Des Moines Register
04-24-06
Top priority: Land two pilot projects
Be testing ground for biomass, wind industries.
REGISTER EDITORIAL BOARD
As Texas is to oil, Iowa could be to renewable fuel — if the state plays its cards
right. It will require a governor and state lawmakers who are willing to invest
enough in university research to make Iowa a world leader in knowledge on
renewable-energy technologies.
An early payoff for such investment should be Iowa's selection as the location for
two ground-breaking demonstration projects — one in wind, one in biomass —
that will define the state of the art in both.
Iowa should get off its duff and go after both projects as if the state's future
depended on it - because it might.
The more imminent of the two projects is a proposal to construct a working
biorefinery. The project will test the feasibility of using biomass - which could be
anything from corn stalks to wood chips to animal fat - as the feedstock to
produce an array of fuels, plastics and chemicals, just as an oil refinery produces
a wide range of petrochemicals.
The U.S. Department of Energy wants up to three demonstration biorefineries to
be built and is dangling grants of up to $80 million each to help. BIOWA, an
industry trade group, is coordinating an effort to build the first one in Iowa.
A biorefinery could be an expansion of an existing ethanol-production facility,
which makes Iowa an obvious location, given the state's leadership in ethanol
technology.
Today's ethanol factories use only the grain from corn. They produce ethanol and
a byproduct, distillers dried grain, which can be used as a cattle feed. A
biorefinery would use the whole corn plant, the grain plus the stover (the stalks
and husks), making fuller use of the biomass. The byproducts, instead of being
only cattle feed, might produce energy to fuel the plant or be further refined into
various industrial chemicals to replace petrochemicals.
The hope is that successful biorefineries would spawn whole new industries in
Iowa to make use of the chemicals.
Landing the first working biorefinery in Iowa should be regarded as one of the
state's highest priorities. The governor and Legislature should commit to
providing up to $17.5 million over five years, which is what BIOWA estimates as
the state's share of the project.
A second demonstration project isn't yet in the planning stage. It's just an idea - a
brilliant one.
It involves the problem of how electricity generated by wind turbines can be
stored for use when the wind isn't blowing. Iowa has enough wind to generate
five times more electricity than Iowans use, which means Iowa could be a major
energy exporter, if storage and transmission barriers could be overcome.
One solution is to use wind-generated electricity to split water into hydrogen and
oxygen, then store and transport the hydrogen.
Bill Leighty of Juneau, Alaska, is a native Iowan and an expert on hydrogen
transmission. He suggests a project in the windy Fort Dodge area to demonstrate
the feasibility of generating hydrogen, and then piping it to Ames for use as motor
fuel on buses or other vehicles.
Hydrogen is regarded as the fuel of the future, the holy grail of alternative fuels,
because it is abundant, nonpolluting and doesn't contribute to the greenhouse
effect. Hydrogen produced from wind or solar energy would be totally renewable.
A paper recently presented by Leighty and others suggests that hydrogen
delivered by pipeline from remote locations could be cost competitive with
gasoline. What's needed is a project to demonstrate that. Leighty said such a
project could be sponsored by the International Partnership for the Hydrogen
Economy, a multinational group of which the United States is a member.
Ames is an ideal location for the project, he said, because it is home not only to
Iowa State University but also the Ames Laboratory of the Department of
Energy. He said a congressional appropriation of about $50 million might be
needed to launch the project.
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, chair of the Finance Committee, has shown
the ability to arrange appropriations of that size for another Department of Energy
project, the proposed Iowa rain forest. The entire congressional delegation
should recognize the huge potential of wind-generated hydrogen and start laying
the groundwork for a demonstration project in Iowa.