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Biodesign's Rittmann offers promising perspectives on society's energy challenge
June 04, 2008Perhaps there is no greater societal need for scientific know-how than in finding new ways to meet future energy demands. Skyrocketing gas prices, an uncertain oil supply, increasing demand from around the world, and the looming threat of climate change have made identifying and developing realistic energy alternatives a national priority.
For Biodesign Institute researcher Bruce Rittmann, the threat of global warming also presents a significant opportunity for innovation and fresh solutions to today's energy challenges.
"Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the unprecedented expansions of human population and economic activity have been based on combusting fossil fuels," said Rittmann. "Today, fossil fuels provide 80 percent of the energy needs to run human society worldwide: 34 percent petroleum, 32 percent coal, and 14 percent natural gas."
In a new Perspective article published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Rittmann points the way toward developing bioenergy as the best realistic alternative to meet our current and future energy needs while cutting back on the use of fossil fuels. Rittmann directs the Center for Environmental Biotechnology and is a professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
"The only way that human society has a realistic way of slowing and reversing global warming is bioenergy; and it has to be bioenergy that is done right," said Rittmann, who leads many of Biodesign's sustainability-themed research projects. "Most critically, we need to be able to have bioenergy sources that work on a very, very large scale."
Besides the scalability issues of bioenergy, any technologies developed must also be able to produce energy while minimizing damage to the environment or affecting the world's food supply.
For Rittmann, the most obvious renewable-energy solution - one that passes the tests of scalability, environment, and food - stems from the very factor that makes life on Earth possible: the sun.
"The good news is that we have plenty of energy from the sun. Every day, the sun sends to the earth's surface about 173,000 terawatts of energy, or more than 10,000 times more that is used by human society. So, we have a lot of what we like to call 'upside potential' for capturing sunlight energy."
Up to now, harnessing the energy of the sun has proven to be technically and socially challenging. In particular, approaches to make biofuels from crops such as corn have been met with skepticism in recent days.
"When people think of capturing sunlight energy in biomass, they focus on plants, which are familiar. However, plants are quite inefficient at capturing sunlight energy and turning it into biomass that can be used a fuel," Rittmann explains. As a result, plants could provide only a tiny fraction of our society's energy needs. "Obviously, we need the plants for producing food and sustaining natural ecosystems. Plants simply fail the scalability, environmental, and food tests."
In contrast, microoganisms, the smallest forms of life on Earth, can meet the scalability and environmental tests. Rittmann sees a vast untapped potential of using microbes in service to society to meet our energy challenges.
"Photosynthetic bacteria can capture sunlight energy at rates 100 times or more greater than plants, and they do not compete for arable land," Rittmann said. This high rate of energy capture means that renewable biofuels can be generated in quantities that rival our current use of fossil fuels.
In addition, non-photosynthetic microorganisms are capable of converting the energy value of all kinds of biomass, including wastes, into readily useful energy forms, such as methane, hydrogen, and electricity.
"Microorganisms can provide just the services our society needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels," said Rittmann. "Only the microorganisms can pass all the tests, and we should take full advantage of the opportunities that microorganisms present."
Arizona State University
In a new Perspective article published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Rittmann points the way toward developing bioenergy as the best realistic alternative to meet our current and future energy needs while cutting back on the use of fossil fuels. Rittmann directs the Center for Environmental Biotechnology and is a professor in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
"The only way that human society has a realistic way of slowing and reversing global warming is bioenergy; and it has to be bioenergy that is done right," said Rittmann, who leads many of Biodesign's sustainability-themed research projects. "Most critically, we need to be able to have bioenergy sources that work on a very, very large scale."
Besides the scalability issues of bioenergy, any technologies developed must also be able to produce energy while minimizing damage to the environment or affecting the world's food supply.
For Rittmann, the most obvious renewable-energy solution - one that passes the tests of scalability, environment, and food - stems from the very factor that makes life on Earth possible: the sun.
"The good news is that we have plenty of energy from the sun. Every day, the sun sends to the earth's surface about 173,000 terawatts of energy, or more than 10,000 times more that is used by human society. So, we have a lot of what we like to call 'upside potential' for capturing sunlight energy."
Up to now, harnessing the energy of the sun has proven to be technically and socially challenging. In particular, approaches to make biofuels from crops such as corn have been met with skepticism in recent days.
"When people think of capturing sunlight energy in biomass, they focus on plants, which are familiar. However, plants are quite inefficient at capturing sunlight energy and turning it into biomass that can be used a fuel," Rittmann explains. As a result, plants could provide only a tiny fraction of our society's energy needs. "Obviously, we need the plants for producing food and sustaining natural ecosystems. Plants simply fail the scalability, environmental, and food tests."
In contrast, microoganisms, the smallest forms of life on Earth, can meet the scalability and environmental tests. Rittmann sees a vast untapped potential of using microbes in service to society to meet our energy challenges.
"Photosynthetic bacteria can capture sunlight energy at rates 100 times or more greater than plants, and they do not compete for arable land," Rittmann said. This high rate of energy capture means that renewable biofuels can be generated in quantities that rival our current use of fossil fuels.
In addition, non-photosynthetic microorganisms are capable of converting the energy value of all kinds of biomass, including wastes, into readily useful energy forms, such as methane, hydrogen, and electricity.
"Microorganisms can provide just the services our society needs to move from fossil fuels to renewable biofuels," said Rittmann. "Only the microorganisms can pass all the tests, and we should take full advantage of the opportunities that microorganisms present."
Arizona State University
Bioenergy Current Events and Bioenergy News RSSMaize cell wall genes identified, giving boost to biofuel research
Purdue University scientists have helped identify and group the genes thought to be responsible for cell wall development in maize, an effort that expands their ability to discover ways to produce the biomass best suited for biofuels production.
Miscounting bioenergy benefits may increase greenhouse gas release
A fixable error in the way carbon is counted in current U.S. climate legislation and in the Kyoto Protocol could undermine efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by using biofuels, says a premier group of national environmental and land use scientists.
Popping the cork on biofuel agriculture
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a novel enzyme responsible for the formation of suberin - the woody, waxy, cell-wall substance found in cork.
World will miss 2010 target to stem biodiversity loss, experts say
The world will miss its agreed target to stem biodiversity loss by next year, according to experts convening in Cape Town for a landmark conference devoted to biodiversity science.
Establishing standard definitions for genome sequences
In 1996, researchers from major genome sequencing centers around the world convened on the island of Bermuda and defined a finished genome as a gapless sequence with a nucleotide error rate of one or less in 10,000 bases.
Strategy outlined for growing bioenergy while protecting wildlife
A study described in the October issue of BioScience identifies diverse native prairie as holding promise for yielding bioenergy feedstocks while minimizing harm to wildlife.
Fuels from Biomass: New Technique Can Fast-Track Better Ionic Liquids for Biomass Pre-Treatments
Understanding how ionic liquids dissolve lignocellulose will help scientists find new and better ways of producing advanced fuels from biomass They've been dubbed "grassoline" - second generation biofuels made from inedible plant material, including fast-growing weeds, agricultural waste, sawdust, etc. - and numerous scientific studies have shown them to be prime candidates for replacing gasoline to meet our transportation needs.
Exploring Standards to Advance Microbial Genomics
Microbes contribute to manifold human endeavors ranging from bioenergy to agriculture to medicine. Moreover, they make the Earth's biogeochemical cycles go round, a prerequisite for all life on the planet.
Berkeley Lab Scientists Contribute to Major New Report Describing Climate Change Impacts on the U.S.
Two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Evan Mills and Michael Wehner, contributed to the analysis of the effects of climate change on all regions of the United States, described in a major report released today by the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program.
All the carbon counts
Cutting down forests for agriculture vents excess carbon dioxide into the air just as industrial activities and the burning of fossil fuels do.
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