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  Additional thoughts from LS9

  Hello.  I am the person from LS9 who David Roberts spoke with last night for this article.  I thought I would take a moment to thank people for their comments both positive and negative.  I also thought I'd share a couple of additional thoughts that may be pertinent to this dialogue.

  First off, we do not view ourselves as a "silver bullet" with respect to addressing global warming and the energy challenges that our world faces (now and in the future).  As others have pointed out, one of the most important things we all need to do is change our consumption patterns.  Conservation - whether in the form of increased fuel efficiency, public transportation, telecommuting, etc - is absolutely critical.  I have two little kids at home and fully recognize that, even if LS9 does its part, a number of other tough challenges need to be overcome to ensure my kids inherit a planet that is the same or better than I did.  That was my motivation for moving out of the high-tech world and joining LS9.  I'm trying to make a difference on my kids' behalf and LS9 (and others working in this space) are just one piece of the larger puzzle.

  Second, the concerns expressed around land-use and food vs fuel are very important.  Access to large amounts of cellulosic biomass will be critical in this regard.  We have no interest in displacing food production or destroying our precious rainforests.  Also, getting the most energy out of those feedstocks will also be critical.  That's why we are utilizing fatty acid metabolism to make our products.  As some of you may be aware, fatty acid metabolism has evolved over millions of years to be "nature's energy storage mechanism" and is >90% energetically efficient.  What that means is that >90% of the BTUs contained in the fermentable sugars of biomass would be conserved in the biofuels we produce.  As rightfully pointed out in an earlier comment, a given ton of biomass will have a fixed number of BTUs of energy.  The important thing is to conserve as much of that energy as possible in the final product - and also minimize the additional energy required to run the production process and distribute the fuels.

  Finally, skepticism of any new claims like these is justified.  I completely agree.  We are still a relatively young company and we have more work to do to bring these products to market.  As David mentioned in his article, we have a pilot facility planned next year on our way to commercial production.  We're not "done" yet but we're working very hard and making very rapid progress both scientifically and commercially.

  Thank you for taking these issues seriously and for sharing your views in this forum.On New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels posted 2 years, 4 months ago 40 Responses