Timber, oil giants collaborate on biofuels

Weyerhaeuser and Chevron said Thursday they are joining forces to research ways to commercialize biofuels made from wood and other cellulose materials.

The companies will explore a range of technologies, including some that could turn wood into ethanol or synthetic gasoline and diesel, said a Chevron official.

"They know things we don't, and we know things they don't," said Rick Zalesky, Chevron vice president for biofuels and hydrogen. "And we are much smarter together."

The new alliance reflects a broader shift in the energy industry as oil companies reach beyond their fossil-fuel roots to invest in the biofuels industry.

The biofuels industry also has grabbed the attention of Federal Way-based Weyerhaeuser, a forestry giant with 2006 sales of $21.9 billion and operations in 19 countries. Weyerhaeuser owns about 6.4 million acres, some of which could be planted with energy crops.

Zalesky said the partnership can offer the economies of large-scale operations that will be key to major growth in the biofuels industry. Both companies already have been investigating biofuels technology, which for Weyerhaeuser follows decades of research into how to transform cellulose into commercial products.

"Crops created for and dedicated to fuel feedstocks offer the opportunity to augment value ... from our managed forest lands," Weyerhaeuser Chairman and President Steven Rogel said in a prepared statement.

The companies aren't saying how much they plan to invest in biofuels research.

Bruce Amundson, a Weyerhaeuser spokesman, said that growing timber for lumber and paper would remain the company's primary focus.

The biggest potential for energy crops may be in some southern lands, where switch grass could be grown along with the timber.

Wood waste would appear to be another potential cellulose fuel source. But Weyerhaeuser doesn't have a lot of waste.

Logging leftovers are kept on the land to help replenish the soil and act as ground cover, Amundson said.

In the lumber mills, leftover wood is burned in boilers or turned into oriented strand board products.

One other feedstock for the cellulose market could be recycled materials now handled by Weyerhaeuser, Amundson said.

Researchers have been trying for decades to find economical ways to turn the tough cellulose fibers of plants into liquid fuels.

The Weyerhaeuser and Chevron partnership will look at technologies that use enzymes and acids to turn cellulose into fermentable sugars that can produce ethanol or possibly butanol.

The partnership also will test thermal chemical technologies that gasify wood and then turn the gas into synthetic gasoline and diesel that could run in the existing transportation fleet. Such technologies, so far, have not been commercially feasible, but Chevron believes they merit more research, said Zalesky

The research is expected to take place around the country in collaboration with universities and national laboratories. Some is already under way at Weyerhaeuser research facilities at Federal Way, Amundson said.

Currently, the biggest biofuel in the U.S. marketplace is ethanol distilled from corn, which is blended at 10 percent concentrations with much of the nation's gasoline supply. Ethanol production reached 4.9 billion gallons in 2006, and the surging demand for corn has pushed up crop prices, delighting grain farmers but triggering concern among livestock producers and others about the diversion of a food crop to fuel.

At a time of increased focus on global warming from greenhouse gases, corn ethanol's carbon footprint also has drawn scrutiny.

The corn-ethanol industry currently requires large amounts of natural gas and other fossil fuels to produce fertilizers, operate tractors and power distillery boilers. Thus, corn ethanol appears to produce only slightly less greenhouse gases than gasoline, according to a University of California, Berkeley study published in Science Magazine last year.

Much bigger greenhouse-gas cuts could be obtained by converting cellulose to ethanol, with some studies citing estimates of 80 percent or more below the levels of gasoline.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com