Chevron investigates wood-fired cars

Could timber one day be used to fuel your car?

That is one of the possibilities being explored by oil giant Chevron, which last week stepped up its interest in the biofuel sector through the launch of a major new joint venture in partnership with forestry giant Weyerhaeuser Company.

The 50-50 joint venture, called Catchlight Energy LLC, will focus on researching and developing the conversion of cellulose-based biomass into biofuels.

Miles Drake, senior vice president, research and development and chief technology officer for Weyerhaeuser, said that "timberlands" have huge potential to address current environmental problems and that the new firm represented "an imaginative approach" to addressing growing energy needs.

The joint venture will access employee resources and funding from Chevron and Weyerhaeuser and will initially focus on developing and demonstrating technologies for converting cellulose and lignin from a variety of sources into biofuels.

The ultimate aim is to "create a sustainable, economic, non-food biofuels business at commercial scale," according to Mike Wirth, executive vice president for global downstream operations at Chevron.

The venture is the latest in a line of second-generation biofuel investments from Chevron. Late last year the company announced it had teamed up with the US Department of Energy to work on a research project designed to turn algae strains into transport fuels, including aviation fuels.