Presentation to Southern Bioenergy Summit Jim Decker Decker Garman Sullivan, LLC

Energy Issues Energy markets and energy effects on environment are global issues. World energy consumption is projected to increase by 50% by 2030 and double by Demand can be met by fossil fuels.

Energy Issues (cont) For the U.S. and many other countries, the problem boils down to: –Security of energy supplies, –Cost of energy, and –Concern about climate change. There is no silver bullet solution. Some bullets are more powerful than others.

Large Impact, Secure, Carbon-Free Production Technologies Zero CO2 emission coal plants Nuclear Wind Biofuels Solar (photovoltaics)? (Conservation is not a production technology but is important.)

Estimates of Ethanol Production in the U.S. DOE and USDA estimate possibility of displacing 30% of current gasoline usage by production of 60Bgal/yr in the U.S. by Biofuels look attractive on both the security of supplies and CO2. Biofuels will face issues of cost, land use and water resources.

Research Opportunities in Biofuels Production of ethanol from corn starch has issues. –Twenty percent of corn crop produces two percent of transportation fuel. –It requires a large amount of fossil fuel energy to produce. –The price of corn has doubled in two years with adverse impacts on food prices, meat producers and ethanol production costs. Cellulosic ethanol offers the promise of higher efficiency and lower costs with better feedstocks. –Developing efficient cellulose to ethanol processes along with improved feedstocks is the hottest area of biofuels research today both in government programs and in the private sector. –DOE published a research roadmap, Breaking the Biological Barriers to Cellulosic Ethanol.

Biofuels Beyond Ethanol Ethanol has 2/3 the energy density of gasoline and has some undesirable chemical properties. Is it possible to make a fuel such as butanol efficiently? Biohydrogen?

Biofuels Research at DOE Two sponsors: –Office of Science FY $22.9M, FY $62.5M, FY $112.9M –Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy FY2006 – $89.8M, FY $149.7M, FY $179.3M

Office of Science(SC) Program in Biofuels BER started Genomes to Life(GTL) program to understand the workings of biological systems, both microbes and plants, to solve energy and environmental challenges. GTL aims to gain this knowledge at the level of multi-protein machines and complex microbial communities in order to use or even redesign microbes and plants.

SC Biofuels Program (cont) Original GTL plan had four large, expensive facilities. Each provided tools to do part of the job. NAS study recommended a vertically integrated facility focused on biofuels. Solicitation for biofuels research centers issued in 2006 with responses due 2/1/2007.

SC Biofuels Program (Cont) BES has funded Energy Biosciences Research for many years. The research objectives are to understand how plants and microbes capture solar energy through photosynthesis, biochemically transduce it and store photosynthetically-fixed carbon into a variety of organic compounds. FY2008 request is $38M.

SC’s FY2008 Increase in Biofuels Award for a third biofuels center funded at $125M over 5 years. Third center will be chosen from proposals submitted in response to the earlier solicitation, i.e. there will not be a new solicitation.

Office of Science User Facilities A number of SC scientific user facilities are useful for biofuels research. –Synchrotron light sources –Supercomputers –Environmental and Molecular Science Laboratory –Joint Genome Institute All facilities available at no charge on a peer reviewed proposal basis.

EERE’s Biomass and Biorefinery Systems R&D EERE program is focused on near-term applied research and development. EERE program is driven by a 2012 target cost of $1.07 per gallon of cellulosic ethanol and an accompanying target of $35 per dry ton of cellulosic feedstock. Program is conducted primarily through industry partnerships. Some university work is funded through NREL, ORNL and PNNL. Congressional earmarks play a major role in the EERE budget with $47M of the $90M being earmarked in FY2006.

Thoughts on a Southern Biofuels Initiative The U.S. biomass belt will be south of the corn belt. It makes sense for universities in the South to be involved. Be aware of what the private sector is doing and partner if possible. There is a lot of private sector R&D at large corporations and small biotech firms. Funding opportunities for large new research efforts are very limited in DOE through FY2008. If you have ideas for new approaches, you should try to influence the FY2009 budget process in the next couple of months. If you decide to form a research consortium, make sure the whole is clearly greater than the sum of the parts.