Initially when countries began mandating specific ratios of gasoline to ethanol in car fuels, corn was and still is a predominant raw material of the ensuing ethanol. Although environmentalists eagerly welcomed the shift from fossil fuel to a cleaner burning, more sustainable ethanol-gasoline mix, the growing controversy over food source materials became a moral issue. Many opponents are now against using food as alternative fuels. Thus, organizations around the world are looking at ways to introduce second generation bio fuels; biodiesel and bioethanol made from sources other than food.
In response to this point and also as a way to augment a deteriorating lumber industry, several groups and scientists from Norway are developing processes to turn wood chips into the oil needed to make ethanol. By the year 2010, gasoline and diesel sold in Norway will require close to six percent bio fuels in the mixture. And since there are so many timber farmers, it seems reasonable that wood chips should be used as the raw material for the resulting oil.
But unlike food sources, trees are much more difficult to liquefy. The specific process of turning wood chips from a solid mass to a liquid form is the basis of the present research and development. And the biggest dilemma is creating a substance that resembles fossil fuel oil as closely as possible.
As companies involved in forestry look for new ways to use trees, they are not quick to embrace wood chip ethanol as an answer to making bio fuels because they feel the venture is not profitable. Despite the skepticism, however, Norske Skog signed a contract with the Association of Norwegian Forest Owners and a new bio fuel prototype factory will be ready by 2009-2010 in Follum near Hanefoss.