James Eckler's  Instablog

What we have learned is that getting off fossil fuel is not as easy, or as quick, as we originally thought. The corn to ethanol experiment of the last few years proved that it was not the route for the future and has lost traction. However, there is a small and growing group of people that like the idea of using biomass as a fossil fuel replacement, but who think that we may need a more efficient way of delivering it. We need lots of new efficiencies to bring the price down to market levels equal to fossil fuels.

One of the new trends appears to be using biomass (cellulose, switch grass, algae, etc.) converted to bio-electricity. In recent studies at Stanford University, the “miles per acre” that can be obtained using this approach are nearly double the value of converting the biomass to a liquid, transporting it to an end point, and then reconverting it to energy using an internal combustion engine.  Electric engines are a much more efficient way of creating comparable mobile power (electric vehicles).

Since one of the future growth industries is going to be biomass production, we need to look for ways to get the costs down and we need to look for ways to increase the “yield per acre”. Combining these two concepts, raising the “yield per acre” and raising the utilization rate of the biomass in “miles per acre”, can make biomass economics work on a larger scale.