Researchers unveiled an unlikely source for biofuel-creating enzymes at the 242nd National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
It’s panda poop.
Giant pandas dine almost exclusively on bamboo rich in cellulose, which most animals — including humans — have a tough time breaking down into simple, usable sugars. Pandas rely on enzymes produced by bacteria in their gastrointestinal tract to digest up to 40 pounds of bamboo daily.
Scientists at Mississippi State University isolated bacteria from panda feces and are now assessing their potential impact on the biofuel industry. These newly discovered enzymes are important because they may make the mass production of cellulosic ethanol, alcohol produced from grass and agricultural by-products, possible.
Cellulosic ethanol is still small-time in the U.S., where corn ethanol currently dominates the biofuel industry. An abundant supply of feedstock and government subsidies contributed to ethanol’s ascension. Unfortunately for consumers, increasing corn ethanol production raises food prices and destroys the environment while only marginally reducing fossil fuel consumption.
Producing large quantities of corn ethanol requires massive amounts of corn. The U.S. already grows billions of bushels of corn every year, but about 80 percent of the crop is fed to livestock, poultry and fish, which are eventually brought to market.
Recent food price increases were influenced by a variety of issues, but “the most important factor was the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and the EU,” said a 2008 study by the World Bank.
Ethanol proponents argue the fuel is better for the environment and can reduce global warming through reduced carbon emissions compared to gasoline. While ethanol does produce fewer greenhouse gases when burned than conventional fuel, the entire industrial process required to grow the corn and convert it to ethanol requires massive fossil fuel energy inputs.
A 2008 article published in the journal Science found increasing demand for corn in the U.S. encourages farmers in other parts of the world to convert forests and grasslands into farms and ranches to meet the new demand. This habitat destruction, particularly in South America, effectively drives up greenhouse gas emissions by destroying natural carbon sequestering systems.
Even if we ignore the negative side effects of corn ethanol production, we are left with a poor substitute for gasoline. For an energy source to be effective, the energy produced must exceed the energy invested to produce it. Basically if we spent more energy producing ethanol than we got out of burning it, it would be a worthless fuel.
While most studies agree corn ethanol yields slightly more energy than the fossil fuels we burn to produce it, we would have to drastically reduce our fuel use to compensate for the switch from gasoline, which is roughly four times as efficient to produce as corn ethanol.
All of these factors add up to needing a more sustainable and efficient biofuel. Biodiesel is an exciting possibility, especially when produced from sustainable algae, but many experts are more excited about cellulosic ethanol, which provides a more efficient energy ratio than corn ethanol with less of an environmental impact.
Most Americans were first exposed to cellulosic ethanol by President George W. Bush, who praised the fuel for its potential to turn switchgrass and other relatively useless materials into renewable energy.
Hopefully these new panda poop enzymes will finally give cellulosic ethanol the edge it needs to start mass production in the next few years, but we should not view cellulosic ethanol as the sole cure for our oil addiction.
We are about to overgrow our energy supply, and it will take a combination of conservation, efficiency and new technologies to transition our civilization away from fossil fuels to a sustainable future.
 
Andrew Shockey is a 20 year-old biological engineering junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_Ashockey.
 
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Contact Andrew Shockey at [email protected]