Cars aren’t the only thing that run on energy. Even as you read this, you are converting food into energy. If we can’t depend on oil or the sun, can we feed our cars in the same way?
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The answer is, yes. The concept of biofuel involves converting food crops into ethanol as a form of energy. This isn’t a new concept: plant-based ethanol can already be found in your cars engine, and gasoline itself is just ancient plant-based fuel. Henry Ford actually planned on fueling his car with plant ethanol, but went for gasoline instead because it was cheaper. Now that the tables have turned, and biofuels are much cheaper than oil, should we depend more on them?
The concept behind them is great from a sustainability standpoint. If we grow our fuel, we can’t run out: its quite renewable. Crops are also cheap: the US has vast empty farmlands on which to grow them. Also, ideally global warming could be slowed down because the plants we would use to grow the fuel would absorb the carbon dioxide that the fuel would release as car exhaust. Neat solution, right? This inspirational video seems to think so:
Unfortunately, it’s too neat. Biofuels don’t involve shoving plants into our engines: they need to be converted into fuel first. And that requires…more fuel. Oil and coal are used to burn the crops down into ethanol-form. Kind of defeats the point, doesn’t it? What’s more, the pesticides and plastic used to grow the crops would not be all that environmentally friendly. In other words, plant-based fuels are far from “green”.
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What’s more, these fuels would require A LOT of plant material. It would take about 500 pounds of crops to fill the tank of an SUV. We have a lot of farmland, but not that much. This means that even if we use biofuels, it would be pretty impossible to depend on them if they are made the way they are currently.
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One argument against biofuels is that we shouldn’t waste our food on fuel. If we feed our crops to our cars, what will we eat? Well, let’s see. What are they using for plant-based ethanol? (For those of you who saw my TED Talk, you know what’s coming…)
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Corn. Well, corn and grass. Most people don’t eat grass. And if you saw my Ted Talk, you know that people don’t eat the corn we’re talking about here either. This corn is not corn on the cob. It isn’t edible. This is the chemically refined corn in soda that makes people fat and that makes cows so sick that they have to be killed for beef before they die. So, I’m calling foul on this one. We won’t be wasting our food, because we can’t eat it anyway.
Still, biofuels present some issues. They have a great concept behind them, but in practice aren’t as eco-friendly or small-scale as we’d like them to be. I think the idea has potential, though. If we change our technique of making the ethanol to be more “green” and to use less material, then I think this idea could be a fantastic alternative energy resource. There’s a lot of research going into this already, involving different plants and refining techniques, including some research here at Penn State. And obviously, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of that corn burned. But what do you think of the biofuel option? Do you think its worth pursuing, or is it more trouble than its worth? Do you see any other problems with it that I may have missed?