Biofuels have not been developed enough to replace fossil fuels yet.

Carson Painter

My friends, we live in an ever shrinking world filled with unceasingly expanding industry and development. All of this expansion and growth doesn’t just happen though. It has to be run, and this requires fuel.

The ever-increasing demand for fuel and the ever-diminishing supply has led to what has become known as the great energy crisis.

As it stands now, our country runs mostly on non-renewable resources such as oil, natural gas and coal.

While we are not in the predicament of running out of fuel sources in the near future thanks to increased exploration and mining/drilling efforts, many among us worry about the inevitable time when our planet will simply run out of these energy sources, as well as what we are going to do about it.

On top of this we must consider the environmental impact that using fuel sources such as oil and coal has on our planet.

In an effort to address these concerns, many scientists, universities and researchers have been working hard to develop new, clean and renewable forms of fuel. One of the most cited and celebrated of these developments is biofuel, a fuel source made from plants or plant material.

While the research into bioenergy offers huge potential, as it stands now, biofuels would, and are beginning to, cause more problems than they are solving. They should stay in the labs until these problems can be resolved.

For one thing, though touted as the great, clean energy source, current biofuels, such as ethanol, a fuel derived from crops like corn and sugarcane, produce just as many green house gasses as gasoline does.

On top of this, producing current types of biofuel such as ethanol requires huge amounts of water. It is estimated that for every one gallon of ethanol produced, up to four gallons of water is used up.

Water is already one of the planet’s most precious resources, and is scarce enough as it is in many places. Do we really want to make it harder to procure by using it to grow our crops for fuel?

Speaking of fuel crops, by using our harvests to create fuel, we will drive up their prices.

This in turn increases the cost of food, something I am sure many of us would like to avoid in these troubled economic times.

On top of this, an increase in prices of such ethanol producing crops will lead to an increase in suppliers of these crops.

According to one study, if we continue down our current path, “bioenergy could displace 59 percent of the world’s natural forest cover” as farmers cut down the forests to plant their crops.

In Brazil, one of the world’s leading producers of biofuels, huge problems are already coming to light as the country pushes forward in its bioenergy campaign. Huge tracts of the Amazon rainforest have already been cleared as farmers rush to plant sugarcane, a crop used to produce ethanol.

This rush to produce ethanol has led to major water quality issues as agricultural runoff pollutes local water tables. It has also destroyed the habitats of many species in what is one of the world’s crucibles of biodiversity.

As farms start producing biofuels, many other crops are pushed into the frontiers, furthering deforestation and increasing environmental problems. On top of this, working conditions on many of these farms are horrendous, and rural poverty is increasing in Brazil as a result.

Many scientists are working around the clock to develop clean and renewable fuels to keep future generations running.

While there is hope for the biofuel option, let’s not jump the gun.

We still have a long way to go before we have a finished product, and until then, let’s keep using corn for its original intended purpose, as a great side item for your upcoming Thanksgiving dinner.

Alternative energy sources are the answer to the world’s energy crisis.

Christopher Gibbons

As a quasi-scientist it is of great pleasure for me to see the advancement we are making on alternative sources of fuel.

As I hope we all know, we are in great need of alternatives to fossil fuels due to the effect they are having on our global climate and our dependence on foreign oil (I mean, why do you think we are really fighting a war in Iraq? It’s definitely not because of terrorism).

My colleague Mr. Painter has described to you the numerous flaws in dealing with ethanol as a source of fuel, so I will extrapolate on the new and upcoming developments in the world of biofuels that are proving to be rather exciting and hopefully practical.

One of the first interesting biofuels that I came across rather recently was algae.

Algae is a photosynthetic organism that is very similar to land plants in harvesting energy from the sun, as well as obtaining inorganic compounds from the environment.

Craig Venter (one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome) has partnered with ExxonMobil to research different species of algae to exploit them as biofuels. So why is algae important?

According to Emil Jacobs, vice-president of research and development at ExxonMobil, “Algae consumes carbon dioxide and sunlight in the presence of water to make a kind of oil that has similar molecular structures to petroleum products we produce today. That means it could be possible to convert it into gasoline and diesel in existing refineries, transport it through existing pipelines and sell it to consumers from existing service stations.”

ExxonMobil has provided Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics Incorporated, with $300 million in research grants to develop new ways to grow algae on large scales and find the most effective species of algae in converting CO2 and sunlight into “biofuels.”

Another interesting biofuel development method I found is a new process of artificial photosynthesis.

Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have begun the process of using artificial photosynthesis to reduce carbon dioxide into a viable fuel. This process is incredibly exciting due to the fact that scientists are recreating a 2.4 billion-year-old process using inorganic compounds!

The Berkeley lab is still a long way of in developing this process. But one my favorite alternative energy sources, electric powered automobiles, are not that far from becoming mainstream.

Electric cars are on the forefront of replacing our current dependency on foreign fuels. We have made a lot of headway in research in extending the mileage of the electrical car using lithium-ion batteries (batteries that power your cell phone and laptop) and incorporating combustion engines into our cars to extend the electric powered cars mileage.

Dr. Steven Chu, U.S. secretary of Energy, has been a large advocate for research and the use of electric vehicles. He has been allotted $25 billion to distribute through loan programs to develop electric and other high-technology vehicles.

One of my favorite electric vehicle manufactures, Tesla Motors, received some benefit from the loan program, which I hope will allow them to develop more affordable cars similar to their main, higher-end model, the Tesla Roadster.

The Tesla Roadster is a magnificent piece of art that can travel up to 130 mph and run about 250 miles on one charge.

So what is the point of highlighting all these new methods of research into biofuel technology?

I believe we have been so ingrained to believing the vanguard of our new technology is fuel derived from ethanol made from corn. This has given a bad connotation to biofuel and leads us to stray away from anything categorized as such.

I hope to have provided a few specific examples of new biofuel technologies to help us learn and hopefully support the scientists who are revolutionizing the way we utilize energy in our daily transportation.