Biofuels are a subject which often raise controversy.<\/p>\n
From claims of producing world hunger, to deforesting the amazon (where, by the way, no biofuels are grown), to being energy-intensive.<\/p>\n
It seems the only thing missing is that biofuels cause cancer.<\/p>\n
Still, it is rather surprising to see such a debate on something being used on a regular basis by an entire country.<\/p>\n
Granted, the country which uses it (Brazil) is a developing one, with all the problems that entails, but knowing that there are more automobiles there capable of running on ethanol than on gasoline (so called \u201cflex-fuel\u201d), and that ethanol is found in absolutely all pumps in that country, and that this use has taken place since 1974, one has to wonder whether using biofuels is as unsustainable as we first thought.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, one may be even more surprised to learn that even though biofuels as \u201cfuels\u201d are a dead end, we will be using them in a much broader and deeper sense in the future than just burning them as fuel.<\/p>\n
In other words, all this debate is futile, as biofuels are indeed the future, although this future will be quite different from we usually think.<\/p>\n
In Europe, we do not use regular (\u201cincandescent\u201d) lamps anymore.<\/p>\n
Have we ran out of electricity? No: it\u2019s still around.<\/p>\n
So why the move? Because only 4% of what they produce is light: 96% is wasted heat.<\/p>\n
So we moved to \u201cfluorescent\u201d bulbs, which gives us 4 to 6 times more light for the same amount of energy.<\/p>\n
And in the future we will move to LED, which for just 4 watts we get what needed 150 with the old ones.<\/p>\n
The same thing happened with the steam locomotives: we do not use them anymore.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not because we are running out of coal, as we still have 300 years worth of coal in the planet, but it is because they only produce 7% of actual traction and waste 93% in heat.<\/p>\n
So we moved to diesel-electric, which gives us 40% traction for the same amount of energy.<\/p>\n
And the same will happen with the automobile, the truck, the bus, the trolley, and anything else which some way or another uses an explosion engine: they will eventually be phased out, regardless of whether we still have oil left or not.<\/p>\n
Instead, they will all be moved by electric engines.<\/p>\n
The reason is that a combustion engine generates only 20% of traction and wastes 80% in heat, whereas with the electric engine is exactly the other way around.<\/p>\n
Many claim that in this brave new world biofuels will have no place, as they would have been replaced by \u201cgreener\u201d sources of energy such as solar, wind, etc.<\/p>\n
Wrong again. Because biofuels also produce MATERIALS.<\/p>\n
All those wonderful energy sources really only produce one single thing: electrons.<\/p>\n
And where will we get the plastic and other materials to actually build them?<\/p>\n
From the same oil which is becoming increasingly expensive?<\/p>\n
No: from increasingly cheaper biofuels.<\/p>\n
Ethanol, for example, can be easily transformed into polyethylene, which is the most widely used plastic in the world.<\/p>\n
In fact it is already being used by companies such as Tetra Pak, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, and Procter & Gamble.<\/p>\n
Farnesene is a basic molecule used in beauty products and obtained in the same plants which produce ethanol.<\/p>\n
Algae produce oils which are used by the food industry.<\/p>\n
And so on.<\/p>\n
But it is in plastics where we will see the most value of biofuels, as plastics have become the basic component of everything we build today.<\/p>\n
Well, we can go back 200 years when we made things out of wood and metal, painstakingly screwing the parts together into a process which luckily produced 5 units a day and which cost a month\u2019s worth of salary.<\/p>\n
Because we have forgotten that it was plastic and its wonderful quality of being able to be molded which created the modern methods of mass production we know today and which allowed product prices to go down so much.<\/p>\n
So, it now becomes clear biofuels are not just \u201cfuels,\u201d but a whole plethora of new products and services much like the oil industry they intend to replace, and that any attempt to compare them with other \u201cgreener\u201d sources of energy is just looking at the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
And all this talk about biofuels is really not about being green, because unless we come up with a third source of materials, the only contender we have against biofuels is good old oil.<\/p>\n
And in all honesty, no one would be crazy enough to actually claim oil is greener than biofuels.<\/p>\n
\u201cBiofuels\u201d will become \u201cBiomaterials\u201d and they will be actually the source of parts needed for solar panels, wind blades and turbines, and many other energy sources which will still come up.<\/p>\n
They will produce paints, cosmetics, rubbers, oils, and many other things which today come from oil, and they will do so in a much cheaper and greener way, regardless of whether we still have oil around.<\/p>\n
Maybe more importantly, they will be the means of continuing the production methods we employ today and which are the basis of our society.<\/p>\n
It is time to look at the bigger picture and face biofuels, for they are coming whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n
Al Costa is the Chief Executive Officer at Alkol, a world leader consulting on ethanol solutions and sugarcane technology. The company consults for investors and Fortune 500 companies involved in the biofuels and bioplastics industry.<\/p>\n
Mr. Costa has written and has been a keynote speaker about the biofuels and ethanol industry in several venues.<\/p>\n
He is also the author of a book in which he studies how Brazil was able to pay its external debt largely in part through its successful ethanol model and how can other countries also attain their energy independence.<\/p>\n
Mr. Costa holds a BA in Biology from Saint Leo University and a Master studies in Computer Engineering from University of South Florida.<\/p>\n
He has been interviewed in several top media such as TIME Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Biofuels are a subject which often raise controversy. From claims of producing world hunger, to deforesting the amazon (where, by the way, no biofuels are grown), to being energy-intensive. It seems the only thing missing is that biofuels cause cancer. Still, it is rather surprising to see such a debate on something being used on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[],"supplier":[8595,7054,600,7625,238],"class_list":["post-18791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","supplier-alkol-biotech","supplier-johnson-johnson","supplier-procter-gamble","supplier-tetra-pak-inc","supplier-toyota"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18791"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=18791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}