Yesterday, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Pope Benedict XVI that Brazil will help Africa develop biofuels.
Brazil is  Pope Benedict arrived on Wednesday in Brazil, a world leader in developing ethanol from sugarcane.

Lula told the Pope he wanted to help with reducing African poverty by helping countries there develop biofuels, like ethanol.  Brazil’s ambassador to the Vatican, Vera Machado, said that although the Pope didn’t know much about biofuels, he certainly appreciated any action in support of Africa. Brazil currently has collaboration agreements with African crop scientists in Ghana through Brazil’s Embrapa crop-science institute.

Brazilian officials have said that it is also in the country’s economic interest to help create new ethanol-producing markets in order to expand global trade of the renewable fuel.  Brazil is the world’s only major ethanol exporter.

The U.S. Senate will consider a bill that would require the production of 15 billion gallons of renewable fuel from feedgrain-based ethanol by 2015.

An estimated 5.4 billion bushels of corn, whcih is roughly equal to 43% of the entire U.S. corn crop, would be needed to produce the 15 billion gallons proposed in the bill.
 

NCBA is providing information to Congress about the negative consequences S. 987 could have on beef producers; the impact of a 15 billion gallon renewable fuel standard for feedgrain-based ethanol could dramatically increase costs of gain and pressure feeder cattle and calf prices.
 

Policy approved by NCBA members earlier this year opposes additional mandates for grain-based ethanol.  Beef producers support a sunset on current ethanol subsidies and greater emphasis on renewable fuels derived from sources other than feedgrains.

Texas A&M Agriculture is scheduled to host U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Gale Buchanan and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples today for a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the most promising biomass research efforts within The Texas A&M University System.
 

“Corn is a viable way to produce ethanol from starch,” said Dr. Elsa Murano, who serves as Vice Chancellor of Agriculture and Life Sciences for the A&M System and also directs the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, where scientists are digging into a range of biofuels alternatives. “But that’s not the only option for Texas and the southern part of the country.”
 

Texas not only grow corn for biofuels, but it can also capitalize on decades of sorghum research at the Experiment Station, Murano said. The giant sorghum varieties being grown in experimental plots today are drought-tolerant, can be grown across the state, and offer high yields in ethanol.  “Based upon our analyses, we find it’s efficient to take something like our new sorghum varieties or sugar cane that produces large volumes of biomass, rather than producing grain and then converting grain-starch to ethanol,” Murano said.
 

Texas is uniquely posed to take advantage of this developing technology as a leading agricultural state with a large forest industry, a major biomass producer with diverse growing environments, and major universities and agencies with energy expertise, said Bob Avant, program manager for the A&M System’s Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.
 

Avant adds that Texas is an energy-friendly state, producing 26% of the U.S. domestic oil and 29% of natural gas.  The state already has an “extensive energy infrastructure in place,” with 26 existing refineries, 135,000 miles of natural gas pipeline, and a large structure of pipelines for transporting crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas.

Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific research agency, have added to their team a one-armed robot, which is expected to speed up studies aimed at harnessing the power of proteins for industrial uses, such as making fuel ethanol from fibrous corn stover.

The robot is the cornerstone of an automated system called the “plasmid-based functional proteomics work cell.”  According to Stephen Hughes, a molecular biologist with the ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, IL, the system is the first of its kind to fully automate several procedures that have traditionally been carried out by (human) hand, such as extracting genetic material from the cells of plants, microbes and other organisms; making DNA copies of genes; inserting the copies into Escherichia coli; culturing these bacteria so that the copies can be sequenced and their proteins identified; and inserting desirable genes into yeasts used to make ethanol.

Because of the mechanized arm’s fast, precise movements, the robotic system can carry out such tasks hundreds, or even thousands, of times faster than a human could, Hughes claims. Hughes and colleagues in the ARS center’s Bioproducts and Biocatalysis Research Unit codeveloped the system with a team from Hudson Control Group (of Springfield, NJ) in 2004.

Of particular interest is using the robotic system to genetically modify new strains of Saccharomyces yeast that can metabolize sugars locked up within corn fiber, something these microbial workhorses have so far failed to do.

Currently, only the starch from corn and other grain crops is being converted commercially into the sugars from which ethanol is derived.  With the Saccharomyces yeasts now used, this equates to nearly three gallons of ethanol from a bushel of corn. Using new strains capable of breaking down corn fiber could potentially squeeze 10% more ethanol from the grain, Hughes and colleagues estimate.

The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) offered  testimony for yesterday’s field hearing of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy, Science, and Technology.

 
The event was held on the campus of South Dakota State University in Brookings and was hosted by Senator John Thune (R-SD), the subcommittee’s ranking member.  The event, “The Next Generation of Biofuels: Cellulosic Ethanol and the 2007 Farm Bill,” was a forum for discussing how the 2007 Farm Bill can play a role in directing the development of the biofuels industry, especially the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol.

“Given the likelihood that the next Farm Bill will contain a meaningful energy title designed to promote biofuels and renewable energy, ACE is grateful for the opportunity to submit testimony at this field hearing on behalf of the U.S. ethanol industry,” said Brian Jennings, ACE executive VP.  “We are also pleased that the hearing featured the expertise of two ACE member ethanol companies helping develop the technology breakthroughs necessary to commercialize cellulosic ethanol - Poet Energy and VeraSun Energy.”

In its testimony, ACE outlined cellulosic ethanol’s greta potential, as well as the four overriding challenges to making cellulosic ethanol a commercial-scale reality: 1)the cost and complexity of converting biomass feedstocks into ethanol, 2) the capital costs of financing and constructing cellulosic biorefineries, 3) feedstock challenges (how and where to grow the feedstocks; how to harvest, collect, transport, and store biomass), and 4) sustainability challenges (respecting soil quality, wildlife habitat, land conservation practices).

ACE pointed to the limitations of the “blend market” and the limitations of how much corn can be used for ethanol as reinforcements of the need for cellulosic ethanol to become a reality in the near future. “There is an intersection between what we refer to as the ‘blend market,’ where E10 comprises virtually every gallon of motor fuel in the U.S., and the upward limitations of how much corn we can distill into fuel ethanol, reinforcing the need to make cellulosic ethanol a reality if we are to achieve a more meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use,” Jennings testified.

In the testimony, ACE encouraged Congress to consider a public policy framework to help create certainty for cellulosic and corn-based ethanol.  The framework contains the following:
- expanding the RFS to reach 10 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2010, 30 billion gallons by 2020, 60 billion gallons by 2030
- promoting the use of higher blends of ethanol is the existing fleet of automobiles
- increasing funding for and consolidating federal cellulosic biofuels loan guarantee programs into a single program at USDA
- establishing a pilot cellulosic biofuels feedstock program
- requiring automakers to ensure that all vehicles in the U.S. are FFV and require installation of E85 and/or blender pump at all gas stations affiliated with major oil companies
- establishing a cost-share program under Title IX of the Farm Bill to provide assistance to ethanol plants for the installation of low-carbon processing and conversion technologies
- extending the Blender’s Credit for ethanol beyond 2010 and retain the existing secondary import tariff offset on imported ethanol

An article in today’s Chicago Tribune reports that, according to analysts from UBS AG and Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co., U.S. ethanol output could rise as much as 60 % by the end of the year.

As a result of more ethanol plants opening and beginnning operations, both prices and profits could be hurt, analysts explain. As supplies increase, ethanol producers will have to cut prices to compete with gasoline and profits will be trimmed, analysts said Monday in separate reports.

In January, ethanol production jumped about 5% to a record 5.9 billion gallons a year, from 5.6 billion gallons a year at the end of 2006, according to U.S. government statistics, the report from UBS said. If growth were to continue each month at that rate, ethanol production would be at about 9 billion gallons a year by the end of 2007, according to the analysts. “It is difficult to tell at this point if there is a strong link between ethanol stocks and pricing; however, we think this data may become more important as more supply enters the market,” wrote one analyst in a UBS report.

In a separate report, Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. estimates that ethanol supplies may rise as much as 33% to 7.6 billion gallons by the end of the year, exceeding demand.  Friedman lowered its ethanol price forecast for 2007 to $2.05 a gallon from $2.10 a gallon and cut its forecast for the years 2008-2010 to $1.95 a gallon from $2.00 a gallon. “We are adjusting our commodity price forecasts and reducing our earnings estimates and price targets accordingly,” wrote Eitan Bernstein, an analyst at Friedman. More operating plants, higher prices for corn - the primary ethanol feedstock - and continued competition from gasoline will lead to reduced margins, the Friedman report said.