By Andy Owens
Managing Editor

Wading through a six-foot-high field of switchgrass at Clemson University’s Pee Dee Research and Education Center, Jim Frederick smiles as he points out the ease of growing the thick stand of thin brown reeds rustling in the winter afternoon.

“It doesn’t require a lot of input. You plant it once. It’s very competitive,” Frederick said from the grassfield at the Florence-Darlington county line.

When the Clemson researcher and crop biologist proposed assembling a team of scientists to prove that switchgrass could be South Carolina’s new cash crop, his supervisor asked if he thought it was a good idea to pin his future on this weed.

Almost two years later, the questions he now gets are from civic groups, entrepreneurs, business and political leaders and anyone else who has an idea about making money by running cars off ethanol. The questions come from different sectors, but they’re mostly the same: “Will it work?” “How much money will it save?” “Can I make money from it?” “Will switchgrass save my farm?”

Frederick says the answers depend on how quickly researchers, farmers, processing plants and buyers can collaborate on and innovate a viable, genetically strong crop and a grass-to-ethanol conversion process that takes advantage of rapidly growing demand in the U.S. and overseas.

In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George Bush offered switchgrass as an example of how America could break its addiction to oil and put this native South Carolina plant at the front of a discussion that quickly moved from environmental concerns to the rising cost of doing business in an economy that depends on petroleum.

Thus began a biomass race with different areas of the country and different parts of the world, all hoping to find what amounts to a renewable oil field.

Erika Hartwig, renewable energy coordinator for the S.C. Energy Office, said much research must yet be done before South Carolina can determine the best primary renewable energy source for the state. The S.C. Energy Office administers renewable energy grants of up to $200,000 under state legislation passed in June 2007 to fund research and projects that demonstrate the viability of renewable energy in the state. Eight grants were awarded in the first round of funding late last year.

“We’re still looking for that optimal biomass product,” Hartwig said, adding that a combination of switchgrass, sweet potatoes, sweet sorghum or even wood might be what fuels cellulosic ethanol production in the state.

“We just have to find what’s right for South Carolina,” she said. “All of this optimism hinges on one thing: The price of crude. If the price of crude goes down, all this goes away.”

Engineering a new cash crop
No one is making money off switchgrass.

Other than a few test plots funded by research grants at universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the only intentional switchgrass plantings are used to stop soil erosion or as cheap foraging food for livestock. That means little work has been done to ensure a dependable source of seeds and a genetically strong crop.

Ken Vogel at the University of Nebraska has led the most detailed study of the costs and benefits of switchgrass to date.

The researcher and geneticist says no one will be filling up their cars on switchgrass biofuel for at least five years, but the outlook is promising when the energy output of switchgrass is compared to that of corn.

“It’s very positive. It’s over five times more energy produced than what it takes to produce the crop,” Vogel said. “(That) you have lower energy input costs and some energy that you can capture at the end of the process makes it very net energy positive.”

Conversely, ethanol distilled from corn produces only about 1.5 units of energy for every unit of energy put into it, he said.

When Vogel did his cost analysis, he took into account everything from seeding and packaging to transportation costs, fuel costs and machinery and labor. He examined greenhouse gas emissions, biomass yields and agricultural inputs and estimated how much ethanol could be produced from switchgrass managed for biofuel production.

He wanted to document every conceivable way switchgrass couldn’t compete with corn.

Frederick said Vogel’s findings provide solid support for his research team’s investigation into switchgrass and shows how different areas of the country can approach the issue of biomass and biofuels collectively.

He thinks that a similar comparison of South Carolina switchgrass to corn will show a much larger return than in Vogel’s study. Frederick said it would not be surprising to get eight to 10 times the amount of energy that’s put into switchgrass from a South Carolina crop, increasing the value for everyone involved.

“They lose up to 20 percent drying (switchgrass) out during the winter. I don’t think switchgrass will be near as profitable (there),” Frederick said. “We’re going to calculate the fuel output. Most of our comparisons will be to corn.”

But South Carolina doesn’t have any ethanol plants, and there are no firm plans to build any commercial operations in the near future.

Clemson University’s Restoration Institute on the former Charleston Naval Base in North Charleston plans to build a pilot facility that will explore ethanol, wind power, solar energy and hydrogen, among other alternative fuels, but the institute’s director of renewable energy, Nick Rigas, said the plant is still at the funding and design stage.

Because South Carolina switchgrass is drought-tolerant and has a longer growing season, which produces higher yields than varieties grown in major corn-producing states such as Iowa, Nebraska and Illinois, Frederick thinks South Carolina growers could seize a competitive advantage in the biomass race.

“(Corn’s) something we’re not going to compete with Iowa on,” Frederick said. “Let them grow corn, and we’ll grow switchgrass.”