PRESIDENT CALLS FOR BIOFUELS…

Analysis: Backing for biofuels high
Krishnadev Calamur, January 23, 2007 (UPI)
- President Bush on Tuesday called for a 20 percent cut in U.S. gasoline consumption, a plan that would see a spike in the increase of alternative fuels…
- Biofuels such as ethanol are expected to make up the gap, along with fuel-economy standards for cars…

- The call comes a year after Bush's last State of the Union speech where he famously said "America is addicted to oil" and called for new fuels such as ethanol to make the nation more energy independent. Since then, much of the American public, aided by rising gas prices, has come around to Bush's thinking…
- [A new UPI/Zogby International interactive poll conducted Jan. 16-18]…showed that 61.1 percent of those surveyed said renewables would replace less than 25 percent of fossil fuel use; 21.9 percent said it would replace 26 percent to 50 percent…the poll found that the majority of those Americans surveyed thought biofuels would most likely replace fossil fuels in the future…

- …the poll showed that nearly half the U.S. public (49.9 percent) thought Bush was doing a "poor" job handling energy issues; 9.4 percent said his performance on energy issues had been "excellent" and 23.6 percent said it was "good."
- [Mark Emalfarb, chief executive officer of Dyadic International, Inc., a Jupiter, Fla., company that has developed high-efficiency enzymes that have lowered the cost of converting biomass into fermentable sugar and, consequently, cellulosic ethanol] said the focus would have to be on biomass rather than corn because increased demand for corn -- both as food and ethanol feedstock -- has driven corn futures to double over the past year…
- Still, ethanol from biomass is not yet commercially feasible and will likely require government incentives…
- Richard Hamilton, president and CEO of Ceres, Inc., a Thousand Oaks, Calif., company that develops first-generation energy crops that will be planted as feedstock for ethanol production, says he believes the 60 billion gallons is a realistic goal if ethanol is produced from cellulosic sources instead of corn…

- [In] Brazil…the military government in the 1970s introduced ethanol from sugarcane as a fuel and subsidized it…for the next nearly three decades…until it became cost-efficient…
- The UPI/Zogby poll found that more than half (55.3 percent) favored increased government action in research and development of alternate energy sources; 3.2 percent said they backed publicly funded campaigns to raise awareness of alternate energy while 11.7 percent said they supported tax breaks for small businesses that use alternate energy…