Comments on: Obama Picks Stephen Chu to Lead Energy Department

By: Jesse Jenkins

Jesse Jenkins — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:46:00 +0000

For a lot more on the GHG mitigation potential (and oil and fossil energy mitigation potential) of various biofuels and other alternative transportation options, see here and here.

By: Jesse Jenkins

Jesse Jenkins — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:43:59 +0000

Developing non-food feedstocks – including perennial native grasses, algaes and others – and the ability to break down cellulosic biomass into ethanol would enable a SIGNIFICANT improvement in the carbon mitigation ability of biofuels – and the BP partnership is working on both of those challenges. With corn ethanol, you get a 10-20% reduction in emissions per vehicle mile traveled (relative to gasoline), assuming no land use changes which can wipe out those meager benefits. With cellulosic ethanol from something like switchgrass, you get more like a 75% reduction in emissions per vehicle mile traveled, and you don’t have to use a food crop to produce it. Algae-based biofuels could be even better (and is one of the few promising alternatives to replace jet fuel). The whole point here is to develop more sustainable biofuels that have significant greenhouse gas reduction potential.

By: robin

robin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:37:11 +0000

It’s more of the same in terms of climate and carbon emissions as far as I can tell. I don’t see any sort of focus on efforts to reduce overall emissions when using biofuel. It seems like all of the points they describe are about reducing the costs associated with producing and using biofuels (like making fuels that can be used in today’s engines) rather than mitigating the environmental consequences of producing and burning biofuels.

By: Jesse Jenkins

Jesse Jenkins — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:28:38 +0000

How is this “more of the same?” Seems to me like it’s actually a pretty real effort to develop technical solutions to the ineffectiveness of today’s biofuels technologies (which incidentally implies an awareness on BP’s part that today’s technologies for biofuels just don’t cut it, an opinion I think we’d share).

By: robin

robin — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:02:40 +0000

I’m not trying to dismiss Chu on a wholesale basis, but just rather to point out that the BP-Berkeley partnership is not a good example of his clean energy credentials.

According to the lab the BP-funded research will focus on “on three critical areas for the conversion of biomass into biofuels. First will be the development of plant feedstocks that are better-suited for biofuel production than the conversion of corn into ethanol that is being practiced today. Next will be the development of new techniques for breaking down plant material into its sugar building blocks. And finally, there will be a search for new ways to ferment sugars into ethanol or other forms of biofuel such as butanol, which has the potential to be used in today’s cars without any change to the engine.”

(http://www.lbl.gov/Publications/Currents/Archive/Feb-16-2007.html)

Although I agree that it would be great to see BP funding good research on alternative fuels, but this seems to be to be what I’d call “more of the same” rather than any sort of real innovation in terms of addressing carbon or climate generally.

By: Jesse Jenkins

Jesse Jenkins — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 19:43:50 +0000

Well, let me start by saying I’m not intimately familiar with the Berkeley-BP partnership, and I have friends (students at Berkeley) who personally protested the partnership, so it’s not all good. I personally would prefer R&D of such importance as energy innovation was funded with public money and the results made available in the public, not corporate, interest. I’ve also been a clear critic of ethanol and food-based biofuels (see this post for example).

All that being said, as I understand it, the Berkeley-BP lab is researching ways to make next generation biofuels that do not rely on foodstuffs as feedstocks. The lab is also funding critical social science and other research that’s actually driven much of the increasing understanding of the risks and tradeoffs/costs of biofuel production – that is, BP is funding the very research that is finding plenty of reasons to be critical of biofuels. So it’s certainly not all bad, and in the absence of a major federal commitment to clean energy innovation, I’d rather have BP spending $500 million on it than no one at all.

Finally, it’s not just the Berkeley-BP deal that confirms Steven Chu’s clean energy chops. In fact, it’s probably the least important. More important is that Chu has helped transition LBNL as a whole into a center for clean energy technology innovation and climate science, including the establishment of the Helios Program at LBNL which is doing breakthrough research on solar power, advanced biofuels and more.

The scale and the urgency of the climate challenge demands that we spread our bets around and work to develop a variety of different options to sustainably power our planet and the nine million human inhabitants we can expect by 2050. Chu keenly understands that it seems, and I don’t think we have any reason to assume otherwise.

By: robin

robin — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:33:46 +0000

Could you perhaps explain a little why you feel that forging a partnership with BP to promote biofuels turned Berkeley Lab into a center for “clean energy and efficiency innovation”? My understanding is that in terms of climate biofuels almost never, especially at an industrial scale, reduce emissions. I suppose that given enough research that might one day change, but considering the urgency of the climate crisis, don’t you think real “clean energy and efficiency innovation” might better be grounded in cleaner and less problematic alternatives?