Everyone from leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists to President Bush is touting fuels created from biomass as a replacement for petroleum. But new technologies are needed to make this vision economically and environmentally feasible.
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ALL SPECIAL REPORTS
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 - Redesigning Life to Make Ethanol
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Genetically engineered organisms can more efficiently produce ethanol from cheap and abundant sources of biomass, such as agricultural waste. It could make ethanol cost competitive.
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"We'll also fund additional research for cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol," President Bush was saying on the television, "not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switchgrass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years." Read More
- BP's Bet on Butanol
- Forget ethanol: it's hard to transport and gives bad mileage per gallon. Another alcohol, butanol, is a much better renewable fuel, says the president of BP Biofuels.
- Bush's Dangerous Energy Proposal
- Moving too quickly on alternative fuels could backfire, says one expert on ethanol fuels.
- Creating Ethanol from Trash
- Researchers find a way to make liquid fuels from waste cheaply and without the pollution produced by earlier methods.
- A Better Biofuel
- A California biotech company is engineering microbes to produce cheap biofuels that could outcompete ethanol.
- Engineered Microbes Boost Ethanol
- Yeast that tolerates more ethanol than usual could bring down the cost of making the renewable fuel.
- Ethanol Demand Threatens Food Prices
- Rising corn prices are already affecting everything from the cost of tortillas in Mexico City to the cost of producing eggs in the United States.
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- Will Cellulosic Ethanol Take Off?
- Fuel from grass and wood chips could be big in the next 10 years--if the government helps.
- Alternative-Energy Spending Fizzles Out
- Congress ends without funding research programs, as the United States falls behind in alternative technologies.
- Electricity from Sugar Water
- Researchers announce a faster way to make hydrogen from cheap biomass.
- Making Ethanol from Wood Chips
- One startup is scaling up experimental techniques to demonstrate the commercial potential of cellulosic ethanol.
- Switchgrass to Gas?
- A biotech startup says its genetic engineering method could turn plants into cheap ethanol producers within five years.
- A New Biofuel: Propane
- Propane chemically derived from corn could be used in heating and transportation.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology