At Mascoma, wood and grass fuel the future

(Caleb Kenna for the Boston Globe)

Termite gut and elephant stomach enzymes are among the ingredients researchers at the Boston-based biofuel company Mascoma Corp. are using to come up with a quicker, cheaper way to brew an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline. Chief executive Bruce A. Jamerson recently sat down with Globe reporter Erin Ailworth, prior to a tour of a Mascoma lab in New Hampshire, to talk about the company's work.

Mascoma's researchers are attempting to make ethanol from "nonfood biomass." What exactly does that mean?
It's nonfood plant material in two categories: woods and grasses. That's pretty much it. Now grasses include things like sugar cane, or we can use waste sugar cane, which is called bagasse. So that's after you squeeze the sugar and molasses out of it. It also includes things like cornstalks - once you remove the ears you have cornstalks and leaves. It includes other agricultural waste, like wheat straw after you remove the wheat. It includes prairie grasses.

And what do you do with all that stuff?
If you take a piece of paper and you tear it and look at the edges, those tiny fibers, those are cellulose. And so, essentially, what our process does is we take living organisms that will essentially go into a container of cellulose material and they'll biologically snip those cellulose chains into small pieces and they become sugars. And sugar is a source of energy, so that sugar can be fermented into ethanol or alcohol. It can also be converted into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, bioplastics. Think about animals - like a cow or a horse - that eat grass. And how do they obtain energy from that? Well, the enzymes from their stomachs will convert the cellulose in the plant material into sugar, and that's the source of energy for them. And we are just doing it a bit differently: We do it in a factory with steel and stainless steel and pipes. And they're doing it, you know, the way Mother Nature has provided.

When will drivers be able to fill up with Mascoma-produced fuel?
That'll be several years away. Our first commercial plant will be in Upper Michigan, and that doesn't come onstream until 2011.

How much will this fuel cost, compared with gas? It will be similar, although I believe that over time our product will be cheaper to produce than a gallon of gasoline. Governor Deval Patrick in July came to our office and signed a bill that says if a gas station sells a gallon of gas with cellulosic ethanol in it, it is exempt from the 23.5-cent gas tax. So, everything else being equal, that gallon should be 23.5 cents cheaper to a consumer.

What are some of the challenges to weaning ourselves off gasoline in favor of biofuel? Today you've got the pipelines, you've got the refineries, you've got the distribution station, you've got the gas pumps - all that have been designed for gasoline and its chemical properties. For example, where are the refineries? On the coast. Why? Because crude comes in by ship from overseas. So, in our business, where's the biomass? It's not on the coast. It's going to be in the northern forests for wood, it will be in the Great Plains for grasses, it'll be in the Gulf for sugar cane, etc. It will be in different locations [than gasoline production]. So if you say, let's make our product and ship it out of the [existing] refineries and the pipelines, it's in the wrong location. So it will take some time to build that [biofuel infrastructure].

Mascoma recently partnered with General Motors. Why?
I have a goal: I'd like to be driving some vehicles by the end of the year with our product. And we want to work with them on optimizing car engines for cellulosic fuels.

Demand for gasoline has been dropping as people worry about the environment and look to biofuels as one solution for climate-change issues. What are some of the other reasons that biofuel has become such a hot topic? It is very hard to refute photographs of shrinking glaciers. So I think what happened is the tangible evidence of global climate change is becoming overwhelming. Plus, we basically had a doubling of oil prices from a year ago, and so it has hit people's pocketbooks. Plus, you have this global political instability with energy security - I mean, 80 percent of the crude oil today is owned by countries, not companies, and a lot of those countries don't get along with us or we don't get along with them. However it is, that's not good. So it's climate worries, it's cost, and it's secure energy. And all of those things have finally come together, and people are finally getting it.