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Joshua Levitt

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Brewing up a Green Revolution: Biofuel for the Masses

By Green Your Network on Fri, 11/21/08 - 9:51am.

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Whether a paragon of the overexuberant eco-chic or a bright ray of hope in a failing economy, Amyris stands out from the pack for the sheer ambition and scale of its plan for biofuel production.

Located in the heart of silicon valley, this Green Tech start up is expanding while traditional businesses trim operating costs and payroll and it promises to produce plant-based diesel fuel at $2 per gallon in the foreseeable future. Exciting stuff, even as the price of oil in world markets drops. Also excited are investors and advocates for aggressive US environmental initiative, former Vice President Al Gore and President Elect Barack Obama notable among them.

And yet, almost Cassandra like we must again note that Amyris' accomplishments, while innovative and certainly promising fall far short of the mass production facilities that would be required to put any sort of dent in American oil dependence, let alone the environmental impact of burning fossil fuels. Indeed, the technology is still “a long way from a profitable process.” Moreover, adding 200 jobs in a recession is no small accomplishment, but falls widely short of the mark set by President Elect Obama of creating 5 million jobs (!) in a burgeoning Green Technology industry, or even the 500,000 people that sought unemployment benefits last week- the most in recent memory. On the whole, and at first glance this would appear to be little more than a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Projects such as the biofuel production (experimental) facilities of Amyris tend to draw opposition, surprisingly, from environmental groups who fear that the production of biofuel will have a longer and harsher deleterious impact on the environment then the production and consumption of fossil fuels already has. Such critics, however, seem to be missing an extremely important point in all of this which is that all other things being equal, our vast consumption of petroleum byproducts is rapidly depleting the resource while at the same time enriching and empowering our enemies. America is an also-ran in oil extraction, but it is a world leader in agriculture. If it were to be possible to shift global dependence on fossil fuels to a global dependence on vast tracts of corn and legume crops then America would quickly find itself placed in the enviable position of being a principal supplier of the goods that drive industry. For this reason, if for no other, it strongly behooves American industry and government to promote such enterprises. At the same time, the growing scarcity of economic resources should serve as a painful reminder of the dangers inherent in irrationally inflated expectations and the heedless squandering of resources that often accompanies them.

See article in WIRED here

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