Mark Rice-Oxley, Straits Times 17 May 09;
Mark Rice-Oxley London - Every green technology has grappled with an image problem as it struggles to become established. Wind farms? Noisy, unsightly, unreliable. Solar? Expensive, cumbersome. Tidal and wave power? Unproven, treacherous for wildlife.
But none has suffered the colossal reputational damage that has contaminated biofuels over the past year. Remember: Once upon a time, these were the sweet organic juices that were going to usher in a new era of guilt-free motoring, a green elixir which would clean up filthy exhausts and stop the planet from overheating.
The beauty of biofuels was that they appeared truly renewable. Sow, grow, harvest, ferment, refine, distribute. And repeat. All that solar energy locked up in the natural world, and at last a way of harnessing it. Government subsidies and quotas made biofuels an attractive business. So did high oil prices.
But that was then. A perfect storm has since beset the world of biofuels, with calamitous results.
First, there was the suspicion that tearing down all that rainfo-
rest to plant areas for biofuels might not be terribly good for reducing carbon emissions. Second, concern multiplied that all that energy-intensive sowing, harvesting, fertilising and distributing was generating almost as much carbon as was being saved. Third, a slump in crude prices made biofuels start to look very expensive by comparison.
And fourth, and most critically, the sudden spike in food prices in 2007-2008 led to damning (and sometimes hasty) conclusions: All that land being diverted into growing maize or sugar cane or palm oil for biofuel usage was reducing acreage for traditional farming, restricting global food supplies.
'Full tanks but empty stomachs' was the cry as environmentalists went on the attack. As Mr Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth puts it: 'Using good agricultural land as fuel for cars instead of people is a stupid idea.'
But this is not the end of the biofuels story. In laboratories and research units in dozens of countries, the hunt is on for the next generation of crops that promise high energy, low carbon and no impact on food supplies.
Algae, wood, straw, willow, miscanthus grasses, and plenty more besides: Scientists and commercial developers are optimistic that within five years some of these will be promising feedstocks for the next generation of green fuels.
'You don't want a crop that needs a lot of fertiliser and tending by farmers because you use a lot of fuel to grow it. You want a crop that gives a high yield but little input from the farmer,' says Dr Paul Dupree, who is leading a team at Cambridge University that is trying to unlock the sugars in non-edible plants which can then be fermented into ethanol.
'Maize and other first-generation crops need a lot of input so they don't have a large benefit and also use high-quality land which we need for growing food.
'The advantage of these other plants,' he says, referring to sugary grasses and willow, 'is that they don't need high-quality land, don't need high fuel input and give much higher yields.
'You have more quantity of plant if you are using the stem and leaves rather than just using the seeds. There is much more available per hectare.'
Algae promises even better yields. At a research and development site in Florida, a US company, PetroAlgae, reckons it is close to perfecting a process in which algae is cultivated for its oils in a matter of days.
The company says algae is at least 20 times more effective than traditional feedstock crops at producing biofuels - and it doesn't need arable land to do so.
According to vice-president Andy Beck, one acre of land can produce enough oil-bearing green goo to make a litre of biodiesel every 21/2 hours. Even better, it feeds off carbon dioxide to do so.
'It takes a matter of hours to produce our harvest whereas with crops like corn, soy and sugar cane it takes months,' he says.
'And it uses a much smaller volume of arable land. You are getting a high productivity on a small scale of space.'
Another great hope is jatropha, a bush whose seeds are oil-bearing. It promises much because it can survive in harsh terrain not normally used for edible crops, and needs little fertiliser. Commercial plantations are springing up in the Tropics on marginal land, and in December last year, an Air New Zealand flight trial-led a Boeing 747 on a blend of jatropha and kerosene in one engine.
'It's a tropical plant and doesn't need water in the same quantity' as other biofuel crops, says Mr Giles Clark, editor of Biofuel Review, a UK industry report. 'It will grow on marginal land. But the issue with jatropha is that the time from farming to production takes about four years.'
The other issue is that as with all 'second-generation' biofuels, considerable work is still required to convert the promise into an abundant, commercially viable fuel that can compete on price and performance against hydrocarbon-based fuels.
Already questions are being asked as to whether some of these crops will be able to pack the energy punch required to power aircraft, for example. Water scarcity is another contentious issue.
Mr Chris Perry, an economist who specialises in water, says that although jatropha can survive on scrubland that has little water, if you want it to flourish and be a productive crop, you will need a lot of water. 'Surviving and being seriously productive are different things,' he says.
And from his laboratory in Cambridge, Dr Dupree concedes that there are many stages in the process of teasing out sugars, converting them into syrups and turning those into ethanol, that still need work.
'There are a lot of improvements in the pipeline,' he promises. 'There are demonstration plants that will be producing on a large scale in two to three years.'
Whether they are commercial, he says, will depend on the price of crude.
They may not need to be.
With major economic powers like the US and the European Union setting quotas for renewable components in motoring oil, it looks like biofuels will be part of the mix long-term.
