A January 15 article from Reuters reports comments of our Minnesota democratic representative Collin Peterson regarding his opinions on the viability of cellulosic ethanol. Peterson is quoted in the piece as saying"I really think the more I look at this whole cellulosic issue, there is a lot bigger problem to overcome here than people realize in terms of the feedstocks. We have a lot of work to do in that regard," he said. "I'm not sure cellulosic ethanol will ever get off the ground."
What a nice vote of confidence from our elected representative who happens to be the head of the house ag committee.
Thankfully the bio-energy industry hasn't bet all of it's chips on cellulosic ethanol. There are currently several biomass to energy technologies being scaled up to meet the increasing demand for renewable domestic energy (see previous posts). While not all of them involve production of transportation fuel, they all have the potential to replace limited reserves of fossil fuels. On the issue of cellulosic ethanol viability, let's just say opinions of those involved directly with cellulosic ethanol contrast starkly with those of representative Peterson...
The cellulosic ethanol industry is making steady progress toward commercialization despite the comments of some detractors. In separate piece, Reuters writer Karl Plume reported on Monday that, “The first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants should come on line by late 2009 or early 2010, and the industry remains poised to meet a U.S. government goal to increase biofuels use five-fold by 2022, the head of a leading energy crop company said on Monday.
"‘We should see the first commercial-scale plants coming on line in late-2009, early-2010,’ said Richard Hamilton, President and CEO of California-based Ceres, speaking at the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuels Summit."Farm Policy
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