mass. Although this will allow them to acquire some operational experience and reduce cost, gaining experience with CCS in particular is critical, as it will probably be required. Because coal and biomass plants are much smaller than coal-to-liquid fuel plants (at 10,000 bbl/d of fuel, a coal-and-biomass-to-liquid fuel plant size is one-fifth the size of a coal-to-liquid fuel plant), biomass feed rates are similar to those of cellulosic ethanol plants. Thus, penetration rates should in principle closely follow the cellulosic plant build out. But most likely the coal and biomass build out will be much slower than the aggressive rate of building cellulosic plants just presented because of more complex plant design and the need to site the plants near both biomass and coal production.

Thus, the committee assumed that penetration rates of the coal-and-biomass-to-liquid fuel plants will be slightly less than that of the cellulosic ethanol buildout case that follows the experience of grain ethanol (which has experienced a 25 percent average annual growth rate). At a 20 percent average annual growth rate until 2035, when 280 plants would be in place, 2.5 million bbl/d of gasoline equivalent would be produced. This would consume about 300 million dry tons of biomass (less than the projected biomass availability) and about 250 million tons of coal per year. The analysis shows that capacity growth rates would have to exceed historical rates considerably if 550 million dry tons per year of biomass were to be converted to liquid fuels in 2030.

If commercial demonstration of cellulosic-ethanol plants is successful and commercial deployment begins in 2015, and if it is assumed that capacity will grow by 50 percent each year, cellulosic ethanol with low CO₂ life-cycle emissions can replace up to 0.5 million barrels of gasoline equivalent per day by 2020 and 1.7 million barrels per day by 2035.

If commercial demonstration of coal-and-biomass-to-liquid fuel plants with carbon capture and storage is successful and the first commercial plants start up in 2020, and if it is assumed that capacity will grow by 20 percent each year, coal-and-biomass-to-liquid fuels with low CO₂ life-cycle emissions can replace up to 2.5 million barrels of gasoline equivalent per day by 2035.

If commercial demonstration of coal-to-liquid fuel plants with carbon capture and storage is successful and the first commercial plants start up in 2020, and if