World Economic Forum Sees Bright Biofuels Future
A new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) concludes that converting biomass into fuels, energy, and chemicals has the potential to generate upwards of $230 billion to the global economy by 2020, most of that in the United States. The report, produced in collaboration with Royal DSM N.V., Novozymes, DuPont and Braskem, says that the biorefineries industry could supplement demand for sustainable energy, chemicals and materials, aiding energy security.
The report on the Future of Industrial Biorefineries was unveiled today during a keynote address at the BIO World Congress conference by Steen Riisgaard, CEO of Novozymes. “We need an energy replacement that comes at oil’s low price, but without its high environmental cost,” said Riisgaard. “Over time, cars, trucks, and even airplanes are going to run on sustainable low-carbon fuels derived from biomass. Plastics and chemicals will be made from plants rather than petroleum. As a result, biorefineries will infuse billions of dollars into the economy and create more than 800,000 new jobs.”
Riisgaard highlighted the U.S. as the world leader in developing biorefineries, accounting for more than 40,000 jobs. “While the U.S. has a head start, the race itself is only at the beginning,” said Riisgaard. “America’s competitive advantage cannot be taken for granted. If the U.S. wants to be a leader in developing these new clean energy technologies, it must build on the progress it’s already made. Congress and the Departments of Energy and Agriculture must ensure that the U.S. has a coherent and comprehensive strategy for the bio-based society and not just fragments of measures here and there.”
The report concludes that the development of the bio-based economy is at an early and high-risk stage and that government has a key role to play in providing seed support to the emerging bio-based sector and creating the market to ensure that it becomes established and successful as quickly as possible.
Read the full report here.
2 Comments »
Canaan Gatsi
Fossil fuel reserves are running out, global warming is becoming a reality, waste recycling is becoming ever more costly and problematic, and unrelenting population growth will require more and more energy and consumer products. There is now an alternative to the 100% oil economy; it is a renewable resource based on agroresources by using the whole plant. Production and development of these new products are based on biorefinery concept. Each constituent of the plant can be extracted and functionalized in order to produce non-food and food fractions, intermediate agro-industrial products and synthons. Three major industrial domains can be concerned: molecules, materials and energy. Molecules can be used as solvent surfactants or chemical intermediates in substitution of petrol derivatives. Fibers can be valorized in materials like composites. Sugars and oils are currently used to produce biofuels like bioethanol or biodiesel, but second-generation biofuels will use lignocellulosic biomass as raw material. Lipids can be used to produce a large diversity of products like solvent, lubricants, pastes or surfactants. Industrial biorefinery will be linked to the creation of new processes based on the twelve principles of green chemistry (clean processes, atom economy, renewable feedstocks…). Biotechnology, especially white biotechnology, will take a major part into these new processes with biotransformations (enzymology, micro-organisms…) and fermentation. The substitution of oil products by biobased products will develop a new bioeconomy and new industrial processes respecting the sustainable development concept. Industrial biorefinery can be developed on the principle that any residues of one can then be exploited as raw material by others in an industrial metabolism.
Prof Craig Brian
Well its a process and the only hope is that food prices dont escalate at the expense of energy.
It makes sense to develop in biofuels hence there is need for more research like developing processes above commented.
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