Biofuel roundup

With consensus growing for abandoning edible crops as biofuel sources, “second generation” biofuels are gaining momentum. With that momentum comes an almost weekly announcement of new biomasses that could serve as fuel sources, each with a more promising raft of features than the last.

Corn-based ethanol, it’s worth noting, was also once set to be the panacea to end all our fuel woes.

While secondary sources can include everything from garbage to food waste and manure, one of the most marketable aspects of many recent biofuel sources is that, as plants, given that they require nothing more than the sunlight, the ultimate source of almost all the world’s energy. Here, then, are three new biofuel sources that have “cropped” up recently in the news.

Algae
Though technically a “third generation” biofuel, algae sits (or floats) alongside other recent innovative biomasses as a readily available, otherwise useless crop that can be grown with little more than sunlight. In fact, it already grows with such aggressiveness that Chinese volunteers were forced to scoop tonnes of it out of their water before the Summer Olympics.

It’s also been proposed on a large scale as a means of geo-engineering the planet’s climate, sucking out excesses of CO2. So, whether it’s processed for our gas tanks or fertilized to consume our carbon dioxide, it’s no wonder that this much-maligned slime is finding a friendlier, more public face.

Camelina
Also known as “wildflax,” camelina brings a list of features long enough to make it pretty irresistible as a biofuel source. It grows in suboptimal soil, has high yields, its oil is resistant to the cold (always an important factor in considering Canada’s fickle climate) and it can even be grown in rotation with traditional wheat. Not only does it grow voraciously without interfering with food crops, then, but it actually gives us more of the food we’d otherwise be using in our fuel tanks.

Must be win-win, no?

Miscanthus
Like switchgrass, another often-cited biofuel source, miscanthus is a grass capable of aggressively growing to meet the needs of hungry fuel producers. Like camelina, miscanthus also grows well in soil that otherwise wouldn’t be usable for crops, compounding its virtues by producing the necessary sugars for extracting into biofuels. But while its proponents may be singing its praises, comparing it with two other prominent, would-be biofuel sources shows that while corn may already have been discounted as a fuel source, the search for the next major source of biofuel is no easy choice.