On Target for 2012

Ethanol Producer Magazine
November 2008

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory must help the United States to develop the technology necessary for making cheap fuels from cellulosic biomass by 2012. It’s a goal that’s not negotiable.

By Ryan C. Christiansen

By 2012, cellulosic ethanol production in the United States must be cost-competitive with ethanol produced from corn—such is the goal of the U.S. DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's Biomass Program. A key player in the program’s mission is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., and its Alternative Fuels User Facility, which houses the lab’s Bioethanol Pilot Plant, an 8,000-square-foot facility designed to test technologies used to produce ethanol and other fuels from cellulosic biomass.

In 2005, NREL co-endorsed a federal report, commonly known as the “Billion Ton” study, which in 2006 prompted the DOE’s “30x’30” initiative to annually produce enough ethanol from biomass to replace 30 percent of the petroleum used for transportation fuel in the United States by 2030.

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