President Bush put on a white coat and visited a laboratory here Thursday to promote his goals for making alternative fuels from switch grass, woodchips and other plant waste. After touring the laboratory, which is developing enzymes to make cellulosic ethanol, fuel distilled from plant byproducts, Mr. Bush spoke buoyantly about new technologies that may reduce the nation’s thirst for foreign oil.

“Doesn’t it make sense to be able to say to our farmers, grow what you can grow so we become less dependent on oil?” the president told an audience at Novozymes North America, the subsidiary of a Danish technology company. “I like the idea of a president being able to say, wow, the crop report is in, we’re growing more corn than ever before, which means we’re importing less oil from overseas.” After listening to company executives describe the role of enzymes in reducing the cost of ethanol, Mr. Bush jumped in to ask a layman’s question: “So is this like a distillery?”

The trip is the latest event this week in which Mr. Bush has stepped away from grim questions about the war in Iraq to focus on domestic themes like energy and health care. He has called for reducing the nation’s projected gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next 10 years, and he has proposed a mandatory, fivefold increase in the production of gasoline alternatives to about 35 billion gallons a year by 2017. Corn-based ethanol is the primary substitute for gasoline, and output is about seven billion gallons a year. But industry experts and administration officials estimate that corn-based ethanol can at most supply only half the alternative fuel Mr. Bush has proposed.

The future, many experts say, lies in cellulosic ethanol, but it remains in the development stage, and is competing for research money with technologies like biodiesel fuel, hydrogen fuel cells and liquefied coal. The largest cellulosic ethanol plant is a demonstration-scale facility in Canada built by the Ontario-based Iogen Corporation, which produces about one million gallons a year. A commercial-scale factory would need an annual capacity of 40 million gallons or more, said Robert Dineen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers.

The president has proposed significant increases in spending for alternative energy development, including about $50 million a year for bioenergy research, $15 million a year for grants on biomass projects and about $2.1 billion in loan guarantees for companies building cellulosic ethanol plants. But Democrats in Congress have criticized Mr. Bush for spending far more money on coal-based technologies and nuclear power.

In his budget, Mr. Bush proposed spending $863 million on programs related to fossil fuels, a 33 percent increase over his request for 2007. That increase included more than $500 million for various forms of “clean-coal” technology. Mr. Bush has also proposed spending $875 million for nuclear energy research and development, an increase of 38 percent. Of that, Mr. Bush has requested $405 million for his proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, a plan to develop uranium enrichment with other countries. The administration’s budget also calls for offering up to $9 billion in loan guarantees for a new generation of nuclear power plants.

Mr. Bush made almost no reference to global warming and climate change on Thursday, though his goal of reducing petroleum consumption is closely related to the reduction heat-trapping gases. He kept his focus on the goal of energy security, and reiterated his support for more coal and nuclear power. “We’ve got about 250 years supply of coal in this country,” he noted, adding that it “makes sense” to use it.

Some environmental groups complain about Mr. Bush’s definition of alternative fuel including liquefied coal, which could produce even more heat-trapping gases than gasoline. But the president appeared to show genuine enthusiasm for cellulosic ethanol, frequently interrupting Novozymes executives to boil down technical explanations into more simple sound bites.

At one point, Mr. Bush jumped in to explain that corn-based ethanol could not provide enough alternative fuel because ethanol demand was already outstripping supply. “We got a lot of hog growers around the United States, and a lot of them here in North Carolina, who are beginning to feel the pinch as a result of high corn prices,” he said. “The question, then, is how do you achieve your goal of less dependence on oil without breaking your farmers — without breaking your hog raisers?”

“Here’s how: You develop new technologies that will enable you to make ethanol from wood chips, or stalk grass, or agricultural waste.”
(Por Edmund L. Andrews, The N.Y. Times, 23/02/2007)