DailyDirt: The Growing Pains Of Biofuels

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

So far, grabbing fossil fuels out of the ground has been an unbeatable way to get cheap energy. Since fossil fuels (presumably) come from decaying dinosaurs (and their contemporaries), it makes some sense that growing biofuels might be a way to generate a more renewable source of energy. Unfortunately, biofuel projects haven't quite demonstrated an obviously better way to replace fossil fuels. Here are just a few links to some biofuel info that could lead to more environmentally friendly fuels.

• Biofuel derived from corn waste might be no better (or worse) than gasoline for carbon dioxide emissions. A recent study estimates that burning corn waste biofuels releases CO2 faster than if the corn waste was left to rot in the fields. There are some questions about how accurate these estimates are, but it raises the question of how green some biofuels really are. [url]
• Breeding algae for biofuels isn't easy -- especially if you want to extract the a significant amount of algae oil from a large photobioreactor. However, if someone does figure out a cost effective way to grow biodiesel (or any important organic compounds) from algae, it'll be a real game changer. [url]
• Ideally, biofuels would take more CO2 out of the air than they emit. At least one startup, Cool Planet, thinks it can do this at a decent-sized scale -- making 10 million gallons of fuel in a year by the end of 2015. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: algae, biodiesel, biofuel, carbon sequestration, corn waste, energy, fossil fuels, hydrocarbons, renewable energy
Companies: cool planet