False hopes and cellulose

Almost a year has passed since President George W. Bush told us that we have a serious problem: Americans are addicted to oil. This astonishing revelation galvanized politicians on both sides of the aisle. It is now de rigeur to decry America’s precarious dependence on foreign oil. Scrambling to find solutions, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which the President signed into law on December 19th, 2007.

A key provision of H.R. 6 mandates that the United States expand biofuels production to 36 billion gallons annually from the current level near 6.3 billion gallons. 21 billion gallons are slated to come from biomass-to-liquids (BTL) processes using cellulosic feedstocks. Funding for key provisions (e.g. section 230) makes it clear that Congress expects cellulosic ethanol to fulfill the renewable fuels requirement. Is this target realistic? If it is, does it matter? Catering to an uninformed public, our politicians have laid out a road map for failure. Cellulosic ethanol is not a silver bullet that solves America’s oil dependency.

Energy Bulletin