One Step Closer To Ethanol Mass Production

Sep. 14 - KGO (KGO) -- Today is an important milestone in the drive to produce more alternative fuels. The journal "Science" is publishing the first-ever genome of a tree, the poplar tree. And a Bay Area lab has helped in this critical step toward figuring out how to replace gasoline.

A poplar sapling was planted this morning in Walnut Creek as part of a celebration. Scientists at the Joint Genome Institute, or JGI, helped discover the tree's genetic code. Its the first-ever tree genome and it will be published in the newest issue of the journal, "Science."

It's important because with the poplar's genome, we are one giant step closer to mass production of ethanol. Ethanol is a clean-burning alternative to gasoline, but right now it's expensively and inefficiently produced from corn.

Eddie Rubin, Joint Genome Institute: "Corn came out of the wild, something that you couldn't really grow in large amounts, but we domesticated it over 10,000 years. We don't have 10,000 years to domesticate poplar, so by having its genome we should be able to dramatically accelerate that."

President Bush has set a goal of replacing 30-percent of our transportation fuels with biofuel like ethanol by the year 2030. But Consumer Reports says the current e85, ethanol-gasoline mix used in some cars, actually gets fewer miles per gallon. Their researchers question why automakers are making e85-ready vehicles when it's hard to find the blend outside the midwest.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman defends the development of ethanol in part because it will be produced in the U.S.

Samuel Bodman, U.S. Secretary of Energy: "The money that our consumers are paying for fuel, whatever the price, ends up in America."

And JGI's director says its still early in ethanol's development.

Eddie Rubin: "The criticisms right now are where things stand today. I think in 10 years from now it's going to be a very different story."

Right now we use about 140 billion gallons of gas a year and we produce only about six billion gallons of ethanol.

The federal government is investing $250 million to establish two new bioenergy research centers, where scientists can work on how to produce ethanol inexpensively and in enough quantities to replace gasoline.

Samuel Bodman: "We're going at this bringing the heart and soul of America's high-tech communities to bear on this. And so we expect a lot of interest in Boston and San Francisco and St. Louis."

The centers are expected to begin work in 2008.

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