prices required will be quite high. “Over­all, unless there is a tech­ni­cal break­through in either the bio­chem­i­cal or ther­mo-chem­i­cal routes that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er the pro­duc­tion costs and accel­er­ate invest­ment and deploy­ment, it is expect­ed that suc­cess­ful com­mer­cial­iza­tion of 2nd ‑gen­er­a­tion bio­fu­els will take anoth­er decade or so.” The IEA also intro­duces use­ful text on the real­i­ties of first gen­er­a­tion biofuels.

Bio­fu­el Archive and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions by Dr. Tad W. Patzek

• Con­cerns over notes on bio­fu­els in IPCC AR4 Mit­i­ga­tion report and SPM (2007 let­ter to chair of IPCC)
• How Can We Out­live
  Our Way of Life? (2007 paper pre­pared for the 20th Round Table on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment of Bio­fu­els: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?)
• The For­est Killers (2006 Peter Huber arti­cle in Forbes Magazine)
• Green Plants, Fos­sil Fuels, and Now Bio­fu­els (Bio­science, 2006)
• Why cel­lu­losic ethanol will not save us? (2006 arti­cle in Ven­ture Beat)
• The Real Bio­fu­el Cycles (Online Sup­port­ing Mate­r­i­al for Sci­ence Let­ter, Vol. 312, p. 1747, 26 June, 2006)

GM Crops: A Third World Sav­iour or a Threat to Farmers?

Writ­ten by Lim Li Ching and brought to you by the Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence Pan­el (ISP), a pan­el of sci­en­tists from many dis­ci­plines, com­mit­ted to the Pro­mo­tion of Sci­ence for the Pub­lic Good. This page has case stud­ies from Argenti­na, Indone­sia, and India.