Five years isn’t long in the energy business, where project development cycles can stretch into decades. That makes the emergence of the cellulosic biofuels business as a commercial force in the US in the past five years even more striking.

While the industry is making rapid strides to commercial maturity and widespread use, it has lacked common templates for creating and building successful production facilities that can be integrated into all-important infrastructure. The Advanced Ethanol Council, only five years after Congress called for aggressive development to alleviate US dependence on foreign oil and the Renewable Fuel Standard was signed, is seeking to provide highly detailed information about those facilities that are under development.

The AEC said this week it will publish a progress report on the production capacity en route to commercial operation in more than 20 states and Canadian provinces. For a copy of that report, click here.

“Much has been made about the slow development of cellulosic ethanol…this report should put all that to rest,” Mascoma Corporation CEO and AEC Chairman Bill Brady said in a statement announcing the report.

AEC cites a Sandia National Laboratories report that lays out the potential for 75 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels production in the US, which could account for roughly half the 134 billions of gasoline consumption in the US.

For featured video on advanced biofuels industry development Breaking Energy, click here.