The Race to Harvest Energy

Tuesday, April 24, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

Robert P. Anex is associate director of the Office of Biorenewables Programs at Iowa State University, which just landed a $22.5-million grant from the ConocoPhillips Company for biofuel research. Mr. Anex is also an associate professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering and of mechanical engineering.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Jeffrey Brainard (Moderator):
    Hello and welcome to this week's Colloquy live discussion. I'm Jeffrey Brainard, a reporter for the Chronicle. I will moderate our discussion today with Robert Anex about university research in biofuels and biorenewable energy. Thanks for taking the time to join us today, Mr. Anex. Please send in your questions now, and I will add a few of my own. Let's get started.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    Biofuels are making headlines, and academic scientists have met with President Bush at the White House to discuss them. How has this buzz changed what you and your colleagues do day to day, and how you think about your work?

Robert P. Anex:
    There is certainly much more interest in biofuels than there was five years ago, or even one year ago. There is also more financial support for research in this area. It is certainly easier to explain my research to my children or my mother when President Bush is talking about ethanol from switchgrass as a national priority.

Question from Michael Watson, LSUHSC:
    Is the EROEI on corn ethanol such that it is a feasible candidate to replace petroleum for some of our energy needs? Even ignoring the issue of competing demands for grain-as-foodstuff vs. grain-as-fuel, I'd understood that modern agriculture is so petroleum-intensive that it uses up more petroleum (as diesel fuel, petrochemicals, chemical fertilizer, etc.) to produce corn ethanol than it does to just burn the petroleum products directly.

Robert P. Anex:
    The energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of corn grain ethanol is positive (the "ethanol fuel energy out to fossil enerty in" ratio is about 1.3), but ethanol is not the goal of a biofuels program. The goals are things like enhanced national security, improved environmental quality, and local economic development. For example, Farrell et al. (1) found that corn grain ethanol does much better at displacing petroleum use than at displacing fossil energy but really excels at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ultimately, we cannot achieve our goals through corn grain ethanol alone, but corn ethanol has developed a biofuel market and has thereby made possible corporate investment in cellulosic ethanol that can have a much larger positive impact on the multiple goals associated with biofuels development. 1. Farrell, A.E., R.J. Plevin, B.T. Turner, A.D. Jones, M. O’Hare, and D.M. Kammen. 2006. Ethanol can contribute to energy and environmental goals. Science 311: 506-508.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard:
    The government has set clear goals for specific research results in biofuels -- "benchmarks" is a popular term in Washington right now. President Bush wants America to reduce its gasoline consumption by 20 percent within 10 years by substituting biofuels. University research is slow and unpredictable, although the Manhattan Project and the moon shot offer examples of how deadlines for applied research can produce results. Given this, how comfortable are you with the expectations that academic scientists will achieve the rapid progress in applied research that industry and government funders expect? And how much of this research should be driven by their specific priorities for useful applications versus scientists’ curiosity about fundamental processes?

Robert P. Anex:
    Although some researchers working on cellulosic ethanol have felt like success was two years away for the past twenty years, we have made some significant advances in the science and the technology of biofuel production. Despite these advances, the amount we have invested as a nation in both basic and applied research in this area is very small relative to the size of the problem and its importance.

Given the practical importance of biofuels to our national priorities, I think setting ambitious goals and communicating a vision of what we want to achieve is appropriate. As for expectations, the economic success of biofuels depends on factors beyond the control of researchers, such as the price of oil, and it is important to set some achievable goals and to manage expectations.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    The world’s population is projected to increase by 50 percent by 2050, and agricultural production to run one person’s car for a year with biofuels could feed many more people. Viewed that way, some say it borders on immoral to grow crops for biofuel. But Al Gore and others say that easing greenhouse-gas emissions, which biofuels might help to do, is also a moral imperative. Can science give us a reliable forecast now about how well these competing demands can be balanced?

Robert P. Anex:
    We live in a resource-constrained world and we trade-off one source of human welfare against another everyday in our choices as consumers, voters and givers of charity. The trade-off between food and fuel is not one that we want to make, but when it is forces upon us we must recognize that it is a value choice. We will make such choices on a moral basis, not a scientific basis. However, we need such choices to be informed by the best science possible - and though the forecast that science can provide regarding the balance of these and other competing demands may not be perfect, it is critical to making informed decisions.

Finally, we must avoid looking at these sort of trade-offs as "zero-sum games". It does not always have to be one or the other. For example, we have never designed our agricultural system to produce food and fuel, so it should not surprise us to realize that it can be redesigned to do a much better job of meeting more of our demands.

Question from Bob Landolt, Texas Wesleyan University:
    What are the current and projected costs of production of the amount of biofuel equivalent to a barrel of oil, taking into account cost of fertilizers and pre- and post crop processing.

Robert P. Anex:
    The answer to this question depends very much what assumptions one makes about feedstock cost, technological development, and market size to name just a few. We know a lot about current corn ethanol technology, but the future is much less certain. Recognizing all of these caveats and others unwritten, consider the following data compiled by Dr. Robert Brown regarding "current" production costs: (In each case production capacity is 150 million gallons of gasoline equivalent per year.)

Full production cost of corn grain ethanol if corn costs $1.84/bu is about $1.11/gallon of gasoline equivalent.

Production cost of grain ethanol if corn costs $3.00/bu is about $1.74/gallon gasoline equivalent. Ethanol produced bio-chemically from lignocellulosic biomass (e.g., corn stover) at $50/ton is about $1.76/gallon of gasoline equivalent. Ethanol produced thermo-chemically from lignocellulosic biomass (e.g., corn stover) at $50/ton is about $1.87/gallon of gasoline equivalent.

Forecasts of future production costs are highly varied. The U.S. Department of Energy set a target for bio-chemically produced ethanol of $1.07/gallon of ethanol (not gasoline equivalent). Others foresee $1.20 as an achievable goal. As I mentioned previously - success should not be measured in price at the pump. Such figures do not reflect the real costs and benefits of environmental impact and changes in national security.

Question from Jim, public two-year college in the south:
    What is an efficient way for two-year colleges to collaborate in assuring the development of a curriculum that best serves the needs of the nation in this emerging discipline for both workforce needs and university parallel needs?

Robert P. Anex:
    There are substantial new training and education needs in this area and the resources of both two- and four-year institutions will be hard pressed to respond rapidly to those needs. Recognizing this challenge, a group of midwest four-year shools have formed a coalition to develop and deliver a number of new biorenewables courses via distance education media (and we have found funding from a USDA Higher Education Challenge grant and private sources). We are also coordinating with community colleges in Iowa to help develop new programs and avoid duplication. This sort of collaboration and coordination is vital. Perhaps an organization such as the American Association of Community Colleges would be an appropriate organizer of such efforts?

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    For undergraduate and graduate students interested in entering this field of research, what would you recommend they study? A double major in engineering and crop science, for example?

Robert P. Anex:
    This new field, which we might call "biorenewables" research, is highly interdisciplinary. The research questions span a wide range of disciplines, and many disciplinary combinations are needed. At Iowa State University we have students pursuing double majors in Agronomy and Biosystems Engineering; plant science and chemical engineering; and plant genetics and rheology. The really exciting advances are coming in the interstitial spaces between and among the disciplines. I am sure we will need many combinations of disciplinary expertise that I cannot yet imagine.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    Critics of BP's plan to fund biofuels research at the University of California at Berkeley maintain that the project will help maintain America's reliance on automobiles powered by liquid fuel rather than explore a wider range of alternative energy sources. Does Iowa State's deal with ConocoPhillips raise a similar question?

Robert P. Anex:
    This is a reasonable question to ask about biofuels in general and about any energy saving technology. Some academics call this the "rebound" effect. If our cars are made more efficient will we then drive more? Possibly or even probably so. This is also why we need to change our lifestyles and consider impacts other than those on our pocket books!

Jeffrey Brainard (Moderator):
    We are now about halfway through our discussion. If readers have a question, now would be a good time to submit it.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    President Bush and other observers have cited switch grass as an especially promising candidate crop for biofuels. But you and other scholars have suggested that the current economic structure, including federal subsidies for growing corn, makes it exceedingly difficult to imagine that farmers will make more money growing switch grass than corn on highly productive land like Iowas's. Can you explain some of the reasons why? What scientific discoveries will need to occur to change that equation -- for example, to make ethanol out of corn residue, or the non-seed part of the corn plant? Or does the solution also lie in a major shift in how the government subsidizes farming?

Robert P. Anex:
    Corn is king in Iowa and is likely to remain so. Dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass will have a very hard time competing with corn for a variety of reasons. First, commodity grain crops like corn benefit from government programs that greatly reduce the risk to the farmer. These payments make up for lost income when prices drop. Also, farmers can purchase crop insurance against natural forces such as hail and drought. Energy crops do not have similar programs. There are also important market forces at play. Food will always outbid fuel in the market but crops that have uses as both food and fuel will provide significant benefits to the farmer. Even on less productive lands, bioenergy crops must compete with other uses of the land and on less productive land the cost of production and transport is higher. Finally, non-market impacts of agricultural production, such as environmental impacts are not reflected in crop prices, so farmers do not benefit from providing environmental services that may come with bioenergy crops. The solution to most of these barriers lie in the realm of policy.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    Farmers will probably need more than a year to establish a commercially viable crop of alternative biomass like switch grass, and meanwhile, corn, which they can raise and sell annually, is selling at near-record prices. So farmers are facing a big economic loss to start growing other crops for biofuel. What can universities do to help them begin?

Robert P. Anex:
    University researchers can help by developing alternative crops, cropping systems and management practices. Industry can help by alleviating risk through contracts that provide farmers with ways to recover costs over the first few years of production of demand disappears or distaster strikes. Government can make the biggest impact by "levelling the playing field" with the commodity crops that are competing for production capacity. Grains such as corn benefit from a range of government programs that reduce farmer risk of production while perennial crops do not have similar programs. There is also an opportunity for policies to pay farmers for the superior environmental services that some biomass feedstock crops may provide, such as carbon sequestration, soil conservation and water quality improvements.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    For cellulosic ethanol to be economically competitive, won't crops need to be grown at high yields near ethanol refineries in order to avoid adding prohibitively expensive transportation costs? What is the scale of this challenge?

Robert P. Anex:
    The economics of cellulosic ethanol (like any commodity) depend heavily on feedstock cost. Yield is very important as are transportation distance and efficient storage. How big of a challenge this is depends on the scale of production. We have some feedstock, like wood waste, that is already concentrated and produced at a central location - so the challenge there is small. If one imagines very large amounts of biofuel made from low-density plant material that is vulnerable to weather, this is a very significant challenge indeed.

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    What’s the risk that we might clear forests, or at least halt re-forestation efforts, both in America and abroad, to produce biofuels, and in so doing, reduce the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide as biomass?

Robert P. Anex:
    The risk is very real. I believe the impact of the world demand for biodiesel and its impact on palm-oil production in Asia and SE Asia are well documented. There have been very large amounts of forest removed to plan palm-kernel plantations. The amount of carbon released in that transition from old forest to plantation is more than the use of biodiesel instead of petroleum diesel will make up in hundreds of years. We need to be careful about how we make biofuels and where. The very first thing we need to do as we pursue biofuels is reduce our use of fossil energy. The greenest Joule of energy is the one that we never use!

Question from Jeffrey Brainard, Chronicle of Higher Education:
    To what extent do biofuels have the potential to earn universities big bucks from patenting and licensing inventions? Some experts say that to produce biofuels economically will require a combination of incremental advances in industrial techniques, but there might be no individual economic blockbuster. How do you see this?

Robert P. Anex:
    I think there is good potential for universities to realize significant income by patenting and licensing technology in this area - even if that is the result of only incremental advances - because this will be a very large industry. If there were to be a blockbuster discovery, I would not like to see the societal benefit of that limited by overly restrictive licensing.

Jeffrey Brainard (Moderator):
    That concludes today's discussion. Thank you to Mr. Anex and to everyone who participated. Good day.