By
John Lindt
Tulare County - Tulare County Ag Commissioner Gary Kunkel says he has approved a test plot of less than 30 acres of biotech enhanced switchgrass that is already planted near Visalia.
The plot is part of a pilot project of Visalia-based ethanol maker EdenIQ. The company plans the first commercial conversion of the tall perennial grass to fuel ethanol in the state to be refined at the firm's Visalia Industrial Park plant in coming months.
The test is part of a venture capital-fueled race to increase the yield of ethanol from the tall native grass on a per acre basis – lowering the cost to produce cellulose-based biofuel.
Company spokesperson Will Gardenswartz confirms the plantings some weeks ago, but says no more details will be available until June 15 when a big ethanol conference in Denver is scheduled.
Gardenswartz would not confirm what is believed to be true – that EdenIQ's partner in the venture is L.A.-based Ceres Inc. that just announced greatly enhanced yields from patented switchgrass varieties – more than 50% above yields predicted by federal estimates to be expected in the future. Switchgrass is considered the most promising non-food crop to make the nation's future biofuel mandated by the U.S. government.
The thin grass that once covered the prairies of the Midwest was of course supplanted by wheat, soybeans and corn and today the trend may head back the other way.
Dramatic Yields Reported
Ceres Inc. reported yields last month of up to 19 tons per acre on varieties tested in California, compared to an average yield seen around the country of just 2 to 4 tons per acre.
Ceres Inc. spokesperson Cory Christensen, Ph.D. said he expects “that through trait development, better genetics and improved crop management practices, we can continue to increase average yields for many years to come.”
Commenting on the news in the May Wall Street Journal, he noted that “the knock against cellulosic ethanol” is that you would have to cover New Jersey twice over to grow enough switchgrass to make enough biofuel, but with this increased yield, you only need to cover New Jersey once over.”
The push to make more ethanol from fewer acres of switchgrass sets the stage for a potential boom in the planting of a biofuel crop and refining of cellulosic ethanol considered “just around the corner” for years.
Switchgrass is considered attractive as the next stage in biofuel development after corn-made ethanol, in part because it's a non-food crop. It can be grown on marginal land and “sequesters” carbon from the atmosphere at a higher rate than when it is burned as fuel. That makes it “carbon negative” in the battle to cut greenhouse gasses.
Switchgrass is typically planted in late spring and can grow to 7 feet tall with little fertilization. Since it is drought-tolerant, the crop might be attractive to the Valley's Westside where the new normal appears to be persistent drought.
Since 2007, several switchgrass varieties have been undergoing trials at the UC Westside Field Station in Five Points. Director of the center Bob Hutmacher says water used to grow switchgrass in the Valley could vary depending on many factors but could be similar to cotton.
Now in its third year of trials, Hutmacher explains that as the plant root system gets more established, it performs better in second and third years after planting when higher yields can be achieved. Hutmacher confirms yields in the 18-ton range, similar to the Ceres numbers. Ceres participates in the trials at the UC stations. There are four around the state testing the crop.
Depending on whether you could trade off some yield for reduced water application, you could grow a crop using about 30 inches of water, says Hutmacher.
Most testing of the new switchgrass varieties has been under university or seed company control, making this private Visalia venture to produce fuel more newsworthy. Once it is planted, switchgrass grows fast with several cuttings during the season and new crop coming up the following year.
More Crop per Acre
Farmers and seed makers have succeeded in squeezing more yield per acre and more yield per drop of water in recent decades, making it likely it will cost less in the future to make a gallon of biofuel. In part, this is also due to intense research going on worldwide.
Generally, ag's productivity has been impressive. For example, in 1960, the state's farmers applied 28.5 million acre feet of water to produce 32.3 million tons of crops at a value of $3.2 billion. By 1995, just about the same amount of water produced a 60 million ton crop valued at $22 billion. This is according to the California Department of Water Resources.
Potentially, this is a crop that could backfill some of what had been almost a million acres of cotton crop land we saw until recent years in the Valley.
“I get the sense that this may play out if a small group of farmers near a refinery (or a plant that could be scaled up) would grow switchgrass. You might make it more attractive because there would be lower transportation costs. If you have to haul a crop too far, margins can go from OK to lousy real fast,” remarked Hutmacher.
Regional refineries could take the crop to make the fuel helping to return the Valley's shuttered ethanol refineries into production even if high corn prices prevent their original use. Two of those plants are in Tulare County. EdenIQ wants to build a phased plant in Visalia if all this works out.
EdenIQ is also busy trying to improve margins in the corn ethanol business where returns have been upside-down for the past nine months. The company just announced patented technology that increased yields of ethanol by 10 percent at existing ethanol plants – an amount that could be the difference between losing money or earning a profit.
These days, corn ethanol producers continue to suffer poor returns with corn prices today over $4.50 instead of the $3.50 range producers had hoped for. Futures prices for ethanol have been following gasoline up, however, helping to improve margins.
Part of the work with existing corn ethanol plants included EdenIQ's patented device – the Cellunator – that breaks down more of the corn plant for fuel, enabling a corn-based producer to claim additional credits for making cellulose based fuel.
Another Google?
Company founder Larry Gross told the magazine Ethanol Producer in recent days that cellulosic ethanol can now be made for $1.50 per gallon, with a federal mandate of 21 billion gallons to be produced by the year 2022.” That's a $30 billion industry being created out of nothing… the size of another Google,” he said.
While Google may have made Silicon Valley rich – a dedicated energy crop may help prop up this Valley that needs all the help it can right now. President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu is well behind cellulosic ethanol – ready to spend $800 million in the next few years to help develop the motor fuels we need to decrease reliance on petroleum – much of it from unstable parts of the world and all of it a greenhouse gas problem.
A few days ago, Brazilian officials announced sugar cane-based ethanol made in their country will fuel 75 percent of light vehicles there by 2020, with petroleum just fueling 17 percent. Chu recently sounded off on a plan to increase the blending of ethanol in the U.S. to 13 percent (it's just 6 percent today in California) and says he supports the idea. EPA is expected to close the comment period on the plan next month.
A recent science journal article suggested
switchgrass grown for electricity production made more sense than using
the same switchgrass for ethanol fuel, considering electric cars can go
further and produce fewer CO2 emissions.
No matter that the switchgrass as a practical matter is co-fired with
coal. Nor does the study appear to consider the much higher yields in
making biofuel from switchgrass.
But the main problem in the electricity vs. biofuel debate is that 99.4 percent of cars today are not plug-in cars and depend on the internal combustion engine to make them go.
If you are going to displace any volume of petroleum, you need a portable liquid fuel that works in today's ICE fleet across the globe. Battery range on electric plug-ins is still a problem and passion for this kind of car isn't enough to make a real dent on the world global warming threat. Obama promised to put a million electric cars on the road by 2015 but there are 200 million cars in the U.S. and will soon be 3 billion cars worldwide.
In California, CARB has let it be known that it has its doubts about corn-based ethanol but hails the coming of cellulose based biofuel.
Brazil blends ethanol at 25 percent compared to 6-10 percent in the U.S., showing a potential to grow a “green crop” in the Valley that could make a difference to the farmers' bottom line, in the gas tank and in our air.
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