The Problem with Biofuels

this video was made possible by the curiosity stream and nebula bundle sign up and get the ad-free and extended version of this video available only on nebula [Music] the united states is a powerhouse in the cultivation of corn when driving across the upper midwest you will be met by vast cornfields stretching to the horizon in either direction this industry was the bedrock of the american diet corn flour corn bread cornmeal all staples of traditional american food but in the last decade this industry has been slowly pivoting to an entirely different industry the energy industry today nearly half of all corn production goes to the production of ethanol a biofuel that is being mixed with gasoline with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of your daily commute for the average american 10 of their gasoline is now composed of ethanol and corn farmers across the us are making more than ever thanks to the government mandated ingredient of gasoline pushing the value of their crop higher with electronic vehicles on the rise and the pandemic's effects on fuel consumption hitting the hydrocarbon fuel industry hired ethanol lobby groups are now pushing the biden administration to make an even larger percentage of our fuel to be made with this ethanol but this begs an important question why there is nothing inherently wrong with burning fuel as long as we have a method of absorbing its products but we've become like the yeast trapped in a brewer's fat eating the fuel it was provided and releasing toxic byproducts until at some point the alcohol it produces reaches a concentration it can no longer survive a closed system with no corrections to keep the balance is unsustainable biofuels seek to address this imbalance fuels that we create using organic material from plants and animals which unlike fossil fuels can be restored over a short period of time then when we restart the cycle regrowing the organic material the carbon we release into the atmosphere when burning them is theoretically absorbed once again restoring our balance with nature theoretically is the key word in 2019 the us received about five percent of its total energy from biomass 45 of that was generated from synthesized biofuels primarily ethanol the primary method of producing ethanol is with our little doomed friends from earlier yeast when deprived of oxygen yeast and bacteria use an anaerobic form of respiration where instead of converting sugars to energy and carbon dioxide they convert it to energy and ethanol the united states is the largest producer of bioethanol thanks to its abundant supply of corn and the quantity is rising the production process isn't terribly complicated the corn is simply ground into a flour and used as a feedstock for our microbial friends to turn into ethanol what we need to worry about is all the extra steps needed before and after this first let's do a simple calculation of how much farmland we would need to grow enough corn this is a map of croplands in the united states the bread basket or corn basket of the united states is the upper midwest which is why the brunt of the infrastructure for ethanol production is located there to avoid transportation costs of shipping corn which has a lot of unusable non-sugar waste this map is super interesting the green area totals about 166 million hectares 22 percent of that land area about 37 million hectares goes to corn and 40 of that corn goes to make bioethanol so 8.8 percent of this map is going to make ethanol to provide just 10 percent of the fuel that fills american fuel tanks the ethanol industry wants that figure to rise to 15 and ultimately are targeting 20 extrapolating that 8.8 farmland figure we can see that it would take around 17.6 of the current total farmland in the united states to achieve 20 at the current gasoline usage nearly one-fifth of all of the united states farmland devoted to making something we can't eat seems extreme and we can already see the effects a fraction of that number is having at the turn of the millennium over 90 percent of the united states substantial corn production went to feeding people and animals only five percent was used to produce ethanol then the average price of a bushel of corn whatever the hell a bushel is was two dollars today the price of corn has risen with the extra demand from the biofuel industry the price of a bushel of corn hang on alexa what the hell is a bushel a bushel is an imperial and us customary unit of volume okay no alexa stop stop hey alexa how much is a bushel one bushel is about 35 liters sound thank you oh hit my glasses okay the price of 35 liters of corn today fluctuates between about four and seven dollars that's great for farmers but the end result is that it encourages more natural habitats to be converted to farmland over the past decade croplands in the united states have expanded at a rate of over 1 million acres per year much of it over important natural habitats corn was the main crop planted on these freshly destroyed natural habitats despite this expansion in corn growth food prices have risen not only for corn based products but for products that rely on corn as feedstock for animals eggs milk and meat have all increased in price costing americans millions without them even realizing but the price to the average u.s citizen is much higher than higher grocery bills this industry simply would not exist without government subsidies to illustrate the inefficiency of this industry one researcher the late professor david pimentel who was the first agricultural researcher to call for the banning of the toxic ddt insecticide did the math he tallied up all of the inputs for the production of ethanol including the seeds labor machinery fuel fertilizer insecticide water electricity and transport he found that to produce one liter of fuel grade ethanol would require an energy input of 6600 kilocalories we have one major red flag right from the stairs one liter of ethanol only contains 5130 kilocalories of energy this process takes 29 more energy than it provides this is an energy negative process if it was energy neutral the energy we extracted from sunlight using photosynthesis would match the total energy we input to get a usable product imagine an ancient farmer working the soil without machinery irrigating his plants removing weeds harvesting the grain only to have spent more calories than they received they would starve this is not a green technology the reality is photosynthesis is an incredibly inefficient way to turn sunlight into usable energy the energy efficiency of photosynthesis is usually under one percent for plants meaning on average plants can only capture and convert about one percent of sunlight humans can now do that with cheap solar cells that can achieve between 12 and 20 percent efficiency corn is even lower than the plant average at 0.25 if humans could eat electricity we would growing plants for food is a necessity growing food for power is completely and utterly irrational it's not just wasteful in energy it's wasteful in water an incredibly scarce resource in this modern world compared to fossil fuels and renewable energy sources like solar biomass energy uses substantially more water on average biomass crops have a water footprint 72 times higher than fossil fuels and 240 times more than solar over 80 percent of our fresh water usage already goes to agriculture increasing biomass energy crops would push this even higher putting more strain on an already limited resource 240 times more water than solar and 48 times less efficient at converting sunlight into energy what's the deal here why is the government subsidizing this industry when that money could be going into actual renewable technologies like solar wind batteries and hydrogen fuel the reality is this industry exists because it represents 300 000 jobs and those jobs are represented by one of the biggest lobby groups in the united states any responsible scientist or engineer would see this industry should not exist and we should be investing in alternative technologies there are better versions of biofuel sugarcane derived ethanol is energy positive but its success in brazilian agriculture is helping drive the destruction of the amazon one researcher found using satellite imagery to estimate the exact percentage of farmland expansion into forested areas in brazil that it would take 20 years for the carbon released due to deforestation to be reclaimed by the reductions in emissions from the use of sugarcane bioethanol and that does nothing for the losses in biodiversity if our break-even point is 20 years in the future what's the point surely we should be aiming to not be using fossil fuels in cars at all in 20 years time by the time we pay off the carbon we sunk into the endeavour we should have moved away from fossil fuels entirely and we have lost valuable natural habitats in the process the united states is helping drive demand for this sugarcane ethanol as they are the largest importer there are other alternatives like cellulosic ethanol which aims to fix the issue of competing with food products like corn and sugarcane it aims to use grasses like switchgrass because it grows fast and is cheap but despite that ethanol made with it manages to be even more expensive and energy intensive due to the extra steps needed to convert the cellulose into sugars the microbes can ease another method aims to use algae grown in ponds certain algae strains double in mass in just 6 hours so creating large amounts of biomass can happen fast 30 times faster than food crops they also flourish when carbon dioxide is pumped into their tanks which is why algae are responsible for more than 40 percent of the global carbon fixation there are plenty of strains of algae that grow in salt water or waste water too which would help us conserve our precious fresh water supplies but the quantities of water are immense and the use of salt water or waste water brings in extra steps for the extraction of the useful product just like corn derived ethanol the energy extracted is much lower than the energy we need to put in making it unsustainable and unprofitable algae-based biofuels currently cost between 300 and 2600 dollars per barrel but because of its great potential to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels researchers like those at the pacific northwest national laboratory who have set a goal to reduce costs to three dollars per gallon by 2030 are working on ways to improve and make algae biofuels an affordable possibility primarily by developing new strains of algae that are perfectly suited for our needs algae do have one massive advantage that could see their use in niche applications algae have a much higher fat content than food crops which means they can be turned into much higher energy green crude oil rather than ethanol this green crude oil could potentially be converted into fuels for transportation that needs much higher energy densities that ethanol cannot provide like fuel for planes the future of aviation fuel is incredibly hazy we have no clear answer for replacing kerosene in that process aviation fuel needs particular properties that ethanol simply does not have and we have no clear answer for how to decarbonize the aviation industry batteries are too heavy for anything but extremely short-range small planes hydrogen's low energy to volume characteristics makes it a nightmare to integrate into airframes and biofuels are either too expensive or not carbon neutral i dive into this subject a little deeper in the extended cut available exclusively on nebula and if i see a lot of people signing up for nebula for that extended cut i may just make a full episode for youtube too you get a lot more than just extended cuts by signing up to nebula through the curiosity stream and nebula bundle deal you will get access to our exclusive content like the nine part two hour 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Channel: Real Engineering

Views: 1,518,900

Keywords: engineering, science, technology, education, history, real

Id: OpEB6hCpIGM

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MatlabGivesMigraines]

My problem is that this focuses heavily on corn-based biofuels, not those based on recycled garbage/oils etc, and it paints a picture that all biofuels are bad.Understandably, the problems with regards to the gigantic corn production and corn lobby in the USA is a problem, but the title alone makes all biofuels appear bad. This is a sensitive topic and the channel has a large viewership. I'm afraid this might turn some people who are uninformed about these fuels completely against all biofeels ("reee, we don't need biofuels because an 'engineering' channel on youtube tells us to. let's burn more coal and petrochemicals").

[u/[deleted]]

Biofuel only makes sense because we have so much infrastructure in place for hydrocarbons and internal combustion engines. If you’d design an energy economy from scratch, without freely available oil reserves to get started, this would never survive the brainstorm phase.

[u/Individual_Map_7594]

So this video references a study saying it takes more energy to create ethanol (from corn) than you get out of ethanol. Other studies have "shown" that it's a net energy positive, and it greatly depends on the location, efficiencies, farming practices used, etc. It's very easy to "adjust" your study depending on what answer you want to get (I honestly have no idea what answer is correct).

It also says plants have a photosynthesis efficiency of 0.25%... That is the efficiency of the light that is absorbed that makes it into the grain, not the energy used to create O2, or organic matter that is created that we don't harvest, but that has other benefits. It also assumes that the corn used to create ethanol doesn't have any other uses. Distillers grains are fed to livestock, so that corn is still used to feed people.

Overall the questions around biofuels are a lot more complex than what is presented in the video. Solar panels sound great (and we should use more of them), but they don't last forever, require a lot of infrastructure to install, and cause problems if you want to repurpose the land in the future (if you want to grow wheat instead of corn that's no big deal, growing wheat instead of generating electricity with solar panels is a lot more complex). I'm not saying we shouldn't install solar panels. but we need to be smart on how we implement them.

[u/LateralThinkerer]

Ethanol distillation is remarkably energy-intensive.

Show me an ethanol refinery that runs on its own produced ethanol as a heat source, rather than some other energy source (usually natural gas in the US which is why the refineries can be found near pipelines) and the credibility of ethanol as a fuel will start to improve. This has been the thermodynamic argument against using it a a bulk fuel it since long before it was subsidized/politicized - I have a copy of "Energy Desk Reference" from 1975 that pretty much says the same thing. Note that this doesn't begin to account for the petrochemical input used in growing the crop itself. What ethanol fuel finally does is turn a crop surplus into something that fits into our existing motor fuel distribution networks.

Other biofuels suffer a similar problem since the energy required to produce/transport/refine the crop usually outweighs any kind of useful product.

[u/willieb3]

The whole idea of this video sort of underlies a concept which surrounds a significant number green technologies. The idea being that when a full scale life cycle analysis is done, often times you will see tons of negative side effects like net negative energy, water consumption, land consumption, alternative pollutants etc. I can not tell you how often I see things like this in my field of work. Scientists and engineers who have poured their lives into technologies which may look good on paper, but just a small life cycle analysis study would show massive drawbacks and inefficiencies in their process. The policy people who direct where money goes for these research funding initiatives are typically people who don't have a science and engineering background (or the relevant one), and are not capable of adequately screening for technologies which succumb to these issues.

The number of times I have seen proposals for dead ended technologies get funded is absurd. A lot of times university professors or experts at small cap companies will try to push technologies which won't actually help the global CO2 initiative. They know all they need to do to get funding is not disclose the negative aspects of their technologies since normally the person to provide funding does not have the capacitance to investigate it. The result is that you end up with so much funding being dumped into projects which have no business being funded in the first place. You also end up with people who spend 20+ years becoming experts on these subjects, and it becomes a vicious circle where the experts keep manipulating the system since that's all they know.

Bio-ethanol is a perfect example. You could have made this same video 15 years ago. People knew about the drawbacks of bio ethanol, I remember my aunt lost her job at a bio ethanol company which needed to under-size because of this exact issue back in 2006. Experts hype up a technology they know isn't really a feasible solution > Technology gets funded by stakeholders who are not educated in the art > generates more hype which generates more investment > technologies reach commercial scale creating jobs for people > these people fall into the "this is all we know" trap and it's very difficult to make an industry shift.

[u/ptc075]

This reminds me of a question I've had forever but never found an answer to. When we talk about growing food or fuel, I always hear about the water usage. But how much of that water actually gets consumed by photosynthesis and turned into energy + oxygen? Isn't most of the water recoverable? Not directly, but I mean it goes back into the ecosystem. We talk about it like bazillions of liters of water are being destroyed, but that's just not true (I don't think, anyway).

Also, presenter had to Google "Bushels", but had no issue with "Hectares" or "Barrels"? Made me laugh.

[u/drunk-reactor]

He has a point in the overall of the video but making an attempt to show biofuels bad is highly misinformative. Biofuels are classified as first, second and third generation biofuels. Biofuels obtained by edible crops (mainly corn) are the first gen having the highest efficiency, but it creates a conflict like food vs fuel which creates a bad influence on them. Second generation biofuels are obtained from either forestry products (ocaliptus, elephant grass) as biofuel or from oils as biobiesel. They are better in terms of not competing with food sources but their production requires a bit more complex process. For bioethanol, lignocellulosic biomass first needs to be breakdown into fermentable sugars whereas biodiesel is produced by transesterification of biomass. Biodiesel is indeed a better quality fuel. Third gen biofuels are obtained from engineered sources like algaes. They are richer in oil more than any other biomass and can grow in any kind of water, however, they require 3000 L of water to obtain 1 L of biofuel. Also their mass production is still not very well adapted for industrialization but it's a very promising field. So as you can see, "biofuel bad" is just a pathetic attempt for clickbait, because biofuel cannot be based only on corn.

[u/doctorcrimson]

Vertical farming has shown promise for wheat and corn in the near future, 1 hectare can grow the equivalent of 600 hectares, powered completely by solar and with lower water usage.

Those energy calculations are useless bullshit with no real world bearing. It assumes an opportunity cost that doesn't exist because nobody else is using that sunlight hitting the cornfields or even empty fields.

I can tell the creator might have some associate in science level chemistry knowledge and the rest is all surface level science and economics understanding not fit to make these sort of informative videos.

[u/WH1PL4SH180]

He missed the point. It's NEVER been about environment: it's always been about votes.

Biofuels is just a narrative to deal with surplus