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Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with

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Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and

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Speaker 1: today I thought I would tackle a topic that I

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Speaker 1: think can get a little confusing at times. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot going on with it, and there are a ton

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Speaker 1: of different parties, all with their own agendas and points

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Speaker 1: of view that make it kind of tricky to understand

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Speaker 1: if you're trying to come at it from an objective,

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Speaker 1: unbiased perspective. The topic is, of course biofuels, which I

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Speaker 1: imagine is in the title of this episode somewhere, so

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Speaker 1: it shouldn't come as a surprise. Now, there are a

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Speaker 1: lot of topics that are either directly or tangentially related

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Speaker 1: to biofuels, and that makes this more complicated than just

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Speaker 1: saying X material represents why amounts of energy if you

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Speaker 1: put it through s Z right, if that's all it were,

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Speaker 1: If we could just say, let's take these two different

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Speaker 1: materials and say how much energy would you get after say,

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Speaker 1: burning them? Uh, and that was it, it would be

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Speaker 1: a lot easier. But as it turns out it's way

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Speaker 1: more complex than that. There are environmental concerns. There are

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Speaker 1: arguments about climate change. Really the only argument is how

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Speaker 1: can we alleviate it? Because climate change is undeniably a thing. Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't well, I guess people can deny it, but

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Speaker 1: they're wrong anyway. There are also national security considerations, and

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Speaker 1: there's a lot more to think about. Two. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna break this down and we're gonna get a deeper

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Speaker 1: understanding about biofuels, what they are, what they aren't, and

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Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. So this is one of

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Speaker 1: those topics where it really is important to think critically

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Speaker 1: about everything. I know. I stressed that a lot in

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Speaker 1: this show, and in this particular topic, I think it

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Speaker 1: it really comes to play. It's very easy to say

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Speaker 1: false fuels are bad and we should stop using them.

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Speaker 1: Now I happen to believe that that is true, that

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Speaker 1: fossil fuels are not great for us to use and

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Speaker 1: we should stop using them. But you also have to

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Speaker 1: acknowledge why we use fossil fuels in the first place

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Speaker 1: as opposed to other stuff. What is it about fossil

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Speaker 1: fuels that makes most of the world dependent upon them?

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Speaker 1: For energy consumption purposes. And the answer isn't as simple

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Speaker 1: as because big oil wants it that way. I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 1: big oil does want it that way, because any business

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Speaker 1: leader wants their business to be a thriving one. But

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Speaker 1: it's not as simple as conspiracy theories might make it seem.

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Speaker 1: A lot of conspiracy theories try to wrap up very

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Speaker 1: complicated issues and create a very simple message to deliver that,

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Speaker 1: and it turns out that reality gets a lot more

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Speaker 1: wibbly wobbly. Timey whiney. Now, my goal is to once

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Speaker 1: again encourage critical thinking and which we examine a problem

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Speaker 1: from many angles to determine what the best solution is,

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Speaker 1: and that solution might be fully dependent upon whatever your

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Speaker 1: specific goal happens to be. So, for example, if your

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Speaker 1: goal is to move dependency away from big oil companies

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Speaker 1: and countries with rich oil deposits that maybe aren't your

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Speaker 1: friendliest neighbors, that's one thing, right, if that's your goal.

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Speaker 1: If you say I have identified what my goal is,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be dependent upon oil, well then

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Speaker 1: you can come up with lots of different potential solutions.

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Speaker 1: But let's say that your goal is different. Maybe your

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Speaker 1: goal is I want to make the smallest environmental impact possible. Well,

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Speaker 1: the solution may end up being a different one from

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Speaker 1: the solution to goal number one. And if you have

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Speaker 1: multiple goals, then you have to start weighing everything against

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Speaker 1: each other and say, well, how do I prioritize this.

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Speaker 1: How do I pick a solution that is not necessarily

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Speaker 1: going to be the best at all of these but

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Speaker 1: is the best option out of all the different options

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Speaker 1: I have? And like I said, it gets tough. So

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Speaker 1: we're gonna start off as simple as we possibly can,

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Speaker 1: which is asking the question what is fuel? Now? I

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Speaker 1: know it sounds silly for me to ask that question.

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Speaker 1: You probably all are very well aware of what it is,

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Speaker 1: but building our understanding on basic fundamentals will help later on. So,

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Speaker 1: a fuel is a substance that contains energy. More importantly,

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Speaker 1: it's energy that can be released and then harnessed to

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Speaker 1: do work of some kind, even if that work is

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Speaker 1: just as simple as releasing heat. So we can think

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Speaker 1: of fuel as stored energy that we must release in

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Speaker 1: some way, typically through a type of chemical reaction, such

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Speaker 1: as through the process of burning it. Now, ancient humans

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Speaker 1: figured out that wood works pretty great as a fuel

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Speaker 1: if you can figure out how to set the stuff

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Speaker 1: on fire. There were you know, there were plenty of

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Speaker 1: trees around. There's a lot of wood available, and it

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Speaker 1: contained enough energy to be practical. It could keep you warm,

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Speaker 1: it could provide light. So wood was a really good

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Speaker 1: fuel source for a very long time. Now, you might

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Speaker 1: remember from science class that fire needs three things to

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Speaker 1: exist the triangle, right. You need to have fuel, you

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Speaker 1: need to have an oxidizer such as you know, oxygen,

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Speaker 1: and you need heat. If you are missing one of

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Speaker 1: those three things, you don't get fire, which honestly is

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Speaker 1: a good thing, or else we wouldn't be here. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if if wood and oxygen we're all you needed, then

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Speaker 1: wood would catch fire immediately upon being exposed to oxygen.

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Speaker 1: If you didn't need oxygen, then once a fire started,

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Speaker 1: it would be really hard to put it out, since

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Speaker 1: nearly all of our methods of extinguishing a fire rely

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Speaker 1: upon removing oxygen from that triangle I just talked about. Now,

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Speaker 1: there's an actual chemical reaction that happens when you have

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Speaker 1: wood in an oxygen eated environment and it reaches its

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Speaker 1: ignition temperature. When wood reaches about a hundred fifty degrees

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Speaker 1: celsius or three hundred degrees fahrenheit. Some of the cellulose

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Speaker 1: material that makes up the wood begins to decompose into

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Speaker 1: three different types of stuff. You get volatile gases which

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Speaker 1: release from the wood and they that's what smoke is.

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Speaker 1: That's part of you know, the stuff we can see,

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Speaker 1: that's part of the voluable gas is released from wood

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Speaker 1: when it reaches that temperature, and volatile gases consist of

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Speaker 1: compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. You also get a

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Speaker 1: substance of nearly pure carbon called char, and that's what

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Speaker 1: charcoal ends up being, and you end up with a

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Speaker 1: byproduct called ash, and ashes all the stuff in wood

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Speaker 1: that isn't actually burnable, it just as left behind, stuff

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Speaker 1: like calcium. When the volatile gases get up to around

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Speaker 1: two d sixty degrees celsius or five hundred fahrenheit, the

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Speaker 1: material in the wood breaks down and recombines with oxygen,

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Speaker 1: forming stuff like carbon dioxide and water vapor. And we

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Speaker 1: call the actual process burning. And this chemical reaction generates

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Speaker 1: a lot of heat. That heat is enough to sustain

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Speaker 1: the reaction as long as there's fuel and oxygen present,

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Speaker 1: so it will continue to burn. Until the fuel is gone.

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Speaker 1: If this didn't happen, then a fire would flare up

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Speaker 1: but then quickly die down because the heat would not

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Speaker 1: be sufficient to keep the reaction going. Not all fuels

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Speaker 1: burn the way wood does. Wood burns up and leaves

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Speaker 1: behind stuff like char and ash, and you can use

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Speaker 1: char as fuel as well, though that reaction is much

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Speaker 1: slower than it is with wood, but other fuels work

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Speaker 1: in a different way. Still. The basic idea is that

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Speaker 1: you've created a chemical reaction using a substance to produce heat,

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Speaker 1: and then you can harness that heat to do something useful. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, you could use that heat to boil water

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Speaker 1: to generate steam. You could channel that steam so that

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Speaker 1: it had to pass through a turbine and the force

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Speaker 1: of this escaping steam would be strong enough to rotate

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Speaker 1: the turbine, which could use magnets to induce electricity to

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Speaker 1: flow through a conductor, and bam, you've got yourself a

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Speaker 1: steam powered electrical generated than you can generate electricity that way. Now,

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Speaker 1: the entire world is largely dependent upon fossil fuels right now,

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Speaker 1: and this is where things are immediately tricky, because if

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Speaker 1: you trace back the source of fossil fuels, you get

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Speaker 1: to organic materials, so, in other words, biological material So

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Speaker 1: you could make a very technical argument that fossil fuels

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Speaker 1: are bio fuels, but that's kind of missing the point

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Speaker 1: and it's being super pedantic, and I'm told nobody likes

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Speaker 1: it when I do that, which is really big blow

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Speaker 1: to me and my personality, especially at parties. Now. See,

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Speaker 1: fossil fuels are called that because they've developed over the

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Speaker 1: course of millions of years under intense heat and pressure,

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Speaker 1: under layers and layers and layers of material, layers of rock, sand, sediments,

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Speaker 1: and soil. They all build up over decayed organic material.

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Speaker 1: Most of the fossil fuels that we end up getting

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Speaker 1: came out of algae that died millions of years ago,

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Speaker 1: uh seaweed analogy would be the two big ones, but

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Speaker 1: other stuff as well, and the pressure and time over

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Speaker 1: the course of these millions of years break down that

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Speaker 1: organic material and it transforms into stuff like coal and

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Speaker 1: oil and natural gas. But it takes millions of years

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Speaker 1: for that to happen. So that is why we call

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Speaker 1: this a non renewable resource, a non renewable source of energy.

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Speaker 1: It's not that they're truly non renewable, right, Not if

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Speaker 1: you were able to live forever in the super super

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Speaker 1: long term, over the course of millions and millions and

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Speaker 1: millions of years, you could renew those resources. But for

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Speaker 1: our purposes for humans, they're non renewable, I mean, for

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Speaker 1: all practical purposes. Because keep in mind that modern humans

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Speaker 1: have only been around a few thousand years, nowhere close

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Speaker 1: to a million, let alone hundreds of millions. So there's

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Speaker 1: no way we could wait hundreds of millions of years

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Speaker 1: more were for the Earth's supply of fossil fuels to replenish.

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Speaker 1: By the time stuff from the dawn of humanity has

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Speaker 1: transformed into fossil fuels, we may very well be extinct

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Speaker 1: as a species, so we can't really think of it

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Speaker 1: as renewable. It doesn't make any sense. Oh and when

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Speaker 1: we say organic material, we're chiefly talking about carbon. Carbon

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Speaker 1: is king here. Burning these fossil fuels unleashes that carbon

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Speaker 1: that had previously been locked away inside coal or gas

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Speaker 1: or oil and deep under the Earth's surface. Now mainly

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Speaker 1: it gets unlocked and released in the form of carbon dioxide.

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Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and contributes to climate

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Speaker 1: change in a really big way. So when we talk

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Speaker 1: about fossil fuels from an environmental perspective, uh, we're really

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Speaker 1: talking about dumping an enormous amount of carbon dioxide along

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Speaker 1: with some other not so healthy gases into the environment.

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Speaker 1: And this is carbon that had previously been saying fulle

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Speaker 1: locked away, and moreover, it's into an environment that cannot

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Speaker 1: easily process this excess amount of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide

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Speaker 1: is part of a natural cycle on Earth, but that

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Speaker 1: cycle is dependent upon the steady supply of carbon diox

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Speaker 1: are really a stable supply, not an increasing supply, But

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Speaker 1: we are unleashing yet more carbon dioxide that had previously

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Speaker 1: been locked away down underneath the Earth. Now, on top

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Speaker 1: of that, there are many other things that go into

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Speaker 1: the extraction, processing, refining, and distribution of fossil fuels, and

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Speaker 1: all of that also adds into the environmental impact overall,

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Speaker 1: as well as the cost of the fossil fuel industry.

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Speaker 1: Some extraction methods cause greater environmental damage than others, but

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Speaker 1: none of them are exactly eco friendly. They are just

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Speaker 1: levels of bad and to be fair, biofuels are not

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Speaker 1: magically immune to this. We will look at how bio

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Speaker 1: fuels can also have a negative environmental impact. They do

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Speaker 1: not get a free pass on this um. Again, critical

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Speaker 1: thinking is key here. We need to look at all

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Speaker 1: the different factors of all the different options. Now, despite

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Speaker 1: the fact that fossil fuels are non renewable and that

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Speaker 1: we're dumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere every day,

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Speaker 1: we depend heavily on these fossil fuels. According to the

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Speaker 1: World Bank, fossil fuels account for about eight of all

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Speaker 1: energy consumption around the world, so they represent the primary

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Speaker 1: energy consumption path we humans rely upon today. So why

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Speaker 1: is that? Why do we rely upon it so heavily

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Speaker 1: if we see these potential negative consequences to using them. Well,

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Speaker 1: for one, these fuels are dense with energy, which means

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Speaker 1: you get a lot of oomph when you burn the stuff. Plus,

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Speaker 1: we've built systems and infrastructures around the idea of harvesting, processing,

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Speaker 1: and burning these fuels. Now, some of the elements in

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Speaker 1: those systems we might be able to adapt so that

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Speaker 1: they can handle a change to a different fuel source. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, the stuff we've already established we might

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Speaker 1: be able to repurpose. But some things we probably couldn't repurpose,

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Speaker 1: so that would mean that switching the to a different fuel.

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Speaker 1: It's not just as simple as saying, hey, this stuff

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Speaker 1: is pretty bad for our environment, because it may also

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Speaker 1: mean having to make really big systemic changes across the board,

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Speaker 1: which is difficult and it's expensive. Now, that's not to

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Speaker 1: say it wouldn't be worth the investment. When you look

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Speaker 1: at the alternatives, especially if you look at the consequences

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Speaker 1: of climate change over the long term, you could make

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Speaker 1: a very convincing argument that this is an investment we

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Speaker 1: have to make. But it's hard to get that ball

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Speaker 1: rolling because when you've already got another option that's easier,

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Speaker 1: the tendency is to go to the easier option, and

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Speaker 1: even if that option isn't you know better, it's just easier. Now.

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Speaker 1: Over time, the supply of these fossil fuels will dwindle,

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Speaker 1: particularly as we see our consumption trends globally on the rise,

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Speaker 1: and we'll see the price for them go up because

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Speaker 1: supply will go down, demand will be increasing. In order

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Speaker 1: to reflect that, you're going to see prices go up,

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Speaker 1: not even in order to reflect it. That's just the

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Speaker 1: way the world works of economics. So We've already seen

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Speaker 1: global conflicts that hinge at least in part on access

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Speaker 1: to fossil fuels. Those will likely escalate should our dependency

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Speaker 1: remain steady while supplies decline. So in other words, we

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Speaker 1: can see instability across the world as a result of

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Speaker 1: this dependence upon fossil fuels. Okay, but what are biofuels then, well,

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Speaker 1: these are fuels that come from biological materials organic material biomass.

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Speaker 1: In other words, they can be solid fuel uh wood

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Speaker 1: is an example of US solid biofuel or poop you know,

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Speaker 1: manure that can be a solid fuel. They can also

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Speaker 1: be liquid fuels, such as grain alcohol also known as ethanol.

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Speaker 1: They can be gases like various synthetic or sin gas products,

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Speaker 1: which in itself is sort of a shorthand for synthetic

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Speaker 1: natural gas. Now, like fossil fuels, these fuels also release

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Speaker 1: carbon when you burn them, though not necessarily as much

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Speaker 1: as fossil fuels might. But more importantly, you can replenish

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Speaker 1: these fuels much faster by growing new biomass new feedstock,

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Speaker 1: and changing to a reliance on biofuels would mean having

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Speaker 1: to plant the stuff, and while it's growing, it's essentially

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Speaker 1: a carbon storage unit. It's taking carbon into itself, so

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Speaker 1: it's taking it out of the environment, and so you're

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Speaker 1: actually locking it down for the duration of growing the stuff.

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Speaker 1: So rather than dumping new carbon into the environment by

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Speaker 1: unlocking stuff that had previously been stored the way in

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Speaker 1: petroleum racle, you've got a cycle of carbon in the

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Speaker 1: form of your fuel crop. At least ideally so. Prehistoric

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Speaker 1: humans relied on biofuels like woold, but even some early

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Speaker 1: inventors in the era of internal combustion experimented with biofuels.

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Speaker 1: Rudolph Diesel, for whom the diesel engine is named, built

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Speaker 1: his engine to run on peanut oil. He imagined a

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Speaker 1: future in which engines would run on various vegetable oils. Now,

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Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about more about biofuels

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Speaker 1: and divide them up into two big categories and talk

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Speaker 1: about some of their pros and cons. But first I

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Speaker 1: I had to keep up with my bag the whole time, too,

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Speaker 1: and I had to rush through unfamiliar airports trying to

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Speaker 1: having to pick it up because we keep falling over.

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Speaker 1: It would wipe out as I was pulling it along

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Speaker 1: code tech during checkout. All right, let's get back into biofuels.

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Speaker 1: So the two main forms of biofuel are biodiesel and ethanol. Now,

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Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, bio diesel comes from stuff like

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Speaker 1: vegetable oils or fats or greases. You can run diesel

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Speaker 1: engines on this stuff without having to alter the engine

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Speaker 1: at all, which is pretty darn handy. Now, that's not

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Speaker 1: to say a gallon of vegetable oil has the same

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Speaker 1: energy density as a gallon of petroleum based diesel fuel,

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Speaker 1: but the fact that you can run diesel engines on

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Speaker 1: vegetable based fuels is a huge plus. You can take

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Speaker 1: used oil from stuff like a fryar and with a

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Speaker 1: minimum amount of processing, and use it as fuel for

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Speaker 1: something like a diesel engine. Now there's also work being

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Speaker 1: done on what's called third generation biodiesel, which would come

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Speaker 1: from stuff like algae and cyano bacteria. Now, these sources

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Speaker 1: could potentially yield an enormous amount of biodiesel with respect

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Speaker 1: to the amount of area they take up on Earth.

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Speaker 1: So in other words, you need to think about factors

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Speaker 1: like how much physical space is the uh production of

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Speaker 1: these biofuels going to take, because we have a limited

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Speaker 1: to that, right, we don't only have so much space

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Speaker 1: on the planet, and we have to dedicate it for

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Speaker 1: various things, so we have to reserve only a certain

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Speaker 1: portion of that for the production of fuel. Well, you

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Speaker 1: want your fuel to be dense, and you want to

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Speaker 1: be able to get a lot of it in as

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Speaker 1: little space as possible, so you can dedicate the rest

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Speaker 1: of that space for other things. That's one of the

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Speaker 1: potential benefits for using things like algae and sano bacteria.

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Speaker 1: You could grow a great deal of the stuff that

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Speaker 1: could yield a good amount of energy for the amount

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Speaker 1: of area it takes. But right now, the process to

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Speaker 1: convert that stuff into biodiesel is a little bit on

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Speaker 1: the expensive side, and that means it's not as attractive

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Speaker 1: so if that expense comes down, it could become an

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Speaker 1: economically viable option. But if it doesn't, then from a

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Speaker 1: financial standpoint, you could argue that makes more sense to

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Speaker 1: use a different source for biodiesel or using petroleum based diesel,

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Speaker 1: even though the alternative would make less use of space.

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Speaker 1: Biodiesel fuels do create pollutants on burning. They do not

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Speaker 1: burn totally clean. They aren't some sort of magic material,

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Speaker 1: but the amount of pollutants is significantly lower than you

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Speaker 1: would find with the petroleum based diesel. On top of that,

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Speaker 1: biodiesel is non toxic and it's also biodegradable, so the

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Speaker 1: fuel is safer to handle and dispose of than petroleum

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Speaker 1: based diesel is. There are other issues, but we'll get

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Speaker 1: into that. Let's look at the other type of biofuel, ethanol.

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Speaker 1: So ethanol is alcohol like it. It's the toff that

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Speaker 1: makes alcoholic drinks alcoholic. It's the same alcohol as you

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Speaker 1: would find in beer or wine or hard liquor. It

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Speaker 1: comes from fermented sugars and it's used as an additive

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Speaker 1: in fuels around the world. The three main types that

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Speaker 1: you tend to find in the United States are E ten,

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Speaker 1: which is ten percent ethanol and nine percent gasoline E

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Speaker 1: fifteen which no big surprise, fiftcent ethanol and eighty five

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Speaker 1: percent gasoline and e eighty five which is not eight

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Speaker 1: five percent ethanol. It's actually somewhere between fifty one and

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Speaker 1: eighty three percent depending upon the blend UH and the

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Speaker 1: rest of it is gasoline, so it's more than half

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Speaker 1: ethanol as opposed to gasoline. Now, unlike biodiesel, to use

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Speaker 1: ethanol and engine has to be designed to handle it

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Speaker 1: above a certain percentage, otherwise you're gonna get some problems

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Speaker 1: as you try to burn the fuel. You might get

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Speaker 1: damaged to the engine or various engine components, and at

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Speaker 1: lower percentages the performance issues are negligible, and so in

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Speaker 1: the United States all gasoline powered ins are rated to

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Speaker 1: run E ten ethanol without any real issue. Beyond that, though,

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Speaker 1: you would need a fuel flexible vehicle to take advantage

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Speaker 1: of higher percentages of ethanol without causing damage to the engine.

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Speaker 1: Ethanol comes from fermenting various plants. In the United States,

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Speaker 1: it's almost exclusively corn, so it makes up the vast

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Speaker 1: majority of all feedstocks used to create ethanol in the US,

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Speaker 1: but farmers have also tried other stuff like sugarcane, potato skins, beats,

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Speaker 1: yard clippings, rice, and switch grass. Now in Brazil, sugarcane

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Speaker 1: is far more common as a feedstock, and nearly all

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Speaker 1: the cars in Brazil can run on pure ethanol rather

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Speaker 1: than on a mixture, although mixtures of gasoline are also

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Speaker 1: still sold in Brazil, but you could run most Brazilian

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Speaker 1: vehicles on pure ethanol. Ethanol also traces its history as

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Speaker 1: a fuel for cars way back to the early days.

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Speaker 1: Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on a

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Speaker 1: mixture of gasoline and alcohol way back in night. Mixing

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Speaker 1: ethanol with gasoline reduces the amount of pollutants emitted when

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Speaker 1: burning the fuel. In the United States, in the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: the oil crisis led to large investments in producing and

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Speaker 1: distributing ethanol, so that it became a standard type of fuel,

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Speaker 1: and it's pretty much stayed that way since. So, in

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Speaker 1: other words, they were looking at, well, we're gonna have

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Speaker 1: fuel shortages unless we can make up some of that

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Speaker 1: volume of fuel with another substance that we can produce.

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Speaker 1: Here in the United States, that substance was ethanol. Now,

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Speaker 1: as it turns out, it gets way more complicated than

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Speaker 1: all this, you can't really go apples to apples with

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Speaker 1: fossil fuels and bio fuels. So let's get down to

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Speaker 1: some of the sticking points that make this a tricky

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Speaker 1: debate right. One of those is the amount of energy

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Speaker 1: that's stored within these fuels, because not all fuels are

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Speaker 1: created equal. A gallon of gasoline and a gallon of ethanol,

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Speaker 1: for example, contain different amounts of energy. A unit we

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Speaker 1: used to measure the amount of energy within fuel when

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00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:02,040
Speaker 1: it's you know, burning released when you burn it is

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Speaker 1: b t U or British thermal unit. This unit, in turn,

430
00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:07,760
Speaker 1: is based off the amount of heat needed to increase

431
00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 1: the temperature of one pound of water by one degree

432
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:14,119
Speaker 1: of fahrenheit. And I can hear all the folks in

433
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: other countries rolling their eyes right now. I hear you

434
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:20,200
Speaker 1: rolling your eyes. I can't see you, but your eye

435
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:23,040
Speaker 1: rolling is making noise. Because this is a very non

436
00:25:23,920 --> 00:25:26,359
Speaker 1: you know, metric way to go about things. So the

437
00:25:26,480 --> 00:25:30,760
Speaker 1: metric system would use units like the calorie, which describes

438
00:25:30,800 --> 00:25:33,119
Speaker 1: the amount of heat needed to heat one gram of

439
00:25:33,200 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: water by one degree celsius, and the unit to measure

440
00:25:38,119 --> 00:25:41,520
Speaker 1: energy would be the jewel one b t U is

441
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:46,080
Speaker 1: equal to around one thousand, fifty five jewels more or less. Okay,

442
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: so you can really think of bt U s a

443
00:25:48,640 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: shorthand for how much energy is stored within this given fuel.

444
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:54,679
Speaker 1: And so you want a bigger number, right, The bigger

445
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:58,119
Speaker 1: the number, the more energy is in that fuel, the

446
00:25:58,200 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: more work you can do with that on the fuel.

447
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:02,720
Speaker 1: And here's where we see one of the big differences

448
00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:05,720
Speaker 1: between fossil fuels and bio fuels. So a gallon of

449
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:10,399
Speaker 1: gasoline contains approximately one four thousand, eight hundred b t U,

450
00:26:10,560 --> 00:26:12,680
Speaker 1: so nearly a hundred twenty five thousand b t U.

451
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 1: A gallon of ethanol would represent only eighty thousand BTU,

452
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:20,840
Speaker 1: so eighty thousand, two hundred twenty five thousand. So the

453
00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: amount of energy within a gallon of ethanol is less

454
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: than what you would get with a gallon of gasoline.

455
00:26:26,119 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 1: All right, So let's take a slightly bigger picture. Look,

456
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,080
Speaker 1: we're using fuel to do something, right, Like, let's say

457
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:34,680
Speaker 1: we're using it to power a car, and let's say

458
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:38,040
Speaker 1: we're operating the car as steady demand for energy. There's

459
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 1: no point where the engine is going to require more power,

460
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:45,959
Speaker 1: So we're just thinking of it as like a nice, smooth,

461
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: steady road. Now, granted, this isn't really how stuff works

462
00:26:49,320 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 1: in the real world, but simplifies things for the purposes

463
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: of our discussion. You'd be able to drive the car

464
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: further on a gallon of gasoline, then you would be

465
00:26:58,119 --> 00:27:01,000
Speaker 1: able if you were using a gallon of pure ethanol.

466
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:04,600
Speaker 1: In fact, you would need one point five six gallons

467
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: of ethanol to get you as far as a single

468
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: gallon of gasoline could take you, assuming all other factors

469
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: remain the same. So this makes the discussion about greenhouse

470
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:19,120
Speaker 1: gases also a little more complicated, because burning a gallon

471
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 1: of ethanol will release less carbon dioxide than burning a

472
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:25,920
Speaker 1: gallon of gasoline. But remember the ethanol does less work,

473
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:28,400
Speaker 1: so really you have to burn one point five six

474
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,719
Speaker 1: gallons of ethanol to represent the same energy released as

475
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:34,960
Speaker 1: one gallon of gasoline, and that starts to shave away

476
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: some of the advantage of releasing less c O two

477
00:27:38,680 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: because you're in fact burning more fuel to make up

478
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,400
Speaker 1: for the shortfall in energy density. Even so, you're still

479
00:27:45,560 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 1: producing fewer pollutants in just that strictly the burning of

480
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: the fuel itself, so there's still benefit to using ethanol.

481
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:54,960
Speaker 1: I just wanted to point out that doesn't quite make

482
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,800
Speaker 1: sense to go gallon for gallon when you're talking about pollutants,

483
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: because you're gonna need to use or ethanol to do

484
00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:03,720
Speaker 1: the same amount of work you could with gasoline. Still,

485
00:28:04,359 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 1: another thing to keep in mind is ethanol is carbon neutral,

486
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,560
Speaker 1: which means that the amount of carbon released equals the

487
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:14,400
Speaker 1: same amount of carbon that the organic material absorbed during

488
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 1: its full lifespan. And with ethanol in the US, like

489
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: I said, we're really talking about corn here, right. So

490
00:28:20,600 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: if we were to stop all fossil fuel generation right now,

491
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: like we we no longer harvest it, refine it. We're

492
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:32,679
Speaker 1: done with fossil fuels. We're just using biofuels magically, somehow,

493
00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 1: we would be working with a more or less closed cycle,

494
00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: right because we wouldn't be dumping new carbon dioxide into

495
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. We would be locking it away in whatever

496
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:49,040
Speaker 1: fuel stock we were growing, and then we'd be releasing

497
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: it again when we burn the fuel stock. But then

498
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:55,000
Speaker 1: we'd have a new generation of fuels of feedstock growing.

499
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:58,440
Speaker 1: I keep saying fuel stop, I mean feed stock. We'd

500
00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 1: have a new generation of feed stock growing that would

501
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 1: lock that carbon away again, and you would just have

502
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 1: the cycle, it's like the water cycle at all, stay

503
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:09,959
Speaker 1: the same. You wouldn't have an increase in carbon dioxide

504
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: because you're not unlocking carbon that was previously locked away

505
00:29:14,240 --> 00:29:17,480
Speaker 1: deep under the earth. Now, according to the U. S.

506
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: Department of Energy, taking the full life cycle of ethanol

507
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:24,120
Speaker 1: into account amounts to an average reduction in greenhouse gas

508
00:29:24,200 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: emissions of assuming you're using corn based ethanol, because that

509
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: factor matters a lot. If however, scientists can produce ethanol

510
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: efficiently using cellulose based feedstocks, meaning more woody parts of plants,

511
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't have to grow corn, You could grow

512
00:29:43,960 --> 00:29:46,680
Speaker 1: lots of different stuff, and you wouldn't necessarily have to

513
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 1: use good farmland for it because the stuff is really

514
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: hardy and it can grow in lots of different conditions.

515
00:29:53,640 --> 00:29:56,680
Speaker 1: Then you could see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions

516
00:29:56,760 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: go up as high as a hundred eight percent taking

517
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 1: in to account the full life cycle of ethanol. Now,

518
00:30:03,440 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: the reason I even bring this up is to point

519
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: out that this is a more complicated discussion than just

520
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 1: fossil fuels are bad. I didn't mention earlier. There are

521
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: other considerations too, like national security. So what do I

522
00:30:14,400 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 1: mean by that, Well, let's say you live in a

523
00:30:17,560 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: nation that is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels, and that

524
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:24,560
Speaker 1: to meet the demand that your country has, you have

525
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,360
Speaker 1: to import fuel from other parts of the world because

526
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: you don't produce enough of it at home to meet

527
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 1: your needs. Now, that means that the day to day

528
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:36,400
Speaker 1: operations in your country are dependent upon the exports of

529
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:40,520
Speaker 1: other countries. And should you have any, say, diplomatic issues

530
00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:43,960
Speaker 1: with those other countries, or if the oil industry in

531
00:30:44,040 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: those countries were to somehow be impacted by regional issues

532
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 1: like a war or something like that, you could be

533
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: in serious trouble. Your supply could be in jeopardy. So

534
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: imagine rolling power outages across an entire country because there

535
00:30:57,520 --> 00:31:00,440
Speaker 1: are fuel shortages and those were all brought around because

536
00:31:00,480 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: of some international dispute or a conflict. These things can

537
00:31:04,040 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: and do happen, and it's a big reason why the

538
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 1: United States began to use ethanol on a widespread basis

539
00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:12,720
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Or imagine that you're limited in

540
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:15,760
Speaker 1: options as to where you get your oil from, and

541
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: the best source of oil, meaning the most plentiful or

542
00:31:19,520 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 1: least expensive, or however you wanted to find. Best. In

543
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,360
Speaker 1: this particular scenario, it happens to be in a country

544
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: that either engages in or supports efforts that are in

545
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:32,840
Speaker 1: opposition with your own. So in a drastic example, you

546
00:31:32,920 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: might be feeding money into a country that is using

547
00:31:35,640 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: that money to fund military operations that threaten your country

548
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 1: or your allies, or it might be a country that

549
00:31:41,680 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: helps fund terrorists cells that clearly you wouldn't want to

550
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 1: hand over cash to someone who wants to see you

551
00:31:47,320 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 1: brought down. But at the same time, you have needs

552
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: that have to be met. Now that's what I mean

553
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 1: by national security. Unless you are in a country with

554
00:31:55,880 --> 00:31:59,320
Speaker 1: plentiful fossil fuel reserves, you're gonna be at least partly

555
00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: dependent on what other nations are able to produce, and

556
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:06,840
Speaker 1: that is a security vulnerability. And if you have plentiful

557
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 1: fossil fuels in your country, then you might be attempting

558
00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 1: target for other countries that do not have those fossil

559
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:18,240
Speaker 1: fuel reserves. Biofuel advocates argue that biofuels can help migrate

560
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:21,760
Speaker 1: a country into energy independence as long as the country

561
00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 1: is capable of growing the right feedstocks, then it can

562
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 1: wean itself off of fossil fuels and depend more on

563
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 1: biofuels to meet its energy needs. It creates industry within

564
00:32:31,960 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: the country itself as farmers grow the feedstock for the

565
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: rest of the nation, producing the basic fuel needed and

566
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 1: freeing up the country from depending upon potentially unreliable partner nations.

567
00:32:42,840 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: But again, to do that, you have to take a

568
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: lot of other things into consideration. You have to consider

569
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: the actual needs of the public. How much energy is

570
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,720
Speaker 1: the public consuming on a daily basis. How much biofuel

571
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: would you need to grow in order to meet the

572
00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:02,120
Speaker 1: demand of the public. Is there actually enough capacity within

573
00:33:02,240 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: your country to grow that feedstock while still dedicating sufficient

574
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: farmland for other purposes, you know, like growing food. If not,

575
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: then you're trading energy dependency for food dependency. Instead of

576
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,680
Speaker 1: being in danger of blackouts, now you're in danger of starving,

577
00:33:19,320 --> 00:33:21,760
Speaker 1: or the very least, you're in danger of affecting the

578
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: economics of food prices, because if you have less land

579
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: for food production, you're going to have a smaller supply

580
00:33:28,000 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 1: of food. The demand for food is going to remain

581
00:33:30,720 --> 00:33:33,920
Speaker 1: high because people gotta eat, so you would this will

582
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: most likely be reflected in rising food costs. Beyond capacity,

583
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:40,960
Speaker 1: you have to take into consideration the environmental impact of

584
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: growing feedstocks in the first place. So the actual process

585
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,280
Speaker 1: of farming and harvesting and then refining the stuff into fuel.

586
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,960
Speaker 1: So farming on its own just requires a lot of water,

587
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 1: and it also can create a lot of pollutants. Uh So,

588
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: while the process of burning the fuel could be cleaner

589
00:33:59,200 --> 00:34:01,680
Speaker 1: than fossil fuels are. Like if you put a gallon

590
00:34:01,760 --> 00:34:04,760
Speaker 1: of gasoline and a gallon of ethanol and a gallon

591
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: of biodiesel, and you measured all the polutants that came out,

592
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: you would say all the gasolines producing more pollutants. That

593
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 1: might be true, but you have to take into consideration

594
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:15,560
Speaker 1: all the other contributing factors, and you have to consider

595
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 1: these factors as they grow to scale as well. It's

596
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 1: possible that at a smaller scale the environmental impact isn't

597
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:25,879
Speaker 1: really that severe and biofuels come out as a clear

598
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 1: superior choice over fossil fuels. But then as you start

599
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: to scale up in order to meet all the energy

600
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:36,400
Speaker 1: needs of a country, it's possible for that to actually change. Now,

601
00:34:36,480 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: for one thing, farming equipment still largely runs on fossil fuels,

602
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: so you still have to burn fossil fuels to create

603
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:47,000
Speaker 1: the alternatives to those fossil fuels, which seems like that's

604
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: a problem. Means that maybe you need to start developing,

605
00:34:50,640 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 1: you know, farming equipment that runs on biofuel to help

606
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 1: alleviate that. But then you also stuff like fertilizer. You

607
00:34:57,680 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 1: need fertilizer to help grow things like corn, and fertilizer

608
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: requires fossil fuels in its manufacturing process. Then there's the

609
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 1: transportation of all this stuff, like the trucks that are

610
00:35:07,680 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: taking it to and from places, whether it's raw feedstocks

611
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 1: or refined fuel. All of this is part of that

612
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: infrastructure I was talking about earlier. Now that's one of

613
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: the big reasons that scientists are working to improve the

614
00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 1: efficiency of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol comes from those more

615
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,440
Speaker 1: woody parts of a plant, and it's more challenging to

616
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 1: get a big yield from that type of feedstock. But

617
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's way easier to grow that

618
00:35:33,320 --> 00:35:36,799
Speaker 1: stuff and it requires less of an investment in resources,

619
00:35:36,920 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: and it also produces fewer pollutants. Right because if you

620
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: don't have to use as much heavy equipment to farm

621
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 1: the stuff, then you're not burning as many fossil fuels.

622
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: So you can also use low quality land to grow

623
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: cellulosic feedstocks stuff like switch grass, for example. That allows

624
00:35:53,640 --> 00:35:57,160
Speaker 1: you to reserve the higher quality land for food production farming,

625
00:35:57,239 --> 00:35:59,839
Speaker 1: so you don't have that conflict between do you grow

626
00:36:00,000 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: food here or do you grow fuel here. But unless

627
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,920
Speaker 1: you can get the conversion rate high enough, that is

628
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: the rate of fuel you get from the amount of

629
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:14,440
Speaker 1: biomass you're growing and processing, then you're fighting a losing

630
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 1: battle because if it if it costs less and requires

631
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: less work to use something like corn or sugarcane, then

632
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 1: it may not make sense to switch over to cellulo

633
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,680
Speaker 1: sick feedstock. Right. You have to look at all the

634
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:30,440
Speaker 1: different pros and cons. Now that being said, a lot

635
00:36:30,480 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: of work is going into improving the conversion rates for

636
00:36:33,480 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: this stuff, and if it works out, it could be

637
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 1: a huge game changer. In fact, it will be a

638
00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 1: big game changer if it works out, because the amount

639
00:36:41,040 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: of work would be low compared to stuff like corn,

640
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:45,879
Speaker 1: and you would be looking at a big energy game,

641
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,880
Speaker 1: meaning that the energy represented by the fuel would be

642
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: sufficiently higher than the amount of energy that was spent

643
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:54,440
Speaker 1: creating the fuel in the first place. Like, if it

644
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 1: takes you x amount of energy to produce the fuel,

645
00:36:58,680 --> 00:37:02,239
Speaker 1: and the fuel represents plus one, you could argue, well,

646
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,919
Speaker 1: that wasn't really enough of a gain. It was negligible,

647
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 1: and therefore we barely broke even. We just barely got ahead. Uh,

648
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 1: you want you want to have a sufficient gain of

649
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: energy based on you know, how much you've put in. Now,

650
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll go into a few more

651
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:22,800
Speaker 1: considerations that we have to take into account when we

652
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: talk about biofuels. But first let's take a quick break.

653
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:35,239
Speaker 1: So I've covered some of the big concerns that we

654
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:37,359
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind with biofuels have a couple

655
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:39,360
Speaker 1: more dimension But first I thought to be interesting to

656
00:37:39,400 --> 00:37:42,520
Speaker 1: talk about the actual methods used to create more advanced

657
00:37:42,560 --> 00:37:47,560
Speaker 1: biofuels from biomass. Uh, you know, beyond just fermentation, Like,

658
00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: what are the processes we're talking about? Why is there

659
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 1: this block between uh, the harvesting of biofuels in the

660
00:37:55,920 --> 00:38:00,160
Speaker 1: processing it. So generally speaking, the first challenge is breaking

661
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 1: down the cellular walls and plants cells, which contains stuff

662
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: like cellulose and lignant, and this material is tough and

663
00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:11,200
Speaker 1: it represents sort of an energy barrier. Right. You want

664
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:14,480
Speaker 1: to get at the sugars that are inside these plants

665
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:17,800
Speaker 1: in order to ferment them, for example, for for the

666
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:20,640
Speaker 1: purposes of ethanol. You want to ferment those sugars and

667
00:38:20,960 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: and produce ethanol, but you have to get this to

668
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,320
Speaker 1: to the sugar first, and you've got these tough barriers

669
00:38:26,719 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: in your way, so you have to break those down.

670
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:31,920
Speaker 1: There are a couple different ways of doing that. In fact,

671
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: they are too broad approaches to breaking down the material

672
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:39,440
Speaker 1: high temperature deconstruction and low temperature deconstruction. So let's talk

673
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:43,320
Speaker 1: about low temperature first. Actually, typically in this approach, you

674
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:48,480
Speaker 1: would mix this biomass with some chemicals or some biological enzymes,

675
00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: and their job is to break down this uh cellular

676
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:57,320
Speaker 1: material so that you know, break down those barriers, the cellulos,

677
00:38:57,400 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: the lignant, that kind of stuff, so that you can

678
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 1: actually get to the sugars. Uh. It creates a new

679
00:39:04,560 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 1: kind of material that is typically called an intermediate because

680
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:13,280
Speaker 1: it is in between the raw feedstock and the processed fuel.

681
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: It's kind of a stage in the middle. So the

682
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:19,880
Speaker 1: chemicals or enzymes breakdown the exposed sugar polymers into simple

683
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:24,320
Speaker 1: sugar building blocks, and that can then go into a

684
00:39:24,480 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 1: further fermentation process to produce ethanol. Then you have the

685
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: high temperature deconstruction method, which actually has a few different

686
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:36,400
Speaker 1: ways of of working. All depends on your specific approach.

687
00:39:36,680 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 1: So one of those approaches is called pyrolysis, in which

688
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:43,520
Speaker 1: you put the biomass into an oxygen free chamber and

689
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:47,080
Speaker 1: you heat that chamber very quickly to a very high

690
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: temperature between like five hundred and seven hundred degrees celsius. Now,

691
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,240
Speaker 1: remember earlier I mentioned if you want to have a fire,

692
00:39:54,440 --> 00:39:58,200
Speaker 1: you need three elements. Right, You've gotta have fuel, you

693
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: have to have heat, and you have to have an oxidizer. Well,

694
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:03,160
Speaker 1: in this case, you only have two of those three.

695
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:05,640
Speaker 1: You've got fuel and you have heat, but you don't

696
00:40:05,760 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: have an oxidizer. Now, that means the material heats up

697
00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: but doesn't burn. It goes through pyrolysis. This process means

698
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: that the cell walls actually do break down, and then

699
00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 1: you can take the material after you've gone through this

700
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:23,600
Speaker 1: process and put it through fermentation to create sin gas.

701
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:25,960
Speaker 1: You could take the biomass and heat it in the

702
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:29,919
Speaker 1: presence of a small amount of oxygen, and you would

703
00:40:30,280 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: increase the temperatures beyond what you would use for pyroalysis.

704
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 1: You're going in excess of seven degrees celsius. This creates

705
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: a gas that's mainly a mixture of carbon monoxide and

706
00:40:39,719 --> 00:40:42,440
Speaker 1: hydrogen and can be used as sort of a synthetic

707
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:47,080
Speaker 1: natural gas. Then, if you wanted to make biodiesel from algae,

708
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:52,240
Speaker 1: you could use a different high temperature method called hydrothermal liquefaction,

709
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:54,919
Speaker 1: which I'm pretty sure the spa right down the road

710
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:57,479
Speaker 1: offers as a luxury treatment, but maybe they just don't

711
00:40:57,560 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: understand what words mean. Anyway, What it actually means is

712
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,799
Speaker 1: that you would be using the biomass with a little

713
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:06,360
Speaker 1: bit of water, and you put it inside a pressurized chamber,

714
00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: and you would heat that pressurized chamber up between two

715
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: hundred degrees celsius, and that would rapidly turn the biomass

716
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:17,120
Speaker 1: into a sort of synthetic crude oil. You have a

717
00:41:17,280 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: bio oil. Now, typically after deconstruction, you have to take

718
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,240
Speaker 1: this intermediary material and then put it through another process,

719
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: or maybe a two processes in order to get actual

720
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: usable biofuel. This is where we start running into not

721
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 1: just energy barriers, but cost barriers and also potential environmental impact. Right,

722
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:44,080
Speaker 1: all of these processes require energy, they all have byproducts.

723
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:46,320
Speaker 1: This is why you have to look at these systems

724
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: as a whole, as opposed to narrowing your focus down

725
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:52,880
Speaker 1: on just the simple burning of fuel, because if you

726
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 1: do that, you might be ignoring other challenges. They have

727
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 1: real world impact, and you could be in a position

728
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,080
Speaker 1: where you're no better off than where you started from,

729
00:42:02,719 --> 00:42:04,600
Speaker 1: or you might be better off in some ways but

730
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,000
Speaker 1: worse off than others. That's why you have to take

731
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: this sort of big picture approach. I find the whole

732
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 1: process actually pretty fascinating for creating biofuels. Now, a few

733
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: other factors that play into the debate around biofuels are

734
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:22,719
Speaker 1: that as farmers clear land to produce the feedstocks, you

735
00:42:22,800 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 1: start seeing a decrease in biodiversity, particularly in places like

736
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 1: the United States where you know they're clearing out enormous

737
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:32,440
Speaker 1: amounts of land in order to grow corn. Cutting down

738
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 1: biodiversity is pretty bad for ecosystems. Just generally speaking, you

739
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,440
Speaker 1: you want to have a lot of biodiversity, and you

740
00:42:39,520 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 1: want you don't want to decrease it if you can.

741
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,279
Speaker 1: There's also the danger of cutting down rich, eco diverse

742
00:42:45,960 --> 00:42:50,120
Speaker 1: environments like the rainforest. You can see that in parts

743
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: of South America where there are areas of ancient rainforests

744
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:57,320
Speaker 1: getting cleared away in order to create like an oil

745
00:42:57,440 --> 00:43:02,200
Speaker 1: palm production facility. That's not great either. H Then again,

746
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 1: if we are able to use stuff like algae for

747
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: biodiesel and more grasses like switch grass for ethanol production,

748
00:43:10,640 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: we reduced the need to clear forests and reduced biodiversity.

749
00:43:14,280 --> 00:43:17,480
Speaker 1: We could use land again that isn't quite as rich

750
00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:20,800
Speaker 1: in order to grow this stuff. But the breakthroughs have

751
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:24,240
Speaker 1: to come first, and they have to be economically viable,

752
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 1: which can be helped significantly through stuff like government subsidies.

753
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:31,920
Speaker 1: So brings a political element into this as well. In addition,

754
00:43:32,320 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: engineers and scientists are working on ways to capture carbon

755
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:39,520
Speaker 1: dioxide from things like power plants. Now, the captured CEO

756
00:43:39,640 --> 00:43:43,840
Speaker 1: two could then be stored in some long term storage technique,

757
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: like pumping it into geological formations deep under the earth

758
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 1: or in sediments under the ocean floor, essentially locking the

759
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:56,080
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide away inside the earth, kind of like how

760
00:43:56,160 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: it was locked away before we started digging up all

761
00:43:58,160 --> 00:44:01,400
Speaker 1: those fossil fuels to begin with, we'd essentially be returning

762
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,800
Speaker 1: the carbon to underneath the surface of the planet. And

763
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: if we use biofuels to do all this, like instead

764
00:44:08,600 --> 00:44:11,680
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels, we're just using biofuels to run our

765
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 1: power plants and the equipment we use to generate electricity,

766
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:17,759
Speaker 1: we could begin to see an overall reduction of c

767
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: O two in the atmosphere right because the feet stock

768
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,160
Speaker 1: would pull CEO too out of the atmosphere as they

769
00:44:23,200 --> 00:44:26,520
Speaker 1: were growing. They would essentially be capturing and locking away

770
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:31,040
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. And then you could further capture c O

771
00:44:31,200 --> 00:44:33,279
Speaker 1: two as it was being produced when you're burning it

772
00:44:33,600 --> 00:44:36,080
Speaker 1: at the power plant. Then you could pump it down

773
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:39,080
Speaker 1: beneath the earth and lock it away and see an

774
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: overall reduction in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. You would

775
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: actually be removing c O two, reversing that trend. Now,

776
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,760
Speaker 1: that's a pretty darn good goal to strife for considering

777
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:53,800
Speaker 1: the current trajectory we're on with regard to climate change

778
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:57,160
Speaker 1: and greenhouse gas emissions. But it requires a whole lot

779
00:44:57,239 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 1: of stuff to fall into place properly, and a lot

780
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: of work done on our behalf uh in order for

781
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: this to all actually work out. It's not a technological

782
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,560
Speaker 1: problem so much as it is a person problem, like

783
00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: as social problem, political problem. There's a lot of complicated,

784
00:45:15,000 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 1: messy stuff beyond the technology. Now, there are plenty of

785
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: people who argue we should not be focusing on bio

786
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 1: fuels anyway, that really that's almost a lateral move off

787
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels when you take the big picture into account,

788
00:45:27,719 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: I would argue that fossil fuels overall are more environmentally

789
00:45:31,680 --> 00:45:35,040
Speaker 1: harmful than bio fuels, but I also admit bio fuels

790
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 1: themselves are not perfect. They have a lot of of

791
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:43,799
Speaker 1: contributing factors towards environmental damage as well. So there are

792
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:45,560
Speaker 1: people who say we don't need to be thinking about

793
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 1: any of this at all. Instead of talking about feedstocks,

794
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:51,760
Speaker 1: we should be relying on stuff like wind power, solar power,

795
00:45:51,960 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 1: thermal hydro power, that kind of stuff. Many of those

796
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: solutions would require that we use some sort of energy

797
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,720
Speaker 1: storage technology, essentially batteries. We would have to have batteries

798
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:05,000
Speaker 1: because we wouldn't always have access to the stuff that

799
00:46:05,120 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: was generating the electricity, and that's one of the big

800
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:10,680
Speaker 1: drawbacks for those technologies because right now, we essentially produce

801
00:46:10,760 --> 00:46:13,839
Speaker 1: electricity when we need it. So when the demand is there,

802
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: we have power plants to produce the electricity and it

803
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: gets distributed throughout the power grid, and the power plant

804
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 1: goes into heavier production at times of higher demand, and

805
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:25,320
Speaker 1: it can slack off a little bit when the demand

806
00:46:25,520 --> 00:46:29,560
Speaker 1: is lower. And many of the green energy solutions produce

807
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: electricity according to some external force. So for example, solar

808
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:37,399
Speaker 1: panels obviously produce electricity when they're exposed to sunlight. When

809
00:46:37,440 --> 00:46:41,239
Speaker 1: it's night, they're not producing electricity, but people still need

810
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,280
Speaker 1: electricity at night, so you have to have a storage system.

811
00:46:44,320 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 1: You have to have batteries to store the electricity that

812
00:46:47,719 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 1: you can use later on, and you would have to

813
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 1: make sure that you can produce enough electricity during the

814
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:57,440
Speaker 1: day to meet everyone's needs, plus produce excess electricity that

815
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,200
Speaker 1: could charge up batteries so that you would have a

816
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:04,920
Speaker 1: supply whenever it's dark or overcast. Also, with these green

817
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 1: energy solutions, they obviously won't work equally well everywhere in

818
00:47:08,040 --> 00:47:10,320
Speaker 1: the world. Right if you live near the equator and

819
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,440
Speaker 1: you typically are in an area that gets a lot

820
00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:15,439
Speaker 1: of sun exposure, solar panels make a ton of sense.

821
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:17,879
Speaker 1: But if you're closer to the polls and you don't

822
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 1: get as many hours of sunlight during parts of the year,

823
00:47:21,440 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: or maybe you get more overcast days than sunny days

824
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:28,440
Speaker 1: on average, solar power might not be a great solution.

825
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,440
Speaker 1: And if you don't live near a river, hydropower becomes

826
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,440
Speaker 1: less viable and so forth. Right, if you aren't in

827
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: an area that regularly gets steady winds, wind power is

828
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: an issue. All of these have drawbacks. There are other alternatives,

829
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 1: such as nuclear power, but nuclear plants that rely on

830
00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:49,200
Speaker 1: fission have their own set of problems, both practical and political.

831
00:47:49,680 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 1: They produce nuclear waste, some of it is extremely dangerous

832
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: and needs to be disposed of in a secure location

833
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:58,680
Speaker 1: far from many people and kept sequestered from everybody else

834
00:47:58,960 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. But as you can imagine, not

835
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:04,280
Speaker 1: many folks are eager to have such a disposal facility

836
00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 1: located nearby, So even if nearby is still a hundred

837
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:10,879
Speaker 1: miles away, most people are like, I'd rather that goes

838
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: somewhere else, so that's become a big issue. Nuclear plants

839
00:48:15,120 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: are way more efficient, especially more efficient than they used

840
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 1: to be. They do not produce greenhouse gases the way

841
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:25,640
Speaker 1: coal fired plants or natural gas plants do, but they're

842
00:48:25,680 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: still as there's still this big issue, right, there's still

843
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:32,279
Speaker 1: this perception problem of them being unsafe, and there's a

844
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:36,360
Speaker 1: practical problem with the nuclear waste, Like even the safest

845
00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:38,880
Speaker 1: how nuclear power plant is still going to be generating

846
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 1: waste that you have to deal with. Uh. That is

847
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,279
Speaker 1: something you just can't get around now. If we ever

848
00:48:44,400 --> 00:48:48,480
Speaker 1: get around to making nuclear fusion work as an economically

849
00:48:48,640 --> 00:48:52,400
Speaker 1: viable means of generating electricity, we'd be all set for

850
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,720
Speaker 1: a good long while. Nuclear fusion does not produce nuclear

851
00:48:55,760 --> 00:49:00,320
Speaker 1: waste the same way nuclear fission does. Uh, it's the

852
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:04,640
Speaker 1: same nuclear process that we see in stars. Right, the

853
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:09,200
Speaker 1: sun is a nuclear fusion power plant. Essentially, if we

854
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:12,680
Speaker 1: could replicate that, and we could harness that sort of

855
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 1: energy economically, we'd be able to produce all the electricity

856
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:19,200
Speaker 1: we would need for a really good long while. We'd

857
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:23,360
Speaker 1: likely see a huge change, like we'd see a migration

858
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:26,919
Speaker 1: to more electric vehicles, for example, because the energy source

859
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 1: would be plentiful compared to more traditional fuels. But the

860
00:49:30,719 --> 00:49:33,920
Speaker 1: big problem we face right now is that nuclear fusion

861
00:49:33,960 --> 00:49:38,400
Speaker 1: requires an awful lot of energy to start. It requires

862
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 1: a lot of energy just to get a fusion reaction

863
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: going in the first place. Sustaining a reaction, or being

864
00:49:44,600 --> 00:49:47,719
Speaker 1: able to do multiple reactions to generate electricity on a

865
00:49:47,760 --> 00:49:51,640
Speaker 1: regular basis remains a really big challenge. So while we

866
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:55,279
Speaker 1: have had a few research fusion plants create reactions that

867
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: produced enormous amounts of energy, we haven't quite cracked the

868
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:03,520
Speaker 1: problem of making it something practical that we can repeat

869
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 1: without costing as much or more energy to start as

870
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:09,960
Speaker 1: we get out of it. So if you're having to

871
00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 1: pour more energy in then you're getting out, that's a

872
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:15,880
Speaker 1: losing proposition, right, You're you're at a net energy loss.

873
00:50:16,360 --> 00:50:18,560
Speaker 1: If you're getting more out than you put in, but

874
00:50:18,719 --> 00:50:23,120
Speaker 1: it's incredibly expensive. That's a different challenge, but still a challenge.

875
00:50:23,800 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of hard decisions to make right.

876
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: We need to select one or more strategies for meeting

877
00:50:31,239 --> 00:50:33,680
Speaker 1: our energy needs, and we need to move away from

878
00:50:33,719 --> 00:50:36,160
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. That seems to be pretty darn clear from

879
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:40,200
Speaker 1: multiple reasons, and we need to acknowledge that these challenges

880
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:43,960
Speaker 1: each alternative has that they exist, we have to acknowledge

881
00:50:44,000 --> 00:50:47,320
Speaker 1: that we need to consider how to overcome or mitigate

882
00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: those challenges in order to make the best choice for us.

883
00:50:51,560 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 1: And we have to commit toward the action of moving

884
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: away from fossil fuels instead of doing the sort of

885
00:50:56,640 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 1: wishy washy, well this area, this, this is maybe not

886
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 1: as good because of X, Y and Z, and this

887
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:05,320
Speaker 1: one maybe not as good because of A, B and C.

888
00:51:05,640 --> 00:51:08,279
Speaker 1: Eventually we have to say, here, let's make a plan,

889
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:14,759
Speaker 1: Let's identify and prioritize our approach, let's diversify it, Let's

890
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 1: not put all of our eggs in one basket, and

891
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 1: let's actually do this. We have to do that at

892
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 1: some point. The question is when do we do it now.

893
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 1: I don't bring up all the challenges or drawbacks in

894
00:51:26,600 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 1: an effort to persuade anyone from pursuing alternatives to fossil fuels.

895
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:32,279
Speaker 1: I do it so we can move forward with our

896
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,520
Speaker 1: eyes on a solution and not just rhetoric. Uh. That

897
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: is the biggest challenge I see is that we because

898
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 1: we're looking for the perfect solution, we're not moving at all,

899
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:47,960
Speaker 1: and at least not as fast as we need to.

900
00:51:48,920 --> 00:51:51,359
Speaker 1: Particularly the United States but other parts of the world

901
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:55,880
Speaker 1: also fall into that category. So that wraps up this

902
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:58,799
Speaker 1: discussion of bio fuels. Like I said, it is complicated.

903
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:01,799
Speaker 1: It's something. Ut if you think about all the ins

904
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:05,359
Speaker 1: and outs, you realize, Okay, I can see why there's

905
00:52:05,400 --> 00:52:07,600
Speaker 1: been a lot of debate on the subject. Uh. You

906
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:10,600
Speaker 1: can also see where there are potential arguments to be

907
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:14,360
Speaker 1: made by interested parties. Let's say that you're, you know,

908
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: a representative of the oil industry. Well, you can see

909
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:23,520
Speaker 1: plenty of opportunities to object to alternatives by pointing out

910
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:27,640
Speaker 1: their shortcomings. Uh. And you don't even have to address

911
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: the problems of your own industry, right, You just hammer

912
00:52:31,239 --> 00:52:35,680
Speaker 1: home that these alternatives have their own drawbacks, and that

913
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:39,279
Speaker 1: can be enough to halt progress. We have seen that

914
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:41,719
Speaker 1: as well. I don't think it's so much a conspiracy

915
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 1: as it's just people trying to protect their own interests, um,

916
00:52:46,360 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 1: and not being terribly obtuse about that. It seems pretty

917
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:54,799
Speaker 1: transparent to me, But we still have to get past

918
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: it somehow. UM. It's imperative. Really, I want to see

919
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:03,879
Speaker 1: a world where my nieces when they're adults, aren't struggling

920
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:09,960
Speaker 1: in an increasingly hostile environment. Due to environmental and fuel

921
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 1: related problems. That's the world I want to see, and

922
00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: the only real way of making sure we get there

923
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:20,080
Speaker 1: is to find this alternative to fossil fuels. All right, Well,

924
00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion. I hope you guys got

925
00:53:23,120 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 1: something out of it, and if you have suggestions for

926
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:28,840
Speaker 1: future episodes, feel free to reach out to me. The

927
00:53:28,880 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 1: email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,

928
00:53:32,440 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: or to get in touch on Facebook or Twitter, the

929
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:37,400
Speaker 1: handle at both of those is tech Stuff hs W.

930
00:53:38,400 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: You can pop on over to our website that's tech

931
00:53:40,480 --> 00:53:42,759
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an archive of

932
00:53:42,840 --> 00:53:45,919
Speaker 1: every single episode we've ever recorded there. Go check that out.

933
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,279
Speaker 1: And also you'll see a link to our online store.

934
00:53:49,520 --> 00:53:51,319
Speaker 1: If you go to the link, you will be able

935
00:53:51,360 --> 00:53:53,480
Speaker 1: to see all sorts of merchandise that has tech Stuff

936
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 1: logos and other other shows stuff on there. And every

937
00:53:57,840 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show, and we

938
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:01,760
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate at it, and I'll talk to you again

939
00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 1: really soon. Hext Stuff is a production of I Heart

940
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,

941
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:16,440
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

942
00:54:16,560 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows