The yields of energy from Miscanthus cane have been very high in trials run by Steve Long and his colleagues at the University of Illinois, and the crop also stores carbon in the soil, helping to restore the carbon lost to the atmosphere when the prairies were ploughed up for arable cropping.

The type of Miscanthus grown commercially for biomass does not set seed so there is no risk of it spreading wildly.

In the EU our agronomists reckon Miscanthus has great potential for making electricity and simultaneously sequestering carbon in the soil via its roots. We also make it into cubes by extrusion, through a machine made in USA, which behave pretty much like lumps of coal and can be burnt or gasified in power stations and domestic fires.

In the US the current interest appears to be mainly for conversion to liquid biofuels (ethanol butanol etc) by gasification or enzymic processes, but there is also great potential for cofiring with coal in power stations to improve the carbon balance.

This crop is only just starting to be grown commercially in the US, but we have quite a lot of experience in England and other EU countries

Jonathan Harvey
Consultant Agronomist