The United States has a cheap fuel policy, but it is becoming increasingly expensive for the country to protect its energy supplies.
“Our military spends a lot of time trying to protect our fuel supply,” said Don Erbach, who recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research division.
Despite these concerns, Erbach told a biofeul conference in Calgary that biofuel remains insignificant when compared to the amount of gasoline and diesel consumed in the U.S. each year.
The U.S. burns 140 billion gallons of gasoline and 40 billion gallons of diesel a year and imports about 12 million barrels of oil per day. The mid-July oil price spike to $78 US per barrel cost the country $342 billion.
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In 2005 the U.S. produced 3.9 billion gallons of ethanol and less than a billion gallons of biodiesel. This year it could hit five billion gallons of ethanol, which is 2.6 percent of the nation’s liquid transportation fuel needs. The country is about 60 billion gallons short of biofuel.
As well, the U.S. must assess whether it has enough feedstock to keep it going.
“We need to take a look at how much cellulose and feedstock is available in the United States that could be used in a sustainable basis annually without impinging on food and feed,” Erbach said.
The country’s corn growers association lobbies hard for ethanol production. This keeps prices high, but Erbach predicted that if corn gets too expensive, manufacturers may find a cheaper feedstock that works as well, such as cellulose from trees or switchgrass.
“As things evolve 20 years down the road, it may be a totally different situation than we have now,” he said.
No one is using cellulose because there is no market for it, but as money is made and demand improves, the innovations will come.
Genetic modification of crops could also provide a better product, Erbach said, but to make that happen the feed suppliers need to talk with the conversion people to see what they need for the most efficient product.
“It won’t be one particular crop that will be the major biomass feedstock,” he said.
Biofuel production must also be economically competitive. Erbach worries corporations may do fine but farmers could end up being serfs to the energy sector.
“To be sustainable, it has to do something for everybody along the way.”
New ways to produce fuel using renewable energy makes the most sense.
“It was interesting to me that the ethanol industry had a palpitation when the price of natural gas went up,” he said.
“We have to figure out a way to get past this.”
In addition, people must be convinced that biofuel is efficient and that their vehicles will operate properly.
He believes a crisis is the only way to convince consumers to switch and so far he has not seen a big enough event to move people.
The soaring price of gasoline, storms such as Hurricane Katrina, war-induced shortages, hostile governments and compelling evidence about climate change may convince some, but these events may have come too late before people notice they have run out of cheap energy, Erbach said.
