Biofuel instead of coal and oil - How promising are these renewable resources? | DW Documentary

[Music] new methods in plant cultivation and animal breeding [Music] microorganisms with amazing properties [Music] among researchers there's a global shift towards renewable resources i envision humans living in harmony with their environment the burning of fossil fuels is warming the climate agriculture and fisheries are spoiling nature one third of the world's fish catch ends up as fish meal and animal fodder look at how we treat food if a loaf of bread costs more than a chicken how is that chicken being fed there are big challenges ahead but luckily no lack of big ideas we need to do something we have to act [Music] can the so-called bioeconomy make our lives more sustainable [Music] the hamper surface mine in northwestern germany a place that like few others in europe clearly shows the destructive consequences of the fossil fuel age [Music] plant researcher has mixed feelings when looking down into the 400 meter deep pit it's surreal to see all of this from up here it looks more like art it's clear that this can't be sustainable it's true that in many places coal and other fossil raw materials were the basis for our prosperity today but if we want to continue having this prosperity as most people do then we must come up with really clever solutions can envision a prosperous life without relying on fossil fuels with the help of the so-called bioeconomy coal should give way to plants fungi insects and bacteria instead of extracting raw materials out of the earth they should be grown in the fields this coal field is going to be transformed into a bioeconomy area and allowing it to flood with water we're trying to shape the entire region turning it into an area that has a completely different role bioeconomy is not really that new humans have been using renewable resources since time immemorial researchers like shaw however want to completely transform the time-honored industry using the latest tools of biotechnology genetically modified organisms increase available biomass like microscopic living factories bacteria produce chemicals and biochemists will create new green products in their labs back to the bioeconomy area alright is a professor at the helmholtz center yulic and has lived here for over 20 years [Music] besides the coal this area is home to a second treasure it's a region with great soil where you can produce a lot so this is a unique opportunity for us to implement something here in the region that we never would have had otherwise for sure the future begins with a return to what made this region flourish before the coal industry the fertile farmland but what should this new age of renewable resources the bioeconomy look like in concrete terms together with a local sugar producer shure is working to increase yields of a local crop the sugar beet the great thing about this plant is how quickly it is developed it went from being the size of a carrot to this in a few decades it just goes to show the potential of a plant like this the real research work begins in the lab sure wants to take a closer look at the root system of the beets by placing the plant in a scanner with roots in particular their surroundings the soil environment has a great influence on how they're structured and function that's why we must use tomographic methods like this to understand what's happening below the surface [Music] for the experiment scientists first create radioactive carbon behind thick screened off walls they use this to vaporize the sugar beets in the climate chamber the leaves absorb the carbon which the roots then store the scanner can make this process visible short image sequences show how the plant absorbs the carbon we're trying to find heritable traits for cultivation where you can say for example i'm looking for roots that stretch particularly deep down or for genotypes that cause this the researchers can tell from the images under which conditions the roots perform best what soil conditions must be present what climate with this knowledge more robust and above all higher yielding varieties can be cultivated [Music] but can only cultivation alone produce enough biomass for a petroleum-free economy the truth is that with the help of technology agriculture has grown as never before in the past century this has been achieved by using heavy machinery artificial fertilizers pesticides and accelerated breeding most recently with the help of genetic engineering but this success has come at a high price species loss depleted soils water shortages and the emission of greenhouse gases side effects that in some places are already causing yields to decline again [Music] ecologist stefan pringetsu of the university of castle examines the effects of global biomass cultivation on nature [Music] is it possible to match europe's consumption with this kind of production [Music] in total germany's consumption of agricultural goods uses over 50 million hectares that's three times our domestic agricultural area of 17 million hectares it's a painful truth to keep european tables filled with food forests in other parts of the world must be cleared in specialists terms this is called land conversion [Music] regarding land conversion we have established that germany's sins lie in the past so to speak because the land conversion rates were at their highest in the 2000s and up to 2015. that is land conversion in other regions of the world due to our consumption of agricultural goods in some regions there were enormous conversion rates 80 square meters per person that is per german inhabitant can we produce more biomass for new green products this poses a great danger to rain forests and primeval forests therefore the goal cannot be the increased production of biomass but rather a more economical consumption it doesn't matter whether we grow plants for food energy or materials there's not an unlimited amount of arable land on earth so are the foundations of the bioeconomy already crumbling with an insufficient amount of biomass being produced a nondescript greenhouse in eastern france not far from north sea this is the realm of frederick burgo the professor of agricultural sciences has gathered plants from all over the world here come on come on this is a special cultivation you don't usually see these here in europe in china there are large fields with this tree for raising silkworms it's the white mulberry tree it's a plant that produces very special molecules super antioxidants that have an anti-inflammatory effect to protect their roots from predators bacteria and fungi plants have created countless defense mechanisms throughout the course of evolution when plants moved from the sea to land 450 to 500 million years ago they had to deal with aggressors that were present in the soil therefore they developed chemical warfare systems natural substances to repel aggressors and prevent them from evolving at their expense or sometimes even to kill them [Music] burgo wants to harness these defenses for plant-based cosmetics new medicines and biological pesticides but to do so he must first produce sufficient quantities of the wonder molecules the key is a completely new form of plant cultivation plant milking [Music] plant milking is based on a soilless cultivation method the roots hang in the air and are regularly sprayed with a nutrient solution from below to obtain the molecules borgo simply dips them in an alcohol solution that washes out the active ingredients this method keeps the roots undamaged so that they can be milked again and again with some plants or active ingredients however that doesn't work the roots must be trimmed and boiled in a bioreactor this lowers the number of harvests but the roots grow back in no time making them ready for another trimming [Music] but can plant milking also produce biomass on an industrial scale for example we can produce on a thousand square meters area that's not a lot 100 square meters multiplied by 10 on an area like that we can produce a quantity of molecules for which you need at least 30 hectares outside in the field since we can't harvest the fine roots in the field anyway we would probably need 60 or even 100 hectares according to borgo plant milking thus requires a good 300 times less land than arable farming the disadvantage is that the costs for the greenhouses spraying systems and above all the nutrient solutions are high that's why the process is not suitable for mass production and is mainly used for molecules in expensive products these technologies allow us to produce molecules that are very valuable to certain industries and they're used for things like pharmaceutics cosmetics food production and crop protection [Music] a startup company from bavaria is taking a different approach with the help of an insect wolfgang vestamaya and thomas kuhn want to upcycle residual biomass [Music] we've chosen the black soldier fly because it can consume the widest range of food harvest waste fallen fruit even grass clippings for example or even things like vegetable scraps are great food for the black soldier flying their startup in 2020 the flies are intended to replace soy and fish meal commonly used fodder in livestock farming [Music] if you look at how agriculture actually works here in the eu over 90 of the soy and fish meal is imported this means that rainforests in brazil are cleared in order to grow soy or that one-third of the world's fish catch ends up as fish meal and animal fodder aquaculture is no exception so that when i eat fish from aquaculture i'm contributing to overfishing of the oceans [Music] instead of soy and fish meal the fodder could be made from larvae of the soldier fly not only do they provide protein to the animals but they themselves can be fed by all kinds of biomass residues lastly they're extremely resilient [Music] the natural habitat of the black soldier fly i'll just go ahead and say it it's actually manure or feces one characteristic of this insect is that it has a very robust immune system which means that it can be reared in a very stable manner without any diseases interfering in a farm north of munich the insects are fed wheat bran a residue from flower production that the company obtains from a neighboring mill which is then mixed with minerals and water to form a nutrient slurry after a week when the maggots have reached their peak protein content they're sieved and fed alive to avoid long transport routes production takes place on the premises of an animal breeder studies have already shown that fodder made from insects can make animal breeding more environmentally friendly the problem however is that the maggots do not grow equally well with all residual materials so does the whole thing pay off we can build a production as a fish meal our production is both cheaper than fish meal and uses less energy although it needs heating we have very good insulation here and after any given day we hardly need to reheat because the larvae also emit warmth when they have grown a bite to prevent more and more nature being sacrificed to intensive agriculture the new green regime must rely primarily on biomass that's already available for example by turning the husks of wheat grain wheat bran into protein-rich maggot food many other methods are also needed to efficiently process green raw materials on the way to creating new environmentally friendly products [Music] [Music] this is a composting plant by heidelberg in the south of germany for biotechnologists rebecca hager and yan ikedormaya looking for clues in a pile of bio waste and food scraps is nothing unusual of course you find these types of microorganisms exactly where there's a lot of plant waste the researchers are looking for previously unknown microbes in the humus they contain enzymes and that's what hager and domaia are looking for because these molecules have some amazing properties enzymes are elementary building blocks of life without them life would not be possible at all they control metabolic processes help to digest food or produce energy from oxygen during cellular respiration they work extremely fast and do not consume any energy themselves however the secrets behind numerous enzymes and the processes they set in motion are not yet fully understood especially in the realm of microorganisms there is still much to be discovered [Music] microorganisms have developed an incredible repertoire of survival strategies in the course of their evolution so that you can find metabolic pathways and enzymes allowing them to survive in extreme situations [Music] want to use the natural power of enzymes to make products such as bioplastics and biofuels both more efficient and environmentally friendly [Music] the basic idea is that you can use enzymatic reactions to make many of the chemical processes you find in industrial production much more energy efficient and more environmentally friendly because for example you don't have to use toxic chemicals [Music] another project is the production of biofuels from straw it's long been known how this raw material can be processed into ethanol with the help of enzymes but up to now the process has not been efficient enough and fuel from straw is anything but competitive as long as the oil price is low it's hard to get a more sustainable production process going and at the same time make it economically profitable the biotechnology company has already collected over 70 000 microorganisms and enzymes and their use is expected to have a long-term impact on the economy [Music] back in ulreshore's bioeconomy area here two research is being conducted into the sustainable processing of biomass with the help of enzymes [Music] biochemist nick virks wants to harness their power to make a new kind of bioplastic out of waste from sugar beet production exactly how that will be possible he's demonstrating here in the lab the remnants from sugar production a brown juice are nothing more than a starter the actual job is done by a fungus called ustilago madis also known as cornsmut vex puts this fungus into a so-called fermenter and feeds it with the waste material from the sugar production the fungus contains an enzyme that processes the carbohydrates from the waste material this produces itaconic acid and that's what the researchers are after because separated from the microbial mass itaconic acid can be used to make plastic in just a few steps it's a very interesting molecule it has functionalities that are not present in oil-based chemicals and so it really allows for new properties new kinds of products new kinds of plastics which we cannot make with oil-based products to make the fungus produce even more acid vics genetically modified it so if you just take a microbe from the field and you would use that in this process you would maybe turn 10 of the sugar into the product and by engineering what we achieved in after several years is to turn not 10 but rather 60 or 70 percent of the sugar into the final product and this is actually the maximum that you can achieve theoretically because they are still living things and they still need a certain amount of sugar just to stay alive and to grow by using biotechnology nick vx is turning a waste material into something new bioplastics it replaces a petroleum product comes from renewable resources and boosts the regional economy but there is a downside growing sugar beets uses pesticides and fertilizers which ultimately has a negative impact on the bioplastics environmental footprint in addition the waste from sugar beets has always ended up as animal fodder at farms or as a fertilizer in the fields if in future they're processed into plastic they'd be sorely missed there [Music] oil is also a finite resource and it's polluting the environment and it's changing the climate so i think we should try to make a most efficient use of the bio-based resources we have and this can come in many different forms but one thing we focus on is waste streams from the food industry from the biodiesel industry which we can then feed to these microbes so the power of enzymes can help to get more out of the available biomass but there's yet another challenge [Music] that challenge becomes more evident with a raw material that's available in large quantities wood wood is extremely robust if it weren't trees wouldn't be able to live hundreds or often thousands of years but it takes decades for a dead tree trunk to rot only slowly do fungi with the help of specific enzymes get at the carbohydrates it contains [Music] theoretically wood could also be used as a raw material for new forms of bioplastics but what nature does on a daily basis has not yet proven to be technically efficient enough and more importantly has not yet been achieved on an industrial scale harnessing the carbohydrate in wood is simply one of the biggest challenges in science at achen university researchers led by engineer yeon phil are working on a solution to the problem [Music] simulation tests will show how wood can be broken down and further processed on a large scale dashboard nature has one thing that we don't and that's time the compost heap has years to decompose the log but of course we have to accelerate that movement in industrial processes so that we can become efficient and competitive at the end of the day during the tests however the researchers must deal with very immediate problems clogged pipes [Music] well that's something we should avoid at all costs you can only get rid of this stuff by hand everyday problems in the high-tech lab an all-too-common issue when working with pieces of wood and a constant nuisance with other biomass as well one thing is clear this is not the way to win the race against petrochemicals biomass has huge potential but petroleum has a head start of more than a century you also have to heat up crude oil many times and if you let the pipelines cool down they get clogged biomass doesn't melt or evaporate which means we have to find other ways to deal with these problems we'll make biomass work so there's still a lot to discover and quite a few problems to solve in biomass processing and even if all of this works out the question remains will the bioengineers boilers actually produce more sustainable and environmentally friendly products the plastics manufacturer also has no illusions about the potential of bioplastics [Music] if you look at what's floating around in the oceans a lot of plastic has been used because it is extremely durable this means that bioplastics at least the biodegradable kind will not solve the problem at the end of the day we all have a role to play both the industry and consumers have to step up to find a reasonable approach by reasonable the plastics manufacturer means above all better and more comprehensive recycling one example is food packaging it's manufactured to be as thin as possible at the same time it must have a sealing effect keeping oxygen from the food but also keeping moisture inside and so it's made extra thin by using little material and that often leads to many different types of plastics being used in several layers thereby it becomes practically impossible to recycle you could just as easily of course develop plastic packaging that has recyclability why isn't it happening today the answer is simple the thin packaging is still cheaper than the slightly thicker packaging which is easier to recycle sadly this means that the new technologies of the bioeconomy will not solve the plastic problem anytime soon does it look more promising in the food sector [Music] a company from bamberg produces meat substitutes its founder friedrich bouzer used to be a butcher and spent years advising fast food chains and food companies but he suddenly had a change of heart standing in a factory hall where millions of male chicks were shredded [Music] the fact that we're actually dealing with a living being which we then kill there's no other way to put it before we eat it is being suppressed more and more when you see how chicks are sorted on a very large scale between male and female and then the ones that have the wrong sex are sent flying into the shredder well i came to a point i just couldn't do that anymore the protein in booze's meat substitute is mostly sourced from green peas he strives for sustainability through the company's entire supply chain and all products come in recyclable packaging the peas come from german farmers who cultivate them alongside potatoes a farmer held up a potato that was bigger than my head and shouted at me from the top of his lungs this is what we work with busa potatoes like this and you want me to plant these crappy little peas so even back then we had to convince people that small peas can be big business boozer gets to the proteins with the help of a giant stirring rod [Music] the peas are heated and mashed he then enriches the extracted proteins with numerous other ingredients [Music] we have a protein content of about 30 to 35 percent that's two to three times more than what's in the p which means i couldn't produce that at all if i just took the p ground it up and put that in it wouldn't be enough boozer gets additional protein from beans lentils and oats he changes the consistency with coconut fat and then he adds lots of spices of course he insists that no synthetic additives are used but wouldn't it make more sense to just eat lentils and peas straight we also eat with our eyes so we expect certain tastes our prosperity is for example reflected in the fact that we can eat varied food that's why you shouldn't just dream but look at what is possible what can be done how can i contribute with something that will change the market and if we now tell everyone that they should eat pea soup all day and have some lentils and beans in between then people would be fed up with a poor digestion after a couple of weeks it's not really an option um according to buzzer his meat substitute requires 10 times fewer resources than meat production in fact many experts see plant-based nutrition as one of the most important tools for environmental and climate protection 60 of the grain produced or imported in germany is used as animal fodder to produce grain you need arable land if you need less fodder you also need less arable land in other words the shift to a more plant-based diet will be crucial to reducing our land footprint [Music] food that protects nature and releases less co2 boozer believes he's on the right track [Music] a food startup from finland is taking an even more radical approach juha pekka pit cannon and passi weiniker want to produce food from thin air at least that's what they promise in their company's promotional film there is a way to turn fields back to grasslands pastures back to forests deserts to food farms without sacrificing our freedom of choice as consumers by harvesting co2 and combining it with water and nutrients we are creating natural protein out of thin air food production is responsible for 25 to 30 percent of greenhouse gases the rest comes from energy systems for which there are technologies to make them emission free for food production there's no such thing turning air into food might sound like alchemy but the founders show how the miracle works in their pilot plant the key to success is once again microorganisms the process gaskets on top at the heart of our process are microbes that we have found in nature and classified as safe the microbes are then grown in the bioreactor similar to a fermentation tank used in beer production except we add hydrogen which we extract using electricity and carbon dioxide filtered from the air the fins are not the first to use microbes to produce food nasa researchers were experimenting with this as early as the 1960s they were looking for ways to use as few resources as possible to produce food for astronauts flying to alien planets and came across the so-called hydrogenotropes hydrogenotropes have the special property of living solely on the elements hydrogen co2 and nitrogen and they produce edible proteins but can the microorganisms be grown in sufficient quantities pit cannon and weiniker are developing a four-step production process in the first step they filter co2 from the air they also get hydrogen which is separated from water in industrial plants then they mix in ammonia which can also be filtered out of the air they then mix all three substances in a tank with the microbes which begin to grow with these nutrients finally all they have to do is dry the tank's contents and that generates a yellow powder called saline the problem is that the production of solid consumes large amounts of energy but the finns envision sustainable sources for this energy in the future [Music] we need solar wind or hydro energy or some other electricity produced from renewable sources but if you think about a certain area of land we can use that area 10 times more efficiently solar panels have a certain efficiency electrolysis has a certain efficiency and our growth process has a certain efficiency and it's about 10 times higher than that of plant cultivation [Music] at the finish startup the dream is to grow the microbes anywhere there's enough space and enough green energy that could be places that are hostile to life like deserts for example whether the yellow powder catches on ultimately depends on the consumer in the lab's kitchen the two founders show us how to make a dessert from solein [Music] it tastes neutral just like it should can be used in products that replace vegetable proteins or proteins in meat and dairy products you can also use it in bread and pastries or in pasta snack bars and ready to eat meals the plan is to launch solin on the european market in two years producing proteins without destroying nature for farmland it could be a game changer but first a lot of green electricity will have to be produced [Music] our journey through the world of the bioeconomy shows that there is no shortage of big ideas and all the new farming methods and green products could make our lives a bit more sustainable we've done a lot of research so we know that things can be done better in many places it's simply about putting it into practice but it takes more than just a few prototypes to turn the dreams of the bioscientists into reality the fossil industry giants aren't happy to give up their seat at the table for the bioeconomy to have its promised positive impact on climate and environments fast and profound [Music] in europe we're talking about a turnover in the meat industry that is much higher than 300 billion euros we're facing a powerful lobby and it's not an easy fight this is kind of but even the innovations of the bioeconomy have a fundamental limit if the globe is not to be exploited to the last spec biomass is and will remain a limited resource ultimately the planet is too small for us to be able to substitute everything we currently produce on a mineral basis with biomass it's impossible in a sustainable bioeconomy resource consumption must decrease massively we need more recycling and reuse but the bottom line remains we the consumers will also have to make do with less i'm optimistic because i see how ecosystems resist abuse how resilient they are it's us who are in danger not nature it's up to us to create a desirable future there is no better time to do so than right now [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 959,677

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2022, documentary, bioeconomy, biobased economy, renewable resources, petroleum, climate crisis, science, nature

Id: I9arI2e5bkw

Length: 42min 25sec (2545 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 04 2022