Abstract
Executive Summary
During the past few years, new technologies have emerged that, if properly
nurtured, could provide the key to a broader effort to wean Americans off
foreign oil, drastically reduce pollution, help slow global warming and
revolutionize portable power. One is an industrial process that may make
ethanol far cheaper to produce than ever before, with the potential of making
this much-maligned-and over-subsidized-biofuel economically competitive with
gasoline. This is far more promising, in the near term, than much of the
research on which we' re currently spending federal dollars and intellectual
energy.
As far as the science books are concerned, ethanol is merely a form of
alcohol, commonly produced from corn, which is mixed in with gasoline to
provide transportation power. The ethanol industry produced 4 billion gallons
last year, less than 3 percent of the volume of gasoline consumed by
Americans. As a result, only a small fraction of gas stations actually sell
ethanol-gasohol mixtures.
A new and promising technology has the potential to make ethanol fuels much
more practical. This method for producing ethanol not from corn kernels, but
from the plant' s stalk, roots and leaves, is known as cellulosic material.
So-called cellulosic ethanol has been around for years, but breaking down the
cellulose to make it fermentable was inefficient, expensive, and manufactured
a fair amount of pollution. But only until recently have companies developed a
process for making it more efficiently. Cellulosic ethanol made from stalks
and husks (and other plant cellulose material) still has to be fermented, but
it uses cast-off waste products of food that' s already being grown.
Cellulosic is just one form of biomass, which is energy produced from organic
substances. Biomass is derived from many types of waste organic matter, both
animal and vegetable, such as crop stalks, tree thinning, wooden pallets,
construction waste, animal waste, agricultural waste and lawn trimmings, etc.
Using renewable resources for our future energy supply is a step in the right
direction because it environmentally friendly by reducing pollution and
helping to preserve other energy sources which are scarcer. It also represents
a hope for those nations that are deprived of natural energy sources, like oil
and natural gas.
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