Vinod Khosla on Biofuel Feedstocks

by Vinod Khosla (GreenTechMedia) Imagination is in shortest supply when it comes to agronomic econometrics that extrapolate the past instead of inventing a new future.
Part II: Feedstock. Feedstock cost, environmental impact and even its politics are critical variables. With each investment one has to pay attention to which feedstocks to get started on, what the process can accommodate over time, the economics, the alternative uses and scalability potential (hence the economics to the feedstock producers among their alternatives) for each feedstock.
Technologies that use food-based feedstocks are likely viable in the near term but will have increasing costs, poor politics, and feedstock competition unless the production technique is compatible with cellulosic to sugar hydrolysis technology (such as HCl and others in development).
For fuels, processes that can directly use all components of biomass (cellulose, hemi-cellulose, sugars, starches and lignin) may have an advantage of higher yields per ton and lower costs per ton. Oil based processes for biodiesel are not likely competitive except in niche applications and in certain geographies.
...The non “paper or lumber” quality biomass ecosystem, which will include co-feed of wood slash, bagasse or corn stover, will develop quickly in the next 5 years as the first commercial cellulosic biofuels units become operational.
...There is a surprising amount of forest waste available; a good example would be hardwood waste, which can reach up to 30 percent or more of the harvest: southeast timber has roughly 18 to 22 percent waste by mass, whereas the Northeast and Alaska have as much as 30 percent.
...Long term (10 to 15 years), dramatically improved energy crops, new cropping practices and new chemical fertilizer reduction strategies (such as polycultures) could yield well over a billion tons of biomass in the United States alone, if not substantially more, without significant land impact.
As a result, the most promising technologies must be able to exploit these ligno-cellulosic sources and ideally, mixed feedstocks to have the lowest costs.
...I expect corn-based ethanol will likely be retired as a fuel in the next 10 years as it becomes increasingly uncompetitive. The sugar or starch based processes that currently run on corn will likely transition to hydrolysed cellulosic sugars...
...I believe that any biomass effort should be subject to an environmental assessment, similar to my CLAW proposal (Carbon emissions, Land use, Air pollution, and Water use), described briefly in Part I. If managed well, biomass production for energy could usher in a rebirth of the rural economy, through improved and expanding arable land and increased revenue. Dollars that once went overseas will stay in the country and revitalize impoverished communities. The key to making this vision a reality is to explore all options and recognize that one size does not fit all; energy crops, perennials, polycultures, better crop rotations, agroforestry, technological breakthroughs in managing plant nutrition and disease, and new harvesting technology.
For the regressives who project fixed land use and biomass production capacity based on yesterday’s technology, un-optimized yields and practices, I just beg to differ. Many people simply refuse to accept that the future can be different from the past and yet extrapolating an unsustainable present is a bankrupt strategy by which to reach a sustainable future. Much research remains to be done but the potential clearly exists for significant jumps in our biomass capacity. With proof of this biomass as a source of liquid fuel, this research will accelerate.
...Perennial polycultures, drought and salt tolerant plants (a huge upside for humanity), long term crop rotations, winter cover crops and innovative low input (water and fertilizer) techniques are very powerful tools in improving agronomy, environmental impact, yields and biodiversity while potentially recovering even non-arable land.
...Well over a billion acres of land that was formerly agricultural has been abandoned worldwide because of degradation due to poor farming practices.
... (B)iomass to sugars conversion technologies can open up sugar fermentation technologies to the whole world of cellulosic sources by cheaply producing fermentable sugars from cellulosic materials. Sugar and cellulosic feedstock prices will drop as the ecosystem expands and matures. Sugars, as high as $0.20 to $0.30 per pound in the US today (versus 15 to 20 cents per pound internationally),will drop to $0.12 per pound and eventually to $0.08 per pound over the next decade or two from cellulosic sources. These improvements will be driven by crop productivity, sugar conversion technologies, specialized transport and processing equipment, competition and improved logistics efficiency as well as new crops.
...US and worldwide demand of oil will be such that biofuels will not compete with each other, they all compete far more with oil. Each technology is suited to particular local conditions, and with the expected demand, there is lots of room for all these and even more technologies. Within a decade after beginning to scale (2012?), advanced biofuels will become material in the oil supply equation, and will be a significant market force within twenty years.
... So what makes a good biofuels investment? Before investing, I evaluate a company on the following checklist. READ MORE