Forests killed by pine beetle being turned into biofuel

Cobalt Technologies has developed a way to turn lodgepole pines killed by the pine beetle into biobutanol.

“If we use only half of the 2.3 million acres currently affected in Colorado alone, we could produce over two billion gallons of biobutanol — enough to blend into all the gasoline used in Colorado for six years,” [...]

BP plans first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol by 2010

Their projects include algae biodiesel, biobutanol from wheat straw in Britain, and partnering with Verenium in Louisiana using enzymes to breakdown grasses into alcohol.

Biobutanol: Latest biofuel aspirant

Biobutanol, a new, promising biofuel has no blend limit when mixed with gasoline,can be put into pipelines as they are, and can be made from multiple fuelstocks.

The question, as always is, can refining it be done on a commercial scale?