WASHINGTON – Speaking at an American Chemical Society briefing on Capitol Hill Monday, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, called on Congress to increase support for the advancement of technology and incentives for biofuels and other clean energy technology. The briefing, “Cellulosic Biofuels’ Economic and Technological Challenges: Speed Bumps or Detours?” was hosted by the American Chemical Society’s Science & the Congress Project. Senator Coons and Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) were honorary co-hosts of the briefing.
“Sustainable biofuels production is essential for our economy and our future,” Senator Coons said in his remarks. “This was a great starting point as a concrete forum to look at how we begin to move forward towards workable solutions that will require cooperation from many public and private interests to be able to move from the field to the filling station in the future.”
In his remarks, Senator Coons discussed the significant role biofuels can play as a next-generation clean-energy resource and Delaware’s role in expanding research and production, “Biofuels are a home-grown resource that have enormous potential for job creation, for rural economic development, and for more. And as you may have already picked up, my home state of Delaware is right in the thick of this venture. We have companies at all ends of the spectrum.”
Senator Coons closed his speech by reiterating our need to work towards a sustained commitment for alternative forms of energy, one where we stand behind emerging technologies and budding markets. He challenged Congress to:
- Continue to fight for invest in Department of Energy and USDA R&D programs;
- Extend tax credits for advanced biofuels, especially incentives that can actually be utilized for building second generation facilities; and
- Work together on a path forward for the Renewable Fuels Standard.
A panel discussion opened the briefing, featuring Oakridge National Laboratory’s Corporate Fellow Virginia Dale, Ph.D.; U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supervisory Soil Scientist Douglas Karlen, Ph.D.; Synthetic Genomics Senior Vice President Aristides Patrinos, Ph.D.; and Purdue University’s James & Lois Ackerman Professor of Agricultural Economics Wallace Tyner, Ph.D. DuPont Central Research & Development’s Biochemical Science & Engineering Science Director William Provine, Ph.D. moderated and opened the discussion.
A YouTube video of Senator Coons’ remarks can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/senatorchriscoons. Senator Coons’ remarks begin at approximately the 1:45:50 mark.
The full transcript of Senator Coons’ remarks is below.
Remarks as delivered
I am grateful for the opportunity to once again co-sponsor an American Chemical Society briefing. I was thrilled that Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma was my co-host today. Senator Inhofe and I come at the world from quite different political perspectives. We come at the federal role in the economy, and many different issues from a different perspective. But I know we share a passion for Africa. We share a passion for American energy independence and innovation, and so anything that I can do in partnership with Senator Inhofe I am grateful to have the opportunity to do.
I have the strong sense not just from the list of who was participating and presenting, but from the briefing I’ve gotten from my folks that participated, that this was an extremely productive, data-rich, challenging and engaging session today.
Sustainable biofuels production is essential in my view for our economy and our future. There is really not enough time to talk about how to overcome the host of challenges that were raised at today’s briefing but as we all know there are a number of environmental and socio-economic and other policy challenges we have to face and this I think, was a great starting point as a concrete forum to look at how we begin to move forward towards workable solutions that will require cooperation from many public and private interests to be able to move from the field to the filling station in the future.
It is remarkable to me that this is the 180th ACS Science and the Congress Project briefing on the Hill since the program started in 1995. I am particularly grateful for the service of Dr. Chris Avery who is a fellow with the American Chemical Society and working in my office this year and making it possible for me to sound relatively well-informed and coherent on issues, which I wish I had the time to delve into deeply, but on which all of the analytical work is done by him and I am merely presenting the slides at the end of the show. He got his PhD in analytical chemistry from Michigan and has contributed admirably to my work not just on the Energy Committee but to be more thoughtful about science policy more broadly. And along with Chris, Franz Wuerfmannsdobler who is my energy policy LA, and well known and regarded across the Hill not just for his unpronounceable last name or that his brother is in fact named Hans, but that he actually has a tremendous grasp of policy and of how to move policy into legislation particularly in what is politically, a very challenging time.
So of all that, financing for the next generation of biofuels is right at the very center of a land which I hope to have some catalytic contribution to moving us forward over the currently clear hurdles, the very significant hurdles, and that might sound strange coming from a Senator generally, but my chemistry background makes me see possibilities for unlocking what are currently seen as insurmountable hurdles.
More than anything I think I am encouraged by the fact that there are four commercial-scale cellulosic projects not just in future development, not just being talked about, but actually in being developed. There will be concrete facilities in production on a time horizon that is short enough so that the many doubting Thomases can be dragged by the nose to visit them, or to witness them in production, or to see documentation of how they actually work.
I understand that there are some significant challenges in terms of biomass and financing that we have to get past but that is exactly the point of marrying policy to science, in my opinion. Biofuels are a home-grown resource that have enormous potential for job creation, for rural economic development, and for more. And as you may have already picked up, my home state of Delaware is right in the thick of this venture. We have companies at all ends of the spectrum.
One is a multi-national company of roughly 200 years providence that some of you may be familiar with. DuPont is deeply committed in investments to a diversified mix of next generation biomass and biofuels, those building blocks and the facilities necessary, those cellulosic production facilities as well as the development of bio-butanol and other drop-in biofuels. But at the other end of the spectrum are a number of other smaller companies I’ll just mention in passing.
One, CMS, is licensing what were formerly DuPont fluoropolymers selected impermeable memory technologies for the dehydration of biodiesel and other biofuels, a small plucky start-up the recipient of a number of critical SBIR and CDR grants that I think can play a key role in solving some of the production and delivery challenges. And another, Elcriton, just two professors at the University of Delaware who with an SBIR grant are taking a way to genetically modify pond scum, I think the nicer term is duckweed, but common pond scum so it stops nitrogen and phosphorus off of polluted groundwater, a challenge which we have in our Delmarva Peninsula due to our abundant and successful poultry industry. In the act of cleaning that nitrogen and phosphorus out of eutrophic ponds they then produce a readily digested bio-butanol that can be extracted from the duckweed, so this poses a potential win-win for the Delmarva Peninsula.
Some of you may not know that agriculture is one of the biggest, longest established industries in my home state and the poultry industry is two parts. One is the competition with ethanol in their view and the price pressure that has put on their prime feed and the others at the other end with what to do with all that chicken litter and what it does to the water ways of the Chesapeake Bay.
So I chose these two examples, Dupont’s role in finding a productive, secondary use of the cellulosic biomass that has been left behind after the harvest of grain and Elcriton’s role in potentially cleaning up the ponds and water ways as a way of showing that biofuels have enormous promise to solve not just our liquid fuel supplies and transportation fuel supplies problem in American energy independence, but then also dealing with lots of other challenges in creative and constructive ways.
You raise today a number of big challenges, one of those is the National Academy study that suggests that we are highly unlikely to achieve the RFS2 goals by 2022 in terms of the great big gap works, what folks are willing to pay and what folks are willing to accept, but if you’ve seen the end of that sentence and that report it says “absent policy.” That’s the whole point. It is only by fighting hard to sustain current policy trajectories and to inject additional policy initiative that we are going to make this change.
And I think it is an incredibly important change for us to be making.
That said, the good news I think is the recognition in that very same report, that the economic environment in which cellulosic biofuels are best able to compete looks very much like the economic environment of today and of our likely decade to come. High oil prices and breakthroughs in processing and implementation technologies are in line to create this space where biofuels can and will be cost competitive. Some have argued that they can’t ever be viable alternatives to petroleum but I believe now is not the time to retreat. To stand behind these emerging technologies, budding markets, predictability and credible amounts of opportunity are going to be absolutely essential.
So in my view, the things we have on our horizon are simple and few. Continuing to fight for investments, in the department of energy and USDA R&D program. Extending the tax credits for advanced biofuels, especially incentives that can actually be utilized for building second generation facilities. And third, most importantly, working together on a path forward for the Renewable Fuel Standard. I know different groups come at the RFS from different perspectives but we should share a common purpose, I think, of making biofuels a significant contributor to our national liquid fuels market.
To be honest with you, the political environment for all of this is quite difficult, it’s quite demanding. But this is something that I am passionate about fighting for. And I hope that I can have your active engagement with this not just as scientists, not just as industry leaders but as advocates. To help in the sometimes thicket of energy alternatives, to clear away a lot of the rhetoric and a lot of the politics to help people understand that biofuels, that advanced biofuels genuinely offer a real promise for American energy independence and for a significant contribution to a change in the global energy markets going forward. So let’s take today’s discussion as a beginning of how to move forward on this enormous opportunity for the next generation of American renewable fuels.
Thank you and thank you to the American Chemical Society.
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