Do Biofuels Make Sense?

a two person show. We've been playing kind of musical hosts because we all took vacations close to one another summertime, and it's nice to swept in other places in your hometown. Fantastic to go someplace else and be just as uncomfortable outside with a better view. Yeah. No, I was out by the ocean for a week and it really was nice, And you guys did an awesome job holding down the fort while I was gone. Yeah. I mean, that's one

of the wonderful things about having two co hosts. Any one person can be gone and still be confident that the show will go on. Yes, and so we are going to go on today. We are with a topic that is one that I've been I've talked about before on tech stuff. I've talked about it on the radio with NPR, You've written blog posts on Forward Thinking dot Com. I have, and we're going to talk about bio fuels

because it's a complicated topic. It's one of those that on the surface, you think, oh, a biological alternative to fossil fuels. Perfect. Yeah, it's cut and dry, you know, obviously switched from one to the other. But as it turns out, when you get into the details, it's a lot more complicated than that. Yes, Also, biofuels have been in the news recently because on May twenty nine, the e p A proposed a new renewable fuel standard for

the next couple of years. And this new propos as all of theirs had been delayed so much like since at least because part of their proposal that just came out was for Yeah, it's it's hard to propose things for the past. I've I've seen that bit referred to as kafka esque, and I can't say I could be a little or well into like the retconning of actual history. Well it did, it did match up with what was actually produced, but but at any rate, um uh so

it's seeing all of these huge delays um. So much so that fossil fuel and chemical groups sued the e p A for harm to the market over these delays. Um, although getting this proposal out before June one settled that suit. Uzzah um. So So this this proposal includes increases of the u s S creation of renewable fuels by about nine percent by the end of which falls short of

Congress's mandate for for renewable fuels that year. Um. Basically, proponents of the standard are saying that it's not enough, and opponents of the standard are saying it's still too much. And what does all of this mean. Let's let's back up just a wee bit and and discuss what the fuss is about these renewable fuels. Yeah, because again, the

name renewable fuel makes it sound incredibly positive. I mean, the fact that we're not relying on a resource that is deplenishing over time and will eventually reach a level where, because of the amount of energy we need to get at it, it will not make sense for us to use as a fuel. Sure. I mean, and technically petroleum based fuels are renewable, but just they're renewable geologic time scale,

not a human one. Yeah, so problematic. If you have time to sit around for millions of years, not an issue. But for those of us mirror mortals that have to get around in our day to day lives, we need something that's going to be a little more renewable for the law term, for us short term, for the galactic scale at any rate. Bio fuel, So bio tells you a lot about what we're talking about here. It is fuel that comes from living things. So sometimes we're talking

about using living things directly as fuel. Uh and not like hamsters or something um, but but usually plants of some kind or or algae. Yeah, yeah, for example, I mean the simplest form would like you burn, would that's fuel? So that would be one way. Or you could also look at waste products generated by living things and using those waste products as a source of fuel. So there are a lot of microbes that will while consuming their food, generate stuff that we can use as fuel as a result,

and we'll talk more about that. And biofuels can be in solid liquid or gas form. U solids include refuse derived fuel, which is just as pleasant as it sounds it's it's fuel that you get from waste. Solid waste. You generally want to get as much water out of it as possible for it to burn efficiently. Um. And you can also use that specifically to make stuff like briquettes or pellets. You can make brickettes or pellets out

of other stuff. Besides, uh, they refuse derived fuel the r d F stuff charcoal bricketts as an example, and these are really efficient because of their surface area, they're they're very efficient at burning, so they're very efficient fuel in that sense. Uh. And again they also are designed to get as much water out as possible, so they burn thoroughly. You can also use sewage treated sewage as fuel, right right. You don't want to just get a handful

of it. Again, you're gonna want to dry it out first. Yet things burn less good. Yeah. A lot of these things require some form of processing, which shouldn't come as any surprise. Oils the same way, so like it's not like we pull oil out of the ground and immediately put in our cars. Uh. Industrial waste is another example. And then the simpler stuff like like would actual would being in what the oldest fuel I can think of, UM, Okay, so that covers the solids. What about liquids. The two

big ones are biodiesel and ethanol. And I've talked a lot about these in the past, if you've heard me talk about them. Uh, these are really interesting and they are in use today. It's not like these are unusual products. Certainly in many states there's a ethanol requirement. Absolutely, yeah, there's most most gasoline is a blend of gasoline and ethanol. Uh. You also have a lot of places where bio diesel is h is on is available, specifically like in the Midwest.

That tends to be where you really find it. Um. And of course there are people who have either converted their diesel cars or have purchased an older model diesel car who run it on stuff like the grease they get from restaurants. This that made the news. Remember back gosh, I must have been maybe a few years out of college, so shortly after the sun shrunk down to its current size. No, anyway, it was one of those moments where I heard you can run a car on like restaurant grease. Yeah, I mean,

I mean you shouldn't. You probably shouldn't try to run your car. You don't have a diesel vehicle, definitely don't. If you do have a diesel vehicle, still you want to look into this, yes, do some research first. Yeah. Well, while your car might smell of delicious French fries, it

may also not run anymore. Oh man, I just thought about like like duck fat powered vehicles and how delicious, how hungry you should be Like now, uh, yeah, no, it's it's one of those things where, um, there are actually a lot of issues that can come into it. For example, when the weather gets colder, this stuff can ca gel and congeal, which means that it will no longer run. It's not liquids anymore. Yeah, it's a gel

and that is a problem. But uh, you know anyway, Biodiesel usually is made in blends, Like you'll get a blend of biodiesel B one hundred would be a hundred percent biodiesel, B twenty would be twenty biodiesel and diesel. And we'll talk more about that in a bit. Ethanol is an alternative to gasoline, Like Lawrence said, it's also used as an additive in gasoline, So you get gasoline

blends where it might be ethanol is gasoline. Uh, Ethanol is created through the fermentation of sugars or ligno celluloses, which is biomass that is woody. It's the woody plant stuff. That's that's a much easier thing to say. Yeah, it's it's essentially cellulose and lignant associated together. Excellent. So okay, those are your two liquids. Okay. So liquids and then gases. Gases are typically a byproduct of some other um process,

So it's not something that you would like. Biogas is not something that just is floating around the atmosphere that we would capture. Biogas is something that you would get from, uh, for example, heating up a biomass to the point where it gasifies. So when we talk about plasma waste converters, which use a plasma torch in a giant furnace, you put waste in there. Non organic waste liquefies and turns

into slag. Organic waste, anything with carbon in it gasifies and turns into gas that can be scrubbed chemically to turn into sin gas. That would be very similar to biogas. So sin gas, by the way, that stands for synthetic. If you couldn't Yeah, it's s y N not I And yeah, it's it's not not sinful gas. Yeah, you're not fueling things based on your sins, right, No, that's that's a different type of gas comes from pacobell, different

type of thing entirely. Oh man, if we could power cars from yeah, if we could alright, So anyway, Yeah, those are the three major formats, and really the the one that most people are familiar with because it would be the kind that they would come in contact with in their daily lives. It would be the liquid versions,

the biodiesel and ethanol. Um solid and gas are typically more associated with like co generation of power for things like waste disposal places, incinerators, cement mixing facilities, that kind of stuff, and also coal plants in Europe. There's some coal plants in Europe have been used to just instead of burning coal, burn these solid fuels, for example, which is interesting because of lots of reasons, including the differences between how much energy is in one form versus another.

We'll get to that in a second. Uh yeah, but before we get into that, let's talk about a couple of the other reasons why people are interested in in making the shift. I mean, aside from the time span of renewable that we talked about earlier. Sure, so a big one is the carbon output, right, the green reason for switching to biofuels reducing that carbon footprint that those emissions of carbon dioxide and et cetera that go into our air that contribute to climate change. Greenhouse gases in

general are a big concern. And it is true that most biofuels would generate significantly lower levels of carbon dioxide while burning the fuel than gasoline or oil. And of course they still would produce some amount of carbon dioxide because that's generally what happens when you burn stuff. Yep, there would be there would be levels, it would just be lower. Also, you have to keep in mind, and we'll talk more about this later, that there's more going

into this than just the burning of the fuel. Right. There's the production of the fuel, how you process it, how you harvest the biomass, how you grow it, how you transport, so all of those things also contribute to a carbon footprint. You have to look at the big picture, not just what happens when you burn the fuel. And that's where things get a little more complex, and we'll go into more detail about that in a bit not

complex at all. That sounds totally easy to sess out. Yeah. Also, um, there there's some other reasons why people have been touting bio fuels over fossil fuels. Oh sure, well, I mean there's the entire political concept of petroleum and all of the contentious situations that it can get nations into. Sure. Yeah, the fact that if you live in a nation where you're getting a significant amount of your oil from foreign sources, it means that your nation is dependent upon those foreign sources.

And if those foreign sources either decide no longer to sell you that oil or sell it at an elevated price, or you get into a political conflict, you being your country really not not you personally. Like I was on the phone own with the entire nation of you know, uh Iraq, and as a result, gas is going to be really expensive for the next three months. That would be Jonathan. What did I tell you about calling around?

I know, I know, I just I was watching The Simpsons and it just seemed like it was so funny when Bart would call it MO, and I thought, I want to do that. Um No, when I say you, I I do mean countries. So if a country comes into conflict with another one and they depend upon that other country for some of their source of oil. That's a problem, it's an it could lead to an energy crisis. We've seen this happen in the past multiple times throughout

the world, not just in the United States. Of course, that's the one that Lauren and I are most familiar with. Perhaps I'm a little more familiar with Lauren because I don't think you were born when the last one really happened, but I was not in fact. Yeah, but at any rate, the uh, you know, going to bio fuels, you could potentially grow all of your fuel at home, so you can make it a domestic fuel source rather than a

foreign fuel source. Even if it just means that you're offloading some of your oil needs so that you are supplementing them with biofuel, it could mean that that you are able to get a little more control over your energy needs, and it could improve national security as a result. So there is a political motivation for investing in renewable sources of fuel. Also renewable energy in general. You'll hear that argument used a lot. In renewable energy, whether it's

geothermal or hydropowered. You know, wind powered, solar powered, whatever it may be. That tends to be. One of the big arguments is get get off the dependence of foreign oil. So those are your big ones also. I mean, depending upon the situation, you might be able to produce biofuels more cheaply than you would be able to produce or

purchase oil or gasoline. And so there's a financial incentive there form a consumer standpoint point, right, the idea that you could buy the same kind of you know, fuel that can do the same sort of things is what you had depended upon before, but at a lower price. Now, as it turns out, that's not true across the board, but it could be true in certain cases depending on where you are, when it is, and what kind of fuel you're you're using, yes, and in the amount of

mass production that you can squeeze into something. So a lot of a lot of the discussion about biofuels has really been uh fiery. That's like a really bad pun. I apologize fantastic for the past. It may be like like ten years or so, um, but the idea of

using biofuels is certainly not new. Right. Yeah, first of all, we've got the the ancient ones, you know, fire discovery of fire, using wood to make fire, and that's we've been using biofuels for ages, sure, and their use in motor vehicles is actually pretty ancient too, I mean, like as far as motor vehicle history goes. Rudolph Diesel himself originally envisioned vegetable oil as a motor fuel, and his engine at the nineteen hundred World Exhibition in Paris ran

on peanut oil probably smelled delicious. Henry Ford also tried ethanol with his Model T, and through the kind of tight pocket times of the nineties and forties, vegetable oils were sometimes used as diesel engine fuel, and then petroleum kind of happened. Um, it proved a lot cheaper and more efficient than biodiesels, and so they went out. And it wasn't until a few things happened in the nineteen

seventies and eighties that the US revisited the idea. First off, the EPA passed the Clean Air Act in nineteen seventy and that set new standards for for pollutants and vehicle emissions, so that, you know, it became profitable for companies to start looking into alternate energy sources. UM. Also, Hey, political turmoil in the at least it more than doubled the world price of curde oil from nineteen seventy one, like fourteen dollars a barrel too, I think like thirty five

dollars a barrel. Yeah, more than doubling is is bad. And and that's what also led to Russia's on gasoline stations. You had gasolene shortages. It was a nightmare. Oh yeah. And and the prices have never returned to those pre turmoil points. I think they even doubt. It's something like twenty eight uh. Yeah. So so the first International Conference on Plant and Vegetable Oils was held in two I did not know such a thing had existed. Does It's

glorious um. And of course since then, further acts from the e p A have also driven development of biofuel knowledge and technology here in the US and in the rest of the world that the interest in biodiesel is really booming. Brazil and China are the other two largest produced years of bio diesels UM after the United States

and in India. In two thousand eight, for example, a national biofuel policy set the goal of replacing twenty percent of the petroleum diesel fuel in the country with biodiesel bye when I'm not sure, but they set that goal and the European Union produces a whole lot too. Yeah. I actually read an interesting report that was obviously published in the European Union because of all the figures being in euros, which it's a tip off, yeah, made it made a little tricky for me to figure out how

much is that in real money? Uh, of course that's just a just just a little little uh joke there. I do consider euros to be very real money. But at any rate, Um, you know, there are a lot of things you have to take into account with bio fuels that make it this complicated issue where you can't just say, oh, bio fuels are good, fossil fuels are bad, let's switch to biofuels, because there are some things you have to take into consideration. Some of them may involve

trade offs. Uh. For example, you might have to say, well, we're gonna have to limit our use if we switch over to this because of supply issues or the energy that is contained within the fuel, that kind of thing. And if you're willing to make that change, then it may end up being the right choice full bio steam ahead. Yeah, but there are other issues too that make get even more complicated. So first we have to talk about specific energy versus energy density. Uh. These are both very important

concepts as far as energy content is concerned. Now, that's the amount of potential energy represented by the fuel. It's whatever work you can do by burning that fuel, right, because of course, you know, an ounce of of hamster and an ounce of wood, are you going to get you the same no output? I'm sorry, I'd prove the hamsters are not worth their ou stairs for It's just I'm just thinking about like I'm having these terrible mental images of the boiler room on the Titanic shovels full

of ansters, and it's just the screaming is terrible. Okay, all right, I'm all right, I'm gonna I'm a bad person. Okay, So let's talk about specific energy and energy density. Uh. So, different fuels provide different amounts of energy for comparable amounts or you know, whether you're talking about mass or volume, and specific energy is talking about mass. It's the amount of potential energy within a fuel per unit of mass

of that fuel. So if we're using the proper scientific units, we would be talking about jewel per kilogram of fuel, or more likely kill a jewel of kilogram per kilogram of fuel. Energy density refers to the amount of potential energy within a fuel per unit of volume, and volume and mass are two different things, right, Density plays a big part here. So if we're talking about the scientific units again, where we'll be talking about jewels per leader of fuel. So let's take a look at the energy

content of bio fuels versus gasoline. This is what I gathered this data from lots of different sources. And here's the thing is that the data on this stuff can vary widely because there are so many different means of production and so many different crops, and the types of bio fuels you can produce from these different things are not all equal. So there's generally a range of what these these different fuels, how much energy they represent, um. So keep that in mind that any figures we give

our kind of estimations or ranges. Let's start with gasoline, though, because that's the one that you know, we're trying to replace, right at least as far as cars go. We can talk about oil as well, but I'm specifically referring to gasoline gasolenes. Energy content ranges from one twelve thousand, one teen to thousand ninety b t use per gallon. And I know you're thinking, Hey, you just gave me all those scientific units. Why are you saying BTUs per gallon?

What's a b t u? Who are you? What podcast am I listening? Why did gallon suddenly come into the equation? Yeah? Okay, so that's because this is the way this particular source had worded it. But don't worry, I did some work for you. So BTU stands for a British thermal unit, And just in case you're curious, one BTU is the energy needed to heat one pound of water by one degree fahrenheit. Thank you Britain. Yeah, keep in mind that a gallon is eight pounds of water. So yea, so

one pound of water is not a gallon, okay. So BTU is equivalent to jewels, So just over a killer jewel? Okay? So uh converting gallons to leaders right, Okay, so three points blah blah blah leaders per gallon. Okay, I did all this. I went to a conversion website because I was not trusting my math because once you start getting into all this divide and my and my and UM and your and your multiplan and stuff, you're no longer just adding. I know, you're just just a simple Georgia. Yeah,

you know. I come from simple stock folks, and I'm an English literature major at heart. So I I did a conversion using a website and it's about thirty two jewels per leader. So that's that's gasoline. Okay, what about diesel, Because diesel is different, of course than gasoline. It has higher energy content than gasoline, which is one of the reasons why it's being used in these really large vehicles because it has much higher energy content. It is around one b t use per gallon or going into the

scientific units, hundred kilo jewels per leader. Now, pure biodiesel contains more energy per unit of volume than gasoline, but less than diesel. So you've got you've got gasoline and d all. Bio diesel is smack dab in between them

as far as energy content per volume is considered. Okay, um, but that is probably in fact why bio diesel is frequently blended with diesel, as we mentioned earlier in the podcast, Right, so you can blend it with regular diesel, and that's when you get something like B twenty, which is the bio diesel diesel. This reduces the carbon emissions of diesel when you burn it, so there is a benefit there. However, it also decreases the energy content. Uh it's got about

the energy as regular diesel, so close. Yeah, that's that's not bad, just slight. It has a d and nine percent the energy of of gasoline. But then you don't run a diesel engine on gasoline. You should not know, don't don't try it. Um, I like that. We're amassing a list of things that you don't want to re you're normally diesel, biodiesel, peanut oil, hamsters. Right, there's a whole list of things. So B one hundred would be pure biodiesel. That one has a lower uh energy um

content than than diesel does. It does still have higher than gasoline. It's like a hundred three percent of what gasoline has. So it's still better than gasoline is for its respective ability to do work, but less even less than diesel. And like we said, there's some other issues with biodiesel as well. Sure, okay, what about ethanol? Alright,

ethanol good old corn, gasoline ethanol. Yeah, it's of course, corn is the the premier source of ethanol here in the United States, partially because of laws that uh, some people say are influenced overly by the corn lobbies. Yeah, Iowa, we're looking at you. Yeah, you know. But at any rate, yeah, mostly made from corn here here in USC and in

other places like in Brazil it's sugarcane. There are other sources as well, And like we said earlier, there are a lot of different potential sources for ethanol, and a lot of researchers are looking into those to find out

ones that would be the most advantageous. At any rate, ethanol does not have the same energy content as gasoline, has about seventy three to three percent of the energy of an equivalent amount of gasoline, So gallon to gallon, we're talking of the same amount of energy represented there. So in other words, if you want to go a certain distance, you're gonna need more ethanol to get there

than you would gasoline. All right. Also, you would probably want to have very special fixtures in your engine so that your your tubes wouldn't rot away. But but that's another issue. So ethanol, like biodiesel tends to be used in blends, so E ten would be a blend of ten percent ethanol to gasoline. Again, it lowers the carbon emissions that you would get if you were just using pure gasoline UM and it has about ninety six point seven percent of the energy of an equivalent amount of

pure gasoline. So so it's again a small step down in the grand scheme of things. If you were to look at something like methanol, that's less than half the amount of energy content of an equivalent amount of gasoline. And you can look at other stuff too, like you could look at uh, natural gases things like yeah, or

or even liquefied gases like um propane. Now, those some of those have very high energy content, but I didn't really look at those specifically because we were we were really focusing on biofuels as opposed to the kind of stuff that you would sort of siphon off of um natural gas like usually we get propane from when we do oil mining or natural gas. You know, Yeah, it's one of the products which can be incredibly useful, but

not biomass. So maybe maybe if you guys are interested in hearing a whole lot of other numbers about fuel types. We can do a whole nother podcast about it. Yeah, and in fact, it's it's good to look into it because it teaches you to really start looking at the broader picture and to ask the questions that need to be answered before you can just categorically say, oh, here is the fuel of the future. Because right, uh, speaking

of that broader picture, I love that that. Our next little bit in the notes here says, here's where it gets complicated, as though the rest of this it's just been dreamy walk in the pod. Well, I took I took a note from stuff they don't want you to know. You know, here's where it gets crazy. Here's here's where

it gets complicated. Alright. So, like we said, if it were just a question of energy content, you could take a look at these things and say, all right, this is close enough to gasoline where the difference in performance is is insignificant compared Yeah, yeah, it's it's you don't have to worry about that, considering the benefit of the

reduced carbon emission, for example, or so reduced price. But but but we have to take that other stuff about how it's produced and transported and how an entire industry could possibly be formed around those those things. Yeah, so biomass or biofuels come from biomass. You have to grow

that biomass somehow. That means you have to dedicate land to growing the fuel stock that you're going to be using, whether that's the stuff that you are directly converting into fuel or that's the stuff that will be producing whatever you use for fuel. Sure, and that's land that might otherwise be used to grow food, or to graze cows, or to have a really fun state park. I'm not sure you know any number of things. Yes, and and these are these are real issues. It's not so simple.

In fact, one of the biggest concerns about biofuels and getting behind them is at it could drive food prices up because let's say scenario. Let's say that you are in a country where there is a strong incentive to

move towards bio fuels for whatever reason. So you create subsidies, tax breaks or actual direct subsidies to farmers to say, grow these types of crops for fuel, because we need to meet our energy needs for the population, and so in order to do that, we have to grow a huge amount of fuel stock so that we can convert it into fuel and then everyone can drive their cars everywhere. And so the farmers say, well, I can make way more money taking in these subsidies dedicating this land toward

growing fuel stock than I ever would growing food. So I'm gonna stop growing food. So fewer and fewer farmers are growing food. That means that the ones that are growing food, that that resource becomes more and more precious as a result, because it's more precious and demand supplies lower. Demand is equal. Yeah, demand is demand is the same. We still got to eat. Then those food prices start to go up, and then that could end up being a really slippery slope that could lead to some dangerous

consequences down the road. Sure, I mean, and especially in countries that are perhaps less lucky than the United States and having less land mass to work with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So this is one of those things. And we have seen this happen specifically in Iowa, where we've seen corn prices change because of the fuel. So now that's not to say that there aren't ways to work around this

and solve this issue. It's it's just, at least in the short term, it tends to have this thing where we have the unintended consequences come out, right, So that's a big part of it, is uh is the food prices also, Again, depending on how you're making this stuff, how you are growing it and maybe you're using fertilizer, how you harvest it, how you process it, all of that has a carbon footprint, right, So you have to start looking at the collective picture out of all the

stuff that goes into producing this fuel, how much carbon dioxide are you producing? If it's if it's getting close to what we're doing with fossil fuels, then it's harder to make the argument that it's greener, especially since a lot of biofuels also produce things like sulfur dioxide, which can lead to acidification of water supplies, acid rain, that

kind of stuff. Um Plus, if you're using fertilizers, pesticides or besides that kind of stuff in order to grow your fuel stocks, rain could wash that into the water table. Oh yeah, yeah, that of course has an impact on the overall environment as well. Yeah, I mean they're there are folks in northern Louisiana who say that the reason why there's a dead zone there is because of the

runoff from Iowa from the corn fields. So, uh, you know, it's it's one of those things that it's it's a real impact, it's and it's again something that you wouldn't necessarily first associate with biofuel because you're looking at a

different part of the equation. But you've got to look at the big picture, um, and then you know, you also have to figure out with the energy density doesn't make actual sense based upon your needs, how much of the biomass are you're going to have to grow to meet the same needs as what you're being able to

fulfill using fossil fuels. Right If if you're only getting i mean even a reasonable like ninety six point seven percent of the energy out of this stuff, at what point I mean, I mean you know you have to really do the math and go like is it worth it? Yeah? Exactly if if your if your net energy is lower than what you put into it, then that's bad. We talked about this with fusion. I was just about to say, yeah, yeah,

same sort of thing, which totally works, it just doesn't work. Well, yeah, exactly, that's exactly the problem. We can we can get a fusion reaction going, we can even get more energy out of the reaction than we put into it. Finally, it took years for us to be able to get there, but we still it consume enough of the fuel for it to be worth our while to make that an

energy source. Right now, there's still we have people working on it to to advance the science to the point and technology to a point where we can rely on fusion. But the same sort of thing with biofuels, right like, if you are pouring so much energy to produce the fuel that it's more than what is represented by the

fuel itself, that's a losing proposition. And you look at it by creating a ratio and that energy ratio and that is essentially a number, and as long as the number is above one, you're getting more energy out than you were putting in. And uh that's important. So gasoline is way ahead of the game on this, like depending upon uh, you know, depending upon how oil supplies are at any given time and how you're getting the oil. You're looking at around fifteen, a number of fifteen, which

is that's much higher than for most biofuels. You're looking at maybe one point three to two. Some of them go a little higher than that. And also, again, like I said, it depends on how you get the oil. If you're getting your oil from oil sands, that's closer to a five for the oil, so much lower than what you know gasoline would typically be. And it also has a greater negative environmental impact, so your your environmental impact per unit of oil is much greater that way.

So you gotta take all of this into consideration. That's why I said, here's where it gets complicated. So other things you have to think about. What if you were to look at a different means of creating your biofuels.

So instead of going out and planting corn as just that's just for biofuel, what if you were to plant the corn as a food crop, but then you are converting all the rest of the stuff, the husks and the stalks, Yeah, all the things that normally you would not you just have to throw that away because it's not edible. What if you were to convert that into fuel?

Those are the questions people are asking now, like, how can we double up so that it's kind of like a co generation that we're generating food and fuel at the same time. Thus, that way we could perhaps get around this issue of driving up food prices while still meeting some of our fuel needs. Uh. Yeah, the the e p A is calling those types of fuels advanced biofuels, and they they're also including that category stuff like like a restaurant waste from your grease traps and in any

kind of fryer situation or anything like that. So uh And and actually the e p A in that new proposal of their's recommended a twenty seven percent increase in those types of biofuels in the next few years. So yeah, I mean, it's it's good that we have people looking ahead on these issues because again, oversimplification is just going to end up causing bigger problems down the road. So

we have to take this stuff into into account. Uh. And the economics that's important too, right, I mean, it's not just the environmental impact, it's not just an energy it's all of these things. Sure, sure, I mean it's it's it's nice to it. It's more heartwarming to think about the environmental impact, but you have to think about the money too, of course. Yeah. Yeah, because if it's one of those things where you know it's it's going to be demonstrably much more expensive to go from fossil

fuel to bio fuel. It's a lot harder to do. I mean it it could mean harder to convince scientists to do the research because there's no money in it. It's hard to convince farmers to make it happen because there's no money. It's it's harder to convince consumers that, hey, it's okay that that fuel prices have gone up a dollar a gallon because the fuel is different now. It's uh, I mean, it's just it's tough. It's not easy, and that's you know, it doesn't mean that it's not worth doing.

I always want to point that out, Like I like to address the challenges not as a means of discouraging people, but rather as acknowledging the things that we have to take into account to overcome in order to reach that future that we want to get to. So I don't want everyone to think I'm being super debby downer. I just want I just want to be realistic and and and it may mean that some biofuels make a great sense for us to invest in, and other biofuels might

be more dangerous. I mean, we haven't even really talked about it. But another potential downfall with going with biofuels is that it could create an incentive to create more deforestation, to clear outland to grow fuel stock, and and forests are a great carbon sink, whereas biomass biomass is good. I mean the idea being as long as you're growing the same amount as you're using, then you're staying carbon neutral.

But that's an assumption, right that one that you're able to do that, and to that you know you do do it, not just the dable, but you actually do it. And uh, of course bio fuels would also be subject to things like drought or flooding, stuff that would anything that could affect food crops could affect fuel crops as well. So and since we don't have weather control quite working yet, Cobra commander has not cracked that egg yet. Commander, you are slacking. You tried so many times and yet we

don't have weather control. Work it out, man, Yeah, because obviously that would be a real that would be a huge issue with national security. I mean, you could say, yeah, we're producing our fuel within our borders, but if you have a really awful drought in the same region as where you're growing most of your fuel. That's a nationwide shortage. Yeah,

and that's a huge problem. And it's not the kind of problem that you know, if if you have a pumpkin shortage one year and all of a sudden, Thanksgiving is a few bucks more expensive for everybody, that's I mean, it's annoying. I'm not going to say I'm not annoyed by my pupkin pie costing more. But that's why I had to swim which to carving squash for Halloween for like two years straight. It was tough. Yeah, those those

butternuts are difficult to work with. Yeah, they just topple over and yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't like to think about it. It's coming from a place that it's all full of pains. Let's move on. But let's talk about the future of bio fuels. You know, we've talked a lot about the the various issues that are there, and I mean, it gets even more complicated than that.

But I wanted to kind of lay out sort of the the big issues surrounding bio fuels to explain why this this has you know, been one of those things that has taken years and years and years too kind of adopt because it's not as cut and dry as you would first think. The nice thing to note is that there are a lot of researchers working very hard to make bio fuels a more viable alternative to fossil

fuels in the future. In fourteen, I read about a pair of studies actually that were both published in Science at the same time. Uh, and then one of them there was some Danish scientists who were using genetically modified yeast to produce biofuel in a more efficient way than previous methods. Yeah, go yeast. Yeah, they're specifically created. I mean, you can guess because they're using yeast. So biofuel would

probably be ethanol, which is a type of alcohol. So you know, yeast being using yeast to ferment sugars and alcohol not that's something that we that a lot of us have heard a lot about. That's that's something that makes both beer, bread and wine, I believe. So yeah, yeah, you're not, you're not, because, yeah, you've got to have something to to convert the sugars into the alcohol and

the fermentation process, and yeast typically is that thing. So yeast, you've got this organism that's able to process sugars and uh, it ferments them, creates the alcohol it excretes um. Yeah, alcohol, it's essentially pooping out alcohol. But yeah, the the problem them, the problem that they are running into, or one of the limitations they were running into, is that the the ideal operating temperatures to produce ethanol were higher than what

the yeast could tolerate. So if the yeast could just tolerate a little bit more heat, they could produce ethanol on a much more efficient rate. Hence stage genetic modification. Yes, they were able to identify a single gene and change it and they were able to have the yeast tolerate

much higher temperatures. And so, uh, folks at m I T think that with some improvements to this method that was first revealed in two thousand and fourteen, there could be an increase in ethanol production efficiency by eighty percent, so almost doubling the efficiency. And now you're really talking about like, well, yeah, the ethanol we talked about earlier

has lower energy content than gasoline. But if you're able to produce it efficiently enough so that you can balance out that and you know, take other factors into consideration as well, it also may mean lowering the price of ethanol. Then that could be huge, so that could be the bust it needs. There's also been a lot of talk about using algae, various types of algae to process or or create bio fuels, very attractive, especially since there are

large areas that we could harvest tons of algae. I even saw one guy who suggested an interesting proposal in which you would have algae harvesting ships running on nuclear power and using the nuclear power to gasify the algae

to turn it into biocas. Uh So, instead of using nuclear power to just generate electricity the way the Navy uses shap power, these would actually have bio gas furnaces essentially you know, burning or not technically burning, but heating up, heating up biomass to the point of gasification, making warm to create that sin gas we're talking about. So cool. It's an interesting idea, although if you've listened to our

episode on nuclear power, yes, also tricky. There's a there's a lot more mathematical like work to do, and something out whether that's a really good idea. Yeah, So go back and listen to our episode on nuclear power to learn more about about that series of pitfalls. Uh, and there's also a research about turning those agricultural by products I was talking about earlier into fuels. So the idea of being making more efficient use of plants so that you know, we don't have to sacrifice food crops for

fuel crops. We can do we can use both for the same thing. It's just we used all the non edible parts of the plant to make our fuel. Again, whether or not you could produce enough to serve your entire country's needs would depend largely on a country by country basis um and Uh, it might mean that even if we switched to bio fuels that some countries would have to import a lot of that fuel. So it wouldn't change things dramatically for for everyone across the board

all the time in all cases. But it's really nifty that we're working on ways to work that out. Yeah, and that the carbon emissions would drop dramatically. Keep in mind that the issues that we have with the emissions are that with fossil fuels, you get a lot of carbon, which has a global effect in climate change largely. Biofuels don't have as big of a global impact. They don't they do not emit as much carbon when you burn them. However, they do have a much more localized impact like that

acidification I was talking about earlier. There are also some concerns that it could be releasing various types of nitrogen into the atmosphere, of nitrous oxides into the atmosphere that could lead to ozone depletion. So yeah, there's some still very localized but but not good. Um. Yeah, so they're you know, they're trade offs that you have to really

take into consideration before you you make this change. But really, what I think, you know, obviously, what I'm trying to drive home here is that anytime we talk about energy concerns, it's very important to look at the big picture and to really look at how each element can affect us and decide whether that actually is a logical step or that maybe that's maybe we need to look at other alternatives, because once you really commit to one of these, it

could be you know, you could be set on that path. It might not be easy for you to get off of that. Yeah, and then you know, it's kind of like we are right now with petroleum. We have an infrastructure and an economy that's more than a century old and it's really hard to switch off of it, even when you know the downside. Yeah. Yeah, and we we've talked about that when we've talked about electric vehicles and stuff like that, where you know, and and that is

starting to change, which is fabulous. As more car companies are producing more vehicles with electric motor we are seeing that infrastructure slowly being built up. Yeah, and and hopefully that will ultimately lead to a more environmentally friendly means of us getting around as well as long as long

as we also make that investment in the generation of electricity. Sure, because as we have said when we've discussed this before, if you're just burning coal to take that, make the electricity so that your car goes room room or I guess not room room, because it doesn't make that noise. Just that's exactly the sound of makes. There's a little

chirp and then nothing. Uh So. Yeah. Obviously, big picture thinkers, that's what we like to promote here on forward thinking, and I think a lot of our listeners are that way too. They realize that because we get your feedback, we get your your points where you you say, you know, you're looking at something very specifically and often that's because

we're focusing on a particular point. But we do want to stress that it's always good to take that thats eye view to really see, you know, what are the implications of this beyond just the the immediate carbon emissions. So this was fun. I mean it was fun in a sense of here's a whole bunch of data about energy, y'all. But I mean, I love talking about this because it's really important and it's something that I really believe we need to look closely into. So but I want to

hear more about what our listeners think. Ah Yeah, and they can in fact get in touch with us to do that. Yeah, there are a couple of ways you can. You can write us. There's an email address it's FW thinking at how Stuff Works dot com. Or you can drop us a line on Google Plus or Twitter or the Facebook. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are FW thinking at the Facebook. Just search FW thinking in the search bar. We will pop right up. Leave us a message.

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