We talked about switchgrass for two hours - and, believe it or not, it was fun!

Dr. Kelly Tiller at The Orangery Tuesday night

I’m not sure whose idea this was, but it’s a good one. Get about a dozen alumni or friends of the University of Tennessee, select a good Knoxville restaurant with a private dining room and bring in a top UT faculty member to just talk to the group about what he or she is doing at UT.

These gatherings are called “Dinner and Dialogue” and they are arranged by UT’s Office of Alumni Affairs. They are limited to two hours total and informal interaction with the faculty member is encouraged.

Tuesday night, the faculty member was Dr. Kelly Tiller and the gathering was at The Orangery. Tiller is a faculty researcher and administrator in UT’s Center for Renewable Carbon — she spearheads the switchgrass initiative you’ve probably heard something about.

Here’s what we found out:

UT’s biofuels initiative was born in 2006 when the governor said, “Bring us a big idea and we’ll fund it.”
A group of faculty members brainstormed for months and proposed a large-scale demonstration project that would grow switchgrass, build and operate a biorefinery, get the switchgrass to the refinery and turn it into fuel.
The state “bought” the concept and gave UT $70.5 million to do it.

“Then reality set in,” Tiller laughed.

But, flash forward four years and here’s where we are: switchgrass is being grown on 6,000 acres of Tennessee farmland; the biorefinery, operated in partnership with DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol, is up and running in Vonore; a for-profit company, Genera Energy (of which Tiller is president and CEO) has been formed to market and sustain the project; and a new industry has been launched.

This project is appealing to the state of Tennessee because:

There is a lot of farmland in the state on which to grow switchgrass;
Switchgrass can grow on marginal farmland that might not sustain a fussier crop like corn or other vegetables;
Once switchgrass is established, which takes about three years, it is very low maintenance: it’s a perennial that only needs to be harvested once a year;
Ethanol made from switchgrass will help reduce our country’s dependence on foreign oil.

In response to a series of lively questions from the assembled group, Tiller predicted that UT’s switchgrass-to-ethanol project “is about to snowball into a real industry.” Within 10 years, she said, a million acres of marginal land will be used for switchgrass cultivation and a very large-scale profitable industry will result. She said more than 250 biorefineries will be built at a cost of $180 billion.

The biggest challenges: finding enough growers to supply the industry and making sure the political landscape doesn’t change in a way that would be a disincentive to developing renewable fuels. (Currently, federal legislation mandates that renewable fuels be a portion of the U.S. fuel supply.)

In conclusion, everyone at the dinner was given a tiny vial of switchgrass seed (not much to look at, frankly) and we left not only more aware of an exciting new industry, but also impressed by the work being done at the University of Tennessee. Which was the point of the dinner in the first place, wasn’t it?

If you would like to be advised of future “Dinner and Dialogue” events, contact Patrick Wade, UT’s director of alumni programs, at (865) 974-2180 or e-mail him at [email protected]

P.S. Oh, I learned one other thing Tuesday: when you take a group to The Orangery and, for a set price of $35, let them choose among filet mignon, salmon or chicken for their entree, nobody chooses chicken!