For decades, the Energy Commission has pursued energy choices that are affordable, reliable, diverse, safe, and environmentally acceptable for Californians. Our primary philosophy is to seek fuel diversity to reduce risks of supply disruption and the effects of energy price spikes.
Biomass is a renewable resource with high potential, not only as a fuel source for the creation of steam and electricity, but as a transportation fuel as well. Today, however, the principal driving force behind biomass development is the environmental concerns of the statešs forests, farms and cities.
Forestry. A four-fold projected increase of controlled burning on public lands, as well as increasing wildfire damage, could couple strategic forest thinning with demonstration projects to produce such valuable products as furniture-grade wood, ethanol and other chemicals, bio-gas and electricity.
Agriculture. Because of air pollution concerns, air quality agencies have tightened regulations on open burning of such agricultural residues as rice straw and orchard prunings. Farmers, too, are looking for an effective way to dispose of waste.
Solid Waste. The state’s cities and counties are now required by state law to divert 50 percent of their waste streams from landfill by the year 2000. Converting waste biomass into valuable products may become an environmentally sound way for California to deal with its waste.
Transportation fuels. Approximately half of California’s energy use involves transportation, and nearly all our transportation fuel is petroleum-based. We consume approximately 18 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel per year. This market is ready for the introduction of biomass-derived ethanol as an alternative fuel. It may also have a valuable application as a fuel additive.
The Energy Commission is currently conducting studies of MTBE and the ramifications of a possible ban of this methanol-based gasoline oxygenate. Demand for biomass-derived ethanol could be significant if ethanol became the oxygenate of choice. At two percent reformulated gasoline by weight, California would require over 50,000 barrels per day of ethanol which is almost half of the nation’s current output. Gasoline blends containing 10 percent ethanol for California would require nearly all the production capacity in the United States.
Clearly, biomass will be an important part of California’s energy future.