[Finnster]

@Luc: No prob man, I'm sure you do. Some some old numbers I saw.
Politics and protectionism is all wrapped up in this. Energy business has some sharp elbows. I'm all for more EtOH.

@ Brian:
That's interesting stuff. I'd seen a bit of it before, but nothing recent. I kinda wondered if was a BS ploy by some of the oil companies to green wash their biz. Exxon has been touting the tech, saying they invested a few hundred mil it in, but that's pennies to what's put into oil.

Funny reading some of that. I met my wife as as an undergrad in a lab she was doing a PhD degree in that was located in CO and worked on cellulosic biomass conversion for fuel ethanol at the time (late 90's.) We worked w. NREL in Golden quite a bit and got some grant money from them. Overall tho, we were the poorest lab in the dept. There was no money for alt E research when gas is $1/gal.

Now its a booming field. My wife left and works in a completely different field now. My bro in law is a Chem E prof, and he is always bemoaning my wife she didn't stay in the field as its so hot.

As far as the article goes, they did gloss over a huge caveat. Basically the same one we wrestled with, where do you get the sugars to start with to ferment into EtOH? That's the bitch. Getting sucrose from sugar cane and beets is fairly easy, but that crop is limited to warm & wet areas. If you really want to displace oil, you need way way more. Simply from corn and such displaces food crops. You can get it from all these other sources (ie farm waste, grass cuttings, paper, etc) but its really hard to process, as there are so many other plant fibers and compounds that F up your process (ie enzymes or catalysts.) You can't do it chemically (ie sulphuric acid) as its just too harsh and expensive to be viable.

It will happen eventually, but that article is FOS that its 5-10 years away for much widespread use. That's fishing for grant money. It will need alot of money and research and some smart breakthru's.