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Willie Nelson and Neil Young toured in a bus that was powered by bio-diesel.  And there are people who travel around in vehicles that burn left-over cooking oil from fast-food restaurants.  There is more and more talk in the news about bio-fuels.

Now, what are biofuels again?  Bio-fuels are simply fuels that are formed when biological matter decomposes.  They can be used for any number of purposes, just as fossil fuels can be.  Like wind energy and solar energy, bio-fuels are considered a renewable energy source.

Bio-fuels differ from fossil fuels in these important respects:

• Fossil fuels are fuels that are created by, well, fossils.  In other words, fossil fuels are generated only by the remains of plant and animal matter from another geologic time.  So it goes without saying that regenerating them take hundreds of thousands of years.  On the other hand, bio-fuels can be created as quickly as growing a crop of switchgrass. 
  
• Burning fossil fuels generates enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses, which cause climate change.  Bio-fuels are safer.
  
• Unlike fossil fuels, bio-fuels are renewable. 
  

Bio-fuels are referred to by category, or “generation.”  So there are first, second, third and fourth generation bio-fuels.

The first generation of bio-fuels come from vegetable fats, starch and sugar from food crops, and from animal fats.  These bio-fuels include bio-gas and bio-diesel.  A tension arises when food crops are converted to bio-fuel crops.  That transition can cause food shortages and increased food prices.

The second generation of bio-fuels are derived from waste biomass, which can be wood or agricultural wastes, or even municipal wastes.  The waste biomass can be burned directly or converted to fuels such as ethanol or methane for burning.  The approach of using waste biomass instead of fresh crops brings balance to the problem of robbing the food supply to pay the fuel supply.

Bio-fuels can also be made from algae, and those products are the third generation.  Algae are those simple life forms that used to be categorized as plants but are now considered a life form of their own because they don’t have roots, stems or leaves.  Some farms grow algae on a large scale for these bio-fuels.  These fuels are considered very environmentally-friendly because they decompose easily into the soil and don’t harm the soil in the process. 

The fourth generation of bio-fuels are the most forward-looking and least developed type.  The approach is to optimize vegetable matter to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Although the intent of the first through third generations is to be carbon-neutral, the intent of the fourth generation goes further to become carbon-negative.  The aim is to actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and to cleanse the air.  Think of it.  Not merely stopping but reversing climate change.  Science continues to work on turning this goal into a reality.

A turn away from fossil fuels to bio-fuels would have the following advantages:

• We are running out of fossil fuels.  Finding alternatives to fossil fuels means that we won’t have to run out of energy.
• Bio-fuels are environmentally-friendly.  The first through third generations of bio-fuel reduce carbon emissions by providing carbon-neutral energy. The fourth generation, amazingly (but still largely theoretically), actually removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Bio-fuels are cost-effective for consumers.

On the other hand, the current technology of bio-fuels pose the following disadvantages:

• The conversion of farmland from food-production to energy production reduces the supply, and therefore increase the price, of food.
• Devoting acres of land to farming it removes its availability as a natural habitat of plants and animals.

With increased improvements in technology and increased production and distribution of bio-fuels to consumers, we have the potential to reduce and even reverse carbon emissions and to reduce, and even reverse, the effects of climate change.

Read more about bio-fuels:

• biochar can sequester carbon cheaply – organic matter, such as agricultural waste, heated in the absence of oxygen splits into two types of material: a charcoal (biochar), and hydrocarbon gases and liquids. when added to soils, the charcoal can provide a powerful fertiliser. …

• Sustainability Science Program at Arizona State University at … – The Christian Science Monitor has an article – Sustainability gains status on US campuses – about Arizona State University’s new School of Sustainability. It is the USA’s first, and it includes quite a few researchers (including …