Advantages
Cellulosic ethanol is an environmentally friendly and renewable transportation fuel that can be produced from forest biomass. Also, compared to corn ethanol, cellulosic biofuel does not require anywhere near the same amount of fertilizers, pesticides, energy, or water to grow. The most important attribute of this type of ethanol is, like all types of ethanol, it is renewable. If you want or need to make more of it, you just grow more trees.
Another issue not yet raised is that corn-based ethanol is also a valuable food crop, but growing corn for ethanol production takes up huge amount of food cropland. This has begun to create conversations of food crop shortages, and has already driven the cost of food up sharply in some situations.
The development of all types of biofuel, including Treethanol can be of great importance for countries looking to decrease their dependence on petroleum, especially those countries that import most of their petroleum and also have lots of crop/forest land such as New Zealand and Sweden.
The most important issue at hand is whether or not Treethanol is a superior alternative to more common forms of ethanol like corn based. The general consensus in an article by Hoover, F., & Abraham, J. (2009), is that most forms of cellulosic ethanol have the potential to yield higher energy outputs and be more sustainable than corn ethanol. They also note that while cellulosic ethanol does not necessarily yield more energy than say, corn based ethanol per unit of measurement, it requires far less energy inputs to produce which could give it a far higher net energy yield at the end of processing. The findings that lignocellulosic biomass has a far greater productivity yield than traditional biofuel sources is supported by Papini, A., & Simeone, M. (2010).
Responsible forestry practices do not contribute to greenhouse gases because the forest is allowed to regenerate following fiber harvesting. For this reason wood can be considered to be an essentially carbon-neutral source of energy.
Read more about this topic: Treethanol
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