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Bio to the future
By Emile Hallez
ehallez@mscd.edu

I was 4 years old when I saw Doc Brown fly his anachronistic De Lorean onto Marty’s driveway at the end of Back to the Future. While flying cars visually delight most children, I was more impressed that Brown fueled his with old beer and a banana peel.

We’ve needed a long-term remedy to fossil-fuel addiction since Karl Benz’s inaugural pump of a gas pedal. On Feb. 15, the Senate will vote on a Department of Energy fiscal-2007 budget increase that could funnel funds into renewable-energy research. From there, approval lies completely with President Bush.

Though he dedicated a banal rambling in the State of the Union Address to a need for more renewable-energy solutions, I’m not convinced his heart is in the matter. If Bush gives this budget increase the thumbs-up, it won’t be anything but reactionary. But at this point, I’ll take reactionary.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a division of the DOE located in Golden, stands to benefit greatly. The laboratory’s budget could increase by at least 50 percent. It would be a welcomed boost; NREL’s fiscal-2006 budget dropped substantially from that of 2005, resulting in layoffs. Though employees were invited back after Bush personally visited the facility and secured financial assistance, not all chose to return.

“I’d say NREL could get $100 million more in fiscal 2007,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, as quoted in the Rocky Mountain News.

Though it won’t use the extra funds to create jobs, NREL would pour the money into buildings and equipment for biomass and solar-energy research, media-relations manager George Douglas said.

Biomass, a term for energy derived from agricultural products, is still in its commercial infancy. While we have some access to ethanol fuel born from corn kernels and a handful of plastic products of similar origin, the greatest potential for this technology has yet to be developed. It’s NREL’s highest priority for additional funding.

The master plan is an “integrated biorefinery.” Such a facility would take in cellulose-heavy agricultural waste, such as corn stalks and wood chips, and create ethanol and chemicals used to make plastics and other materials.

“What we see as the future is the ethanol that comes from inedible parts of plants,” Douglas said.

Though ethanol made from the edible portions of plants is currently available, its production costs about $2.50 per gallon, Douglas said. “You couldn’t sell it because gasoline is much cheaper. … You can still buy gasoline as cheap as bottled water.” One goal of the integrated biorefinery includes making cellulose-derived ethanol production thriftier.

“We have done a study that says that if we put our minds to it – and our money to it – we could replace a third of the nation’s gasoline by 2030 with biofuel,” Douglas said.

If this seems far away, that’s because it is. Biofuels are a promising prospect whose implementation we can’t afford to delay. Write your members of Congress, the president or Paul Reubens. If this matters to you in the least, let them know about it. Let them know you enjoy the last five minutes of Back to the Future as much as I do.