June 19, 2015 • 49 mins
It sure would be great to not use fossil fuels but are biofuels the answer? We look at the complicated case for biofuels.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, here's to
our last drink of fossil fuels. May be vow to
get off of this sauce. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
(00:22):
bog Obama, and our other co host, Joe McCormick, is
out today. Yeah. So it's a it's a once again
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
(00:43):
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
(01:04):
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
(01:26):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:55):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:39):
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
(03:59):
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
(04:20):
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,
(04:45):
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.
(05:06):
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
(05:29):
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
(05:51):
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
(06:12):
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.
(06:35):
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
(06:57):
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,
(07:21):
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,
(07:44):
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,
(08:05):
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
(08:25):
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,
(08:48):
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
(09:11):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:58):
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
(10:23):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:12):
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,
(12:36):
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
(12:56):
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
(13:18):
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,
(13:39):
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
(14:00):
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
(14:24):
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
(14:45):
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
(15:05):
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
(15:27):
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
(15:48):
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
(16:09):
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
(16:29):
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
(16:52):
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.
(17:16):
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
(17:39):
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
(17:59):
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.
(18:21):
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.
(18:42):
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
(19:02):
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,
(19:25):
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,
(19:45):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:48):
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
(21:10):
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
(21:31):
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
(21:52):
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
(22:12):
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
(22:36):
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
(22:57):
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
(23:19):
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
(23:40):
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
(24:03):
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
(24:23):
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
(24:43):
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
(25:07):
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
(25:28):
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,
(25:53):
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,
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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
(27:01):
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.
(27:23):
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
(27:45):
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,
(28:06):
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
(28:27):
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
(28:49):
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
(29:10):
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,
(29:32):
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.
(29:54):
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,
(30:18):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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
(31:26):
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,
(31:50):
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
(32:11):
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
(32:31):
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,
(32:52):
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
(33:12):
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?
(33:33):
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
(33:54):
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,
(34:16):
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
(34:40):
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
(35:01):
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.
(35:24):
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
(35:46):
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
(36:07):
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
(36:29):
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
(36:49):
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
(37:10):
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.
(37:31):
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.
(37:52):
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
(38:12):
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,
(38:34):
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
(38:55):
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
(39:19):
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,
(39:42):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:27):
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
(40:50):
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,
(41:12):
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,
(41:34):
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,
(41:59):
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,
(42:22):
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,
(42:45):
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.
(43:06):
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
(43:29):
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,
(43:54):
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
(44:16):
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
(44:37):
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
(44:59):
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
(45:23):
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
(45:43):
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,
(46:07):
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.
(46:28):
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
(46:49):
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
(47:11):
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
(47:35):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:19):
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
(48:43):
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.
We read all of them. We really enjoy them. Thanks
guys for continuing to give us suggestions because they're awesome,
and we will talk to you again really soon for
(49:06):
more on this topic. In the future of technology visit
forward thinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's
Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, here's to
our last drink of fossil fuels. May be vow to
get off of this sauce. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren
(00:22):
bog Obama, and our other co host, Joe McCormick, is
out today. Yeah. So it's a it's a once again
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
(00:43):
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
(01:04):
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
(01:26):
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
(01:50):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:55):
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
(03:19):
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
(03:39):
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
(03:59):
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
(04:20):
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,
(04:45):
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.
(05:06):
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
(05:29):
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
(05:51):
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
(06:12):
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.
(06:35):
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
(06:57):
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,
(07:21):
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,
(07:44):
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,
(08:05):
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
(08:25):
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,
(08:48):
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
(09:11):
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
(09:34):
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
(09:58):
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
(10:23):
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
(10:47):
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
(11:08):
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
(11:29):
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
(11:51):
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
(12:12):
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,
(12:36):
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
(12:56):
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
(13:18):
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,
(13:39):
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
(14:00):
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
(14:24):
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
(14:45):
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
(15:05):
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
(15:27):
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
(15:48):
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
(16:09):
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
(16:29):
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
(16:52):
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.
(17:16):
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
(17:39):
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
(17:59):
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.
(18:21):
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.
(18:42):
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
(19:02):
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,
(19:25):
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,
(19:45):
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
(20:06):
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
(20:27):
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
(20:48):
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
(21:10):
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
(21:31):
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
(21:52):
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
(22:12):
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
(22:36):
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
(22:57):
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
(23:19):
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
(23:40):
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
(24:03):
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
(24:23):
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
(24:43):
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
(25:07):
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
(25:28):
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,
(25:53):
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,
(26:17):
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
(26:37):
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
(27:01):
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.
(27:23):
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
(27:45):
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,
(28:06):
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
(28:27):
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
(28:49):
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
(29:10):
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,
(29:32):
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.
(29:54):
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,
(30:18):
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
(30:39):
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
(31:02):
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
(31:26):
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,
(31:50):
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
(32:11):
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
(32:31):
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,
(32:52):
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
(33:12):
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?
(33:33):
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
(33:54):
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,
(34:16):
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
(34:40):
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
(35:01):
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.
(35:24):
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
(35:46):
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
(36:07):
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
(36:29):
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
(36:49):
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
(37:10):
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.
(37:31):
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.
(37:52):
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
(38:12):
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,
(38:34):
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
(38:55):
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
(39:19):
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,
(39:42):
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
(40:05):
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
(40:27):
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
(40:50):
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,
(41:12):
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,
(41:34):
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,
(41:59):
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,
(42:22):
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,
(42:45):
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.
(43:06):
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
(43:29):
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,
(43:54):
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
(44:16):
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
(44:37):
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
(44:59):
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
(45:23):
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
(45:43):
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,
(46:07):
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.
(46:28):
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
(46:49):
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
(47:11):
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
(47:35):
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
(47:57):
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
(48:19):
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
(48:43):
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.
We read all of them. We really enjoy them. Thanks
guys for continuing to give us suggestions because they're awesome,
and we will talk to you again really soon for
(49:06):
more on this topic. In the future of technology visit
forward thinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's
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Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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