In State of the Union addresses in 2006 and 2007, then President Bush outlined Advanced Biofuels Initiative, which seeks to break our national dependence on imported oil by accelerating the development of domestic, renewable biomass fuels to supplant petroleum-based transportation fuels. In President Obama's address to congress, in January 2008, he mentioned a continuation of the advanced biofuels effort and to further emphasize advance biofuels development. Advanced biofuels are defined as renewable fuels, not including corn based ethanol, that offer life cycle greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below baseline lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These initiatives are efforts to develop cost competitive cellulosic biofuels as transportation fuels by 2012, and to reduce gasoline usage in the US by 20 per cent by 2017. The Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 specifies a target quantity of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels to be available in the U.S. for domestic consumption by 2022. Of this amount 21 billion gallons must be from advanced biofuels and within this 16 billion gallons is expected to be cellulosic biofuels, 1 billion from biomass-based diesel, and the rest from other sources. The investment in cellulosic ethanol made by the Department of Energy and the Federal government is helping to make cellulosic biofuel technology a reality and enter the marketplace.
展开▼
