Cellulosic ethanol can be made out of switchgrass, Miscanthus, Napier grass, waste, or woodchips.

Until recently, the assumption had been that cellulose would take over from sugar and starch as the feedstock for making biofuels. Making cellulose into sugar is technically possible and many firms are working on that possibility. The cel­lulose can be blended with enzymes or microorganisms. Still others have a hybrid approach — part biotechnological and part traditional chemistry.

The buzzword here is “RFS-2”, which stands for America’s Renewable Fuel Standard (http://www. epa. gov/otaq/fuels/renewablefuels/index. htm). The US government hands out subsidies and these require that a certain amount of renewable fuel be blended into petroleum-based fuels over the next decade or so. RFS-2 calls for a 10% blend of cellulosic fuel by 2022. Making fuels out of cellu — losic material is still difficult and costly. Production costs are, however, coming down. Not in Brazil, not in the United States, but in Crescentino, close to Turin in Italy, the biggest biorefinery in the world will be opened in September 2012 by the privately held Italian company Mossi & Ghisolfi, where 40 000 tonnes of ethanol will be produced out of a bamboo-like grass called Arundo donax at a production cost price of around $500 per tonne.

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