Word: ethanol
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Whatever the future of the electric car and bioethanol, the notion that America must end its oil habit is gaining currency in Washington. George W. Bush, the former Texan oilman, has begun talking up corn ethanol and clean diesel and has endorsed a $4,000 tax credit for purchases of hybrid cars. That has not gone unnoticed by energy's new coalition of convenience, even if the President hasn't yet mentioned plug-in hybrids or bioethanol. "We drive to high-tech jobs today in cars built with 100-year-old technology, using 100 million-year-old fuel," says Podesta...
...electricity provides half of the 500-m.p.g. dream, ethanol provides the other: an alternative to gas. Hopkinsville's ethanol experience is hardly unique. Since 2001, 26 plants have been built in the U.S., bringing the total to 87, as political support for the fuel has grown. Roughly 40% of the plants are owned by farmers, although a single corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, retains a 25% share of the market...
When the hawks and greens of Washington's new anti-oil coalitions talk about ethanol fueling the future car, they aren't talking about the brew distilled from cornstarch. What they are referring to is a more fiscally and environmentally defensible alcohol, brewed from prairie grasses or agricultural waste, like straw. Trouble is, the technology required to commercialize bioethanol is in its infancy...
...into business because he thought he could do good, are helping the technology mature. Novozymes, the $1 billion, Copenhagen-based company he leads, sells microbes and enzymes made from genetically engineered bugs that improve consumer products and make dirty industrial processes more environmentally friendly. But as the volume of ethanol brewed in the U.S. has doubled since 2001, to 3.4 billion gal., the farm-fuel business has become Novozymes' fastest-growing source of revenue...
Enzymes that help transform cornstarch into ethanol are fairly run-of-the-mill in biotech terms. The same can't be said of those needed to brew bioethanol from indigestible plant fibers. Making enzymes efficient and cheap enough for that has long been an obstacle to a viable bioethanol industry. Canada's Iogen is the only biotech firm to have shipped a batch of commercial bioethanol (see main story). But Novozymes is making waves as well. It announced in March that with $17 million in U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding, it had reduced the cost of enzymes for making...