Toward the end of the year, the plant at Freiberg will go into operation, fed primarily with old, untreated bits of lumber and other scrap wood. It will take approximately five tons of dry material to produce one ton of fuel. The small refinery will consume nearly 70,000 tons of waste wood a year. “It should be pretty easy for us to get our hands on this amount,” says Michael Deutmeyer, who is responsible for supplying biomass to Choren.
A comparison of the different types of biofuel used for vehicles.
To meet this increased demand, Deutmeyer is planning to plant trees. Wood is the most suitable raw material for biofuel processing. Three years ago, just east of Schwerin, the capital of the federal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Choren converted 20 hectares (50 acres) into experimental “rapid sapling-to-sawmill plantations,” where willows and other fast-growing trees are flourishing.
Such cultivation, says Deutmeyer, requires significantly smaller amounts of pesticides and fertilizers than crops like rapeseed. This type of forestry also reaps considerable public subsidies. The Ministry of Agriculture in the state of Brandenburg has already indicated that it will provide government funds for the plantations destined to supply the wood for a plant to be built in Schwedt. Up to 45 percent of the investments for saplings, preparations and soil-improvement measures will derive their financing from state coffers.
The experimental fields in Mecklenburg have already been harvested once, the trees reduced to wood chips by a special chopper from Sweden. The results look very promising. Annual yields of up to 20 tons of dry material per hectare can be harvested from good soils. This would work out to a top production rate of four metric tons -- or 5,000 liters -- of BTL diesel. Until now, rapeseed fields that are comparable in area have only yielded 1,500 liters.
With numbers like these, BTL is the first plant-based liquid fuel that could constitute a viable replacement for fossil fuels while not directly competing with food production. According to the FNR, up to six million hectares of land in Germany could be used to grow energy-producing plants. This corresponds to over a third of the area currently used for agriculture. The agency says this acreage could form the basis for BTL products to satisfy a quarter of Germany’s domestic fuel needs. On a Europe-wide scale, the replacement potential could even reach as high as 40 percent, owing primarily to the vast areas available in the new EU states in Eastern Europe.
Chances in the American Heartland
Other parts of the world offer even larger expanses that could be put into play. In comparison with Germany, which is relatively densely populated, the United States has seven times as much farm- and pasture land per inhabitant. The Bush administration has recently been trying to use agro-energy policies in an effort to reduce the country’s deplorable dependence on imports of foreign oil. Under the battle cry of “freedom fuel,” the US government has so far put its money on ethanol derived from agricultural crops. Ethanol is one of the products most simply derived from biomass, but it also numbers among the least efficient.
Vast tracts of land have already been wasted in this endeavor. Bread-basket states like Iowa have primarily fed refineries that quench American gas guzzlers. There are currently 139 ethanol plants operating or under construction in the US. As a result, grain prices have skyrocketed, which has -- among other problems -- already triggered a tortilla crisis in Mexico as corn becomes unaffordable. But ethanol has proven to be a poor replacement for gas and has captured only a small percentage of the fuel market.
Now, shortly before the end of his second term in office, Bush’s energy strategists have apparently recognized their error. According to a strategy paper recently published by the US Congress, there are plans to boost admixtures of biofuels in the US sevenfold to 136 billion liters (36 billion US gallons). However, this will not be based on the old technologies. The strategy, which is now also officially supported by Bush, foresees only minimal growth for conventional biofuels. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of the planned production will be met by advanced biofuels using second generation technologies.
Ushering in New Technologies
US researchers are focusing primarily on cellulose ethanol, an enzyme technology that converts straw and wood first to sugar and then to alcohol. Anything with high cellulose content could be used, including farming and forestry waste products, which would produce far greater yields per acre. The prospect of manufacturing alcohol with this method has attracted the attention of Shell, which has purchased a stake in a Canadian enzyme producer Logen. So far, however, this partnership has produced research projects and feasibility studies, but no refineries.
This is where Choren has a clear advantage. The German technology is ready for production. And this has prompted traditionally gasoline-fixated Americans to take an interest in BTL diesel. In a competition held last year between 146 entrants, Choren emerged as the only foreign company in a group of winners to offer new energy technologies. Washington wants to promote these new technologies quickly and effectively -- and without red tape.
Choren CEO Blades says a US government agency reviewed his company for just nine months. Soon thereafter came the offer for a loan guarantee amounting to 90 percent of the investment costs of a BTL facility on American soil.
It was quite another story with the bureaucratic agencies in Germany. In 2004, the company applied for a loan covering 30 percent of the investment. The application process dragged on for two years and, in the end, turned out to be totally superfluous: Choren didn’t need the state guarantee anymore.
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