Senator calls on US to help biofuels’ development

A US senator has called for congress to do more to support development in technology and biofuels incentives during a briefing at the White House.

Senator Chris Coons spoke at an American Chemical Society briefing, saying that biofuels production was essential for the future of the US economy.

‘This was a great starting point as a concrete forum to look at how we begin to move forward towards workable solutions that will require cooperation from many public and private interests to be able to move from the field to the filling station in the future,’ he said.

Coons listed the advantages that investment in biofuels could have for the US, such as job creation, economic development in rural areas and employment in all different types of sectors from growing the biomass to distributing the fuel.

He also discussed what individual companies in the country were doing to improve the production of biofuels and its development.

‘DuPont is deeply committed in investments to a diversified mix of next generation biomass and biofuels, those building blocks and the facilities necessary, those cellulosic production facilities as well as the development of bio-butanol and other drop-in biofuels,’ said Coons.

‘CMS is licensing what were formerly DuPont fluoropolymers selected impermeable memory technologies for the dehydration of biodiesel and other biofuels, a small plucky start-up the recipient of a number of critical SBIR and CDR grants that I think can play a key role in solving some of the production and delivery challenges,’ he continued.

He called for the Department of Energy and the USDA R&D programmes to extend tax credits for advanced biofuels and for the industry to work together on the Renewable Fuels Standard.