Producing cellulosic fuels and chemicals in the face of $40/bbl oil: a new imperative for sustainability

The Advanced Hardwood Biofuels (AHB) research program is a five year, $40 million USDA funded project to lay the foundation for a renewable fuels and chemicals in the Pacific Northwest using purpose grown poplar feedstock.  When we began the program in 2010, oil prices were well over $100 per barrel and natural gas was running at $4 per million BTU. The prospect at that time of producing fuels that could compete with petroleum based fuels, while providing environmental services – primarily low life-cycle carbon emissions – looked promising. A primary goal of the AHB program then was to assess the sustainability of this potentially enormous enterprise to assure that there were no unintended environmental consequences that could put the sustainability of producing fuels and chemicals from poplar feedstock into question. Today oil is $40 per barrel and natural gas is dropping to $2 per million BTU. The prospect of producing fuels that directly compete with petroleum is faint. Cellulosic based fuels and chemicals, however, do have an enormous asset that petroleum – or even wind and solar power – cannot provide and that has yet to monetized – its environmental services;  sustainability needs to make money. In this talk we will explore the environmental services that a poplar based biofuel industry can provide and discuss the prospect of using those services to improve the economic viability of the emerging industry.