A new competitor for ethanol?

Biobutanol is the name of a new biofuel that BP and Dupont are presenting today as an alternative to ethanol with a 30% more punch. The following is an excerpt from Forbes’ Kerry Dolan’s recollection:

DuPont and BP (nyse:  BP–news–people )
have been working on the new fuel since 2003. The two companies plan to
introduce the first generation of biobutanol in the U.K. by the end of
2007. And they hope to roll out an improved second-generation
biobutanol by 2010. DuPont and BP aim to make the fuel competitive with
gasoline, even when oil is priced as low as $30 to $40 a barrel. In the
U.K., the partnership will produce the new fuel by extracting
fermentable sugar from sugar beets and converting that into a fuel,
similar to the way ethanol is produced.

Currently, biofuels
account for just 2% of all fuel consumption. But biofuels could account
for 30% of all fuel consumption by 2020, some sources predict. Dupont
and BP estimate the global market for biofuels could reach 87 billion
gallons by 2020, up from just under 11 billion gallons today.

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