Challenging ethanol’s dirty reputation

Wood chips could yield a clean, inexpensive biofuel

CHICAGO — A propriety process for making ethanol from leftover sawmill woodchips significantly reduces the fuel’s lifetime greenhouse gas emissions relative to gasoline, a new analysis concludes.

The 60 to 80 percent relative reduction in emissions “is comparable with other wood-based bioethanol processes,” says May Wu of Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.,