High gas prices and politics push companies toward the ‘holy grail’ of biofuel: cellulosic ethanol.

The race for nonfood biofuel

By Mark Clayton Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / June 4, 2008 edition

Way back in 2006, when gasoline cost just $2.50 a gallon, President Bush called for home-grown biofuels to replace three-quarters of oil imports from the Persian Gulf – or about 72 billion gallons – by 2025.

How to achieve that goal is still a question. Corn-based ethanol production is expected to be 12 billion to 15 billion gallons in coming years.

But with gas now at $4 a gallon and critics hammering corn ethanol for helping to pump up global food prices, it is clear that the holy grail of biofuels – cellulosic ethanol – needs to make its entrance soon.

Driven by a growing political consensus to shift toward nonfood biofuels, the high price of oil, and gains in technology, a flood of public and private investment has poured into the development of cellulosic ethanol.

“Actual marketplace production of cellulosic ethanol is zero – there’s not a gallon being produced [commercially] right now,” says Thomas Foust, biofuels research director at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. “But with all these plants coming on line … by 2010 or 2011 we will start to see millions of gallons.”

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