A report published by the California Research Bureau (CRB), at the request of state Sen. Richard Alarcon, estimates that California could produce as much as 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol if green wastes are utilized as a feedstock. Dr. Rosa Moller, author of the report, said that Alarcon was interested in improving the work opportunities for the labor force in the Central Valley and the agricultural community. "The idea was to create an industry while at the same time, addressing issues very pertinent to the reality about energy sources and a potential oil crisis," Moller said.
Alarcon introduced a bill to divert green waste from landfills where it is currently used daily to cover municipal waste. "Often they use soil, but more and more they are using green waste, or composted wood and plant material, and this is an effort to divert the green matter from the landfill," Moller said.
The California Integrated Waste Management Board, another state agency, is also exploring ways to convert green waste into alternative energy sources such as ethanol instead of using it as a cover for landfills. "Sen. Alarcon requested this study as a way to manage the waste while exploring the possibility of renewable fuels in regard to the Energy Policy Act," Moller said.
California consumes nearly 1 billion gallons of ethanol in the form of reformulated gasoline but produces less than 1 percent of that amount, an imbalance state officials would like to correct by utilizing biomass. "The 1.5 billion figure is in regard to if we use all of the biomass that exists in the state, but of course there are alternative uses; it is possible to produce this amount if we use the biomass," Moller said.
The "Brief on Biomass and Cellulosic Ethanol" prepared by Moller states that energy experts believe that California must begin to convert green wastes if the state is to have a legitimate and sustainable ethanol industry. California is not a large corn producing state, and importing corn for ethanol refinement is an uneconomical option.
More feasible is the conversion of biomass feedstocks from a variety of sources including animal manure, food processing operations, municipal wastes and forestry residues. The California Biomass Collaborative, an extension of the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering at the University of California-Davis, generated the 1.5 billion-gallon estimate. "We took state inventories on crop production, municipal waste recycling and degeneration, and forestry residues using a geographic information model from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection," said Professor Bryan Jenkins of the Biomass Collaborative. "Estimates were based on criteria such as tree diameters and residue factors."
The Biomass Collaborative estimates "are built on the assumption of an average yield of 70 ethanol gallons per ton of biomass," Moller said. The production of this amount of ethanol from corn feedstocks would require 3 million acres.
The brief from the research division of the California State Library, which drew much of its data from the California Biomass Collaborative, reports that currently "residual sugars, cheese whey and other sources already support ethanol production of approximately 8 million to 10 million gallons per year of fuel ethanol in the state, and development plans exist for much larger sugar and starch-crop based facilities."
The paper is accessible through the California State Library's Web site
www.library.ca.gov/html/statseg2a.cfm.