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From the New Uses Council's EverGreen newsletter
Vol. 6 No. 1, February/March 2001
Testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
March 29, 2001
By Professor Bruce E. Dale, Ph. D.
Chairman, Department of Chemical Engineering, Michigan State University
Excerpt: "I cannot imagine a more important and significant effort with more interrelated benefits than our work to produce biobased fuels, chemicals and industrial products."
Thank you Senator Lugar for the invitation to testify again before this Committee. I commend you for the passage of your bill "The National Sustainable Chemicals And Fuels Act." I hope that this year the funds may be appropriated to fully support the competitive research envisioned by your Bill. I believe that research to help us develop biobased chemicals, fuels and other industrial products will also help us solve a number of serious national problems including:
Low crop prices
Dependence on imported petroleum
Lack of rural development opportunities
Lack of economically viable technologies to reduce atmospheric carbon Dioxide
In general, the lack of sustainable technologies that can provide both economic growth and cleaner air, water and soil.
I believe renewable fuels and chemicals derived from plant material can address all of these problems. I cannot imagine a more important and significant effort with more interrelated benefits than our work to produce biobased fuels, chemicals and industrial products.
As I speak and write on the subject of biobased industrial products, on renewable chemicals and fuels, one of the concerns I often hear expressed is that these products will compete for agricultural land, sharply driving up food prices. Put most simply the concern is: can we have both food and fuel from biomass? There is a two hour answer to this question and a five minute answer. Let me give the five minute answer.
First, most of our agricultural production goes to feed animals rather than directly to feed people. We then consume various animal products. Animals need two primary nutrients: these are calories and protein. Providing plant biomass for chemical and fuel uses without increasing food costs therefore means finding ways to better and more efficiently meet the calorie and protein needs of animals. I believe the research called for in your bill would do this--even though that is not its primary intent. Let me explain.
A very large scale biofuels industry, probably bioethanol, must be based on lignocellulosic materials. These are grasses, hays, trees, crop residues and byproducts of food and fiber production. In the United States alone we produce hundreds of millions of tons of lignocellulosic byproducts. We could also grow hundreds of millions of tons more of soil-conserving and water-purifying perennial grasses and trees as a replacement for or in rotation with row crops if there were a greater market for these grasses. That greater market could be a large-scale biofuels industry.
Many of these grasses or legumes could be grown as winter cover crops and thereby would have little or no impact on the production of the primary crop which is normally on the field only during the summer months. In fact, the winter cover crop, sown into the main crop prior to harvest, grows through the fall and again early in the spring. Such winter cover crops would take up nutrients that might otherwise be lost to groundwater and surface waters while providing additional plant material for conversion to fuels and chemicals.
Your bill provides for research to overcome the resistance of lignocellulosic materials to conversion to sugars. These sugars represent available food energy or calories.
Scientists have long known that any process that frees up the sugars in lignocellulosic materials for fermentation to ethanol will also free these sugars for feeding to animals. In essence we will increase the resource base for both animal feed and biobased fuels if we can liberate the sugars in lignocellulosic materials.
The research provided in the Lugar bill also emphasizes the importance of biorefineries, large integrated processing facilities that will produce multiple products from plant material. Biorefineries must use all of the components of plant biomass in order to compete economically.
This is the second part of the food and fuel equation. All plant material contains protein. In fact the perennial grasses, legumes and crop residues on which we might build a very large bio-ethanol industry contain between about 6 and 15% protein. As those plants and crop residues are "refined" to produce fuels and chemicals, we will also produce large quantities of proteins as byproducts of the refining process. These protein byproducts can be fed to animals.
Therefore when we succeed in developing a large scale biofuels industry, with its associated "biorefineries" we will also accomplish two other things: 1) we will learn how to make the sugars (or calories) in plant material available for animals and 2) we will recover large quantities of protein suitable for animal feeding. My calculations show we can have both food and fuel from plant material.
In closing I would like to make a few points regarding the potential environmental and social benefits of these biobased products, especially biofuels.
We rely on imported oil for an increasingly large fraction of our liquid transportation fuels. The recent troubles in California remind us that energy is critical to our economy and way of life. If we suffer another oil supply disruption, the national impact will far exceed the problems in California. We need more reliable energy supplies--and biofuels can help.
Unfortunately, many forms of energy production and use tend to degrade the environment. Wisely, your bill further provides for research to maximize the environmental benefits of biobased products and biofuels and minimize their drawbacks. As we build a biobased economy, if we are smart and forward looking, we can do it right the first time.
There are at least two major areas in which biobased products, particularly biofuels, can help improve the environment.
First, deep-rooted perennial grasses and legumes such as switchgrass and alfalfa can reduce soil erosion and intercept groundwater borne pollutants such as fertilizers and pesticides before they reach aquifers, streams, rivers and lakes. A large scale biofuels industry would greatly increase the demand for such grasses--thus more would be grown with corresponding environmental benefits.
Second, my colleague Dr. Phil Robertson of Michigan State University's Kellogg Biological Station and his coworkers have shown that these same perennial grasses and legumes can serve as net sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. They can promote soil carbon storage even when the above ground plant matter is removed. A large scale biofuels industry based on such grasses would therefore also help offset the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels.
Properly managed to produce both environmental and economic benefits, a biobased products and biofuels industry could attract broadbased support from agriculture, industry and environmental groups.
I also believe the evidence shows that a biofuels industry will actually increase and not decrease world food supplies because it will make available large new sources of the two major nutrients: calories and protein. We can have both food and fuel from agriculture.
Again, I thank you for the invitation to speak today. I will be happy to try to answer questions.
Cargill-Dow Testimony
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