Jun 6 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Jim Stafford The Daily Oklahoman

The search for the Holy Grail of a renewable energy source has led researchers to Oklahoma and a native plant that grows wild statewide. It's not corn and it's not wheat.

It is switchgrass, said David S. Fleischaker, Oklahoma energy secretary.

"It is the Holy Grail because this is low-value plant matter," Fleischaker said. "Meaning that it's not used for anything else today; there is no competing demand for this material. Yet this material contains enormous amounts of sugar (that can be refined into ethanol)."

In fact, Fleischaker said energy experts believe that at least 30 percent of the nation's transportation fuel can be replaced by ethanol produced from switchgrass and other "biomass" fuel sources.

The challenge for refiners is unlocking the sugars held in switchgrass so that it can be converted into cellulosic ethanol to serve the transportation industry, he said.

The answer may be close at hand.

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation of Ardmore and Thousand Oaks, Calif-based Ceres Inc. announced a collaboration Monday to create switchgrass varieties that will serve both Oklahoma landowners as a cash crop and refiners as a fuel source.

Researchers from both organizations will work to create varieties of switchgrass that will grow in sufficient quantities to serve as biomass fuel and meet the needs of refiners. The partnership will work to create switchgrasses that yield more sugar per acre and release the sugar more easily, Fleischaker said.

Ceres is a privately held plant biotechnology company using gene technologies to enhance crops for energy production and other purposes.

"In the short run, they are partnering with us to get some varieties out fairly quickly," said Joe Bouton, director of the Noble Foundation's Forage Improvement division. "We have some that look good for the whole southern United States, so there is a potential to help us get those out in the short run."

The switchgrass initiative fits into the Noble Foundation's mission and the area in southern Oklahoma and north Texas that it serves, Bouton said.

"The land resources are available, the producers are in the area, especially the producers who work with the Noble Foundation," he said. "We've got about 1,200 producers, cooperators who work with the ag division of the Noble Foundation within a 100-mile radius of Ardmore."

Fleischaker said switchgrass offers Oklahoma many advantages as a fuel source over other renewable resources such as corn. For starters, using switchgrass as a fuel source does not deprive animals or people of a food source as does corn use, he said.

And what Fleischaker called the "energy equation," or the amount of energy inputs required to create ethanol, is more cost-effective with switchgrass.

It takes about one unit of energy to make five units of ethanol from switchgrass, as compared with corn, for which the energy equation is about 1 to 1.3, he said.

"Switchgrass requires very low inputs," Fleischaker said. "It's a hardy plant, it's a perennial; it requires very little water; it grows in marginal soils; it requires very little nutrients, fertilizer. The energy equation for this kind of material is much more positive than it is for corn-based ethanol.

"And that is why I said it is the Holy Grail."

Steven Rhines, vice president and general counsel for the Noble Foundation, said the next step will be construction of a demonstration-level refinery in Southern Oklahoma to prove the viability of switchgrass as a fuel source.

Ceres researchers will focus on the project at both its California headquarters and with scientists who will work in Ardmore, Bouton said. The Noble Foundation will dedicate seven to eight researchers from the Forage Improvement division to the collaboration, he said.

"We think it not only is going to help get an alternative form of energy and offset a lot of this petroleum, but it has a great potential to be a 'rural development' project for communities," Bouton said. "It's a whole industry that employs a lot of people in the plants directly. Farmers get contracts and the money moves through the rural economy.

"I think throughout Oklahoma and the nation, it could substantially enhance agriculture."