With fuel prices where they are these days, there is a lot of talk about domestically available options. One type of fuel that is central to the debate is biofuel. You may recognize them by their other names - ethanol, biodiesel, biocrude, methanol and methane to name a few.
Don’t freak out on me, this is not your high school chemistry class, but there are some big questions that arise that are still under debate and as consumers of the product/byproduct it is important that we understand what is being discussed.
Central to the biofuel discussion are two fundamental debates:
- Energy and Food Supply. Early biofuel supplies were built using a corn and other food supply feedstocks. Should energy products compete with the food supply?
- Energy Conversion. Biofuels are created from organic material (e.g. corn, switchgrass & crop residues). What amount of energy is required to create the fuel from these feedstocks? If the amount of energy required to produce the fuel is less than the output from the resulting fuel, is it worthwhile? The conversation is a bit heated.
These are not simple questions. However, their answers are arguably simple - each resource should be used to provide its greatest return. In the questions we ask above — I would argue that food supply should remain as food supply. We can use the crop residue for energy. As far as energy conversion, I don’t need to look any further than modern biomass heating options with efficiencies greater than 70% (per US standards). Until the economics or science indicate otherwise perhaps we should be selective in our choice of the feedstocks for biofuels.
As someone who has made it this far, implies some level of interest, so I encourage you to take a look at this resource from Farm Credit of Canada that provides an overview on the biofuel discussion.