It's seemed for the longest time that if a clean, economical form of ethanol was ever going to be developed, the cost and effort would be left largely up to researchers in the U.S. and Europe.
But Reuters is reporting that Japan has now gotten into the act in a serious way, with a consortium of major companies including Toyota Motor Corp. and Nippon Oil Corp. agreeing to set up a national research effort.
The companies want to develop a low-cost method of producing cellulosic ethanol - the kind that comes from the cellulose in wood chips, prairie grasses and waste biomass instead of that in food crops such as corn and sugar cane.
The Japanese cellulosic ethanol research isn't aimed at a particularly quick fix, though.
Reuters says the group's goal is to be producing about 1.6 million barrels a year by early 2014 and to get the cost down to the equivalent of $70 a barrel by 2015.
Among the companies joining Nippon Oil and Toyota in the consortium are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sapporo engineering - a subsidiary of Sapporo Breweries, which churns out a lot of biomass waste from beer-making.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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