Sugar is the new oil. Sugars can be transformed into fuels and useful chemicals through a variety of industrial processes much like we’ve done with oil for decades. By using sugars instead of petroleum as the chemical precursor, we increase our energy independence and our energy security while decreasing our dependence on foreign sources of oil.
For the past thirty years, corn has been our primary source of sugars for biofuels, namely ethanol. As a nation, we have come to recognize that using land, water and other resources to grow corn as a feedstock for fuels dramatically reduces the environmental and societal benefits of this renewable fuel. Of late, a great deal of effort is going into creating non-food crops that are suitable for conversion to sugars and ultimately fuels and chemicals. Better still is to use the non-food, or cellulosic, portion of crops, plants and trees as the feedstock for fuel and chemical production.
Conderos is developing new processes and technologies to break down cellulose and hemicellulose so that the sugars contained within them can be used instead of petroleum or food crops. There are hundreds of millions of tons of biomass in the U.S. available for conversion to sugars. Using biomass that has already served its primary purpose is even better for the environment because it does not add any new carbon to the cycle and it displaces carbon from fossil fuels that would otherwise be added to the carbon cycle.