Science 2034 Podcast: Harvesting the Fuels of the Future

By the year 2034, we will be able to produce biofuels efficiently, economically and on a scale such that they make up a meaningful portion of liquid transportation fuels and chemical products in the United States. We will do this by using biomass, the parts of plants that are ineffectively used today. The impact that this will have on our environment, national security, economic security and even our food security is significant. Biofuels are created when plant material is broken down into simple sugars and those sugars are converted by microbes into fuels. While ethanol and some other biofuels are being produced today, the process is not particularly efficient. In the case of ethanol, the current process for converting plant sugars into fuel is only about 80 percent efficient. So an additional 25 percent more ethanol could potentially be produced. Additionally, most microbes prefer glucose, but there are other sugars present in plants that can be converted to fuel. We just need to figure out how to get the microbes to eat these less desirable sugars. It’s a little bit like when you serve your children a plate of food and they gobble up their French fries, but leave the broccoli and tomatoes.