Speaker 1: Welcome to text Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and
Speaker 1: today I thought I would tackle a topic that I
Speaker 1: think can get a little confusing at times. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on with it, and there are a ton
Speaker 1: of different parties, all with their own agendas and points
Speaker 1: of view that make it kind of tricky to understand
Speaker 1: if you're trying to come at it from an objective,
Speaker 1: unbiased perspective. The topic is, of course biofuels, which I
Speaker 1: imagine is in the title of this episode somewhere, so
Speaker 1: it shouldn't come as a surprise. Now, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of topics that are either directly or tangentially related
Speaker 1: to biofuels, and that makes this more complicated than just
Speaker 1: saying X material represents why amounts of energy if you
Speaker 1: put it through s Z right, if that's all it were,
Speaker 1: If we could just say, let's take these two different
Speaker 1: materials and say how much energy would you get after say,
Speaker 1: burning them? Uh, and that was it, it would be
Speaker 1: a lot easier. But as it turns out it's way
Speaker 1: more complex than that. There are environmental concerns. There are
Speaker 1: arguments about climate change. Really the only argument is how
Speaker 1: can we alleviate it? Because climate change is undeniably a thing. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't well, I guess people can deny it, but
Speaker 1: they're wrong anyway. There are also national security considerations, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to think about. Two. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna break this down and we're gonna get a deeper
Speaker 1: understanding about biofuels, what they are, what they aren't, and
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. So this is one of
Speaker 1: those topics where it really is important to think critically
Speaker 1: about everything. I know. I stressed that a lot in
Speaker 1: this show, and in this particular topic, I think it
Speaker 1: it really comes to play. It's very easy to say
Speaker 1: false fuels are bad and we should stop using them.
Speaker 1: Now I happen to believe that that is true, that
Speaker 1: fossil fuels are not great for us to use and
Speaker 1: we should stop using them. But you also have to
Speaker 1: acknowledge why we use fossil fuels in the first place
Speaker 1: as opposed to other stuff. What is it about fossil
Speaker 1: fuels that makes most of the world dependent upon them?
Speaker 1: For energy consumption purposes. And the answer isn't as simple
Speaker 1: as because big oil wants it that way. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: big oil does want it that way, because any business
Speaker 1: leader wants their business to be a thriving one. But
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as conspiracy theories might make it seem.
Speaker 1: A lot of conspiracy theories try to wrap up very
Speaker 1: complicated issues and create a very simple message to deliver that,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that reality gets a lot more
Speaker 1: wibbly wobbly. Timey whiney. Now, my goal is to once
Speaker 1: again encourage critical thinking and which we examine a problem
Speaker 1: from many angles to determine what the best solution is,
Speaker 1: and that solution might be fully dependent upon whatever your
Speaker 1: specific goal happens to be. So, for example, if your
Speaker 1: goal is to move dependency away from big oil companies
Speaker 1: and countries with rich oil deposits that maybe aren't your
Speaker 1: friendliest neighbors, that's one thing, right, if that's your goal.
Speaker 1: If you say I have identified what my goal is,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be dependent upon oil, well then
Speaker 1: you can come up with lots of different potential solutions.
Speaker 1: But let's say that your goal is different. Maybe your
Speaker 1: goal is I want to make the smallest environmental impact possible. Well,
Speaker 1: the solution may end up being a different one from
Speaker 1: the solution to goal number one. And if you have
Speaker 1: multiple goals, then you have to start weighing everything against
Speaker 1: each other and say, well, how do I prioritize this.
Speaker 1: How do I pick a solution that is not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be the best at all of these but
Speaker 1: is the best option out of all the different options
Speaker 1: I have? And like I said, it gets tough. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna start off as simple as we possibly can,
Speaker 1: which is asking the question what is fuel? Now? I
Speaker 1: know it sounds silly for me to ask that question.
Speaker 1: You probably all are very well aware of what it is,
Speaker 1: but building our understanding on basic fundamentals will help later on. So,
Speaker 1: a fuel is a substance that contains energy. More importantly,
Speaker 1: it's energy that can be released and then harnessed to
Speaker 1: do work of some kind, even if that work is
Speaker 1: just as simple as releasing heat. So we can think
Speaker 1: of fuel as stored energy that we must release in
Speaker 1: some way, typically through a type of chemical reaction, such
Speaker 1: as through the process of burning it. Now, ancient humans
Speaker 1: figured out that wood works pretty great as a fuel
Speaker 1: if you can figure out how to set the stuff
Speaker 1: on fire. There were you know, there were plenty of
Speaker 1: trees around. There's a lot of wood available, and it
Speaker 1: contained enough energy to be practical. It could keep you warm,
Speaker 1: it could provide light. So wood was a really good
Speaker 1: fuel source for a very long time. Now, you might
Speaker 1: remember from science class that fire needs three things to
Speaker 1: exist the triangle, right. You need to have fuel, you
Speaker 1: need to have an oxidizer such as you know, oxygen,
Speaker 1: and you need heat. If you are missing one of
Speaker 1: those three things, you don't get fire, which honestly is
Speaker 1: a good thing, or else we wouldn't be here. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if wood and oxygen we're all you needed, then
Speaker 1: wood would catch fire immediately upon being exposed to oxygen.
Speaker 1: If you didn't need oxygen, then once a fire started,
Speaker 1: it would be really hard to put it out, since
Speaker 1: nearly all of our methods of extinguishing a fire rely
Speaker 1: upon removing oxygen from that triangle I just talked about. Now,
Speaker 1: there's an actual chemical reaction that happens when you have
Speaker 1: wood in an oxygen eated environment and it reaches its
Speaker 1: ignition temperature. When wood reaches about a hundred fifty degrees
Speaker 1: celsius or three hundred degrees fahrenheit. Some of the cellulose
Speaker 1: material that makes up the wood begins to decompose into
Speaker 1: three different types of stuff. You get volatile gases which
Speaker 1: release from the wood and they that's what smoke is.
Speaker 1: That's part of you know, the stuff we can see,
Speaker 1: that's part of the voluable gas is released from wood
Speaker 1: when it reaches that temperature, and volatile gases consist of
Speaker 1: compounds of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. You also get a
Speaker 1: substance of nearly pure carbon called char, and that's what
Speaker 1: charcoal ends up being, and you end up with a
Speaker 1: byproduct called ash, and ashes all the stuff in wood
Speaker 1: that isn't actually burnable, it just as left behind, stuff
Speaker 1: like calcium. When the volatile gases get up to around
Speaker 1: two d sixty degrees celsius or five hundred fahrenheit, the
Speaker 1: material in the wood breaks down and recombines with oxygen,
Speaker 1: forming stuff like carbon dioxide and water vapor. And we
Speaker 1: call the actual process burning. And this chemical reaction generates
Speaker 1: a lot of heat. That heat is enough to sustain
Speaker 1: the reaction as long as there's fuel and oxygen present,
Speaker 1: so it will continue to burn. Until the fuel is gone.
Speaker 1: If this didn't happen, then a fire would flare up
Speaker 1: but then quickly die down because the heat would not
Speaker 1: be sufficient to keep the reaction going. Not all fuels
Speaker 1: burn the way wood does. Wood burns up and leaves
Speaker 1: behind stuff like char and ash, and you can use
Speaker 1: char as fuel as well, though that reaction is much
Speaker 1: slower than it is with wood, but other fuels work
Speaker 1: in a different way. Still. The basic idea is that
Speaker 1: you've created a chemical reaction using a substance to produce heat,
Speaker 1: and then you can harness that heat to do something useful. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you could use that heat to boil water
Speaker 1: to generate steam. You could channel that steam so that
Speaker 1: it had to pass through a turbine and the force
Speaker 1: of this escaping steam would be strong enough to rotate
Speaker 1: the turbine, which could use magnets to induce electricity to
Speaker 1: flow through a conductor, and bam, you've got yourself a
Speaker 1: steam powered electrical generated than you can generate electricity that way. Now,
Speaker 1: the entire world is largely dependent upon fossil fuels right now,
Speaker 1: and this is where things are immediately tricky, because if
Speaker 1: you trace back the source of fossil fuels, you get
Speaker 1: to organic materials, so, in other words, biological material So
Speaker 1: you could make a very technical argument that fossil fuels
Speaker 1: are bio fuels, but that's kind of missing the point
Speaker 1: and it's being super pedantic, and I'm told nobody likes
Speaker 1: it when I do that, which is really big blow
Speaker 1: to me and my personality, especially at parties. Now. See,
Speaker 1: fossil fuels are called that because they've developed over the
Speaker 1: course of millions of years under intense heat and pressure,
Speaker 1: under layers and layers and layers of material, layers of rock, sand, sediments,
Speaker 1: and soil. They all build up over decayed organic material.
Speaker 1: Most of the fossil fuels that we end up getting
Speaker 1: came out of algae that died millions of years ago,
Speaker 1: uh seaweed analogy would be the two big ones, but
Speaker 1: other stuff as well, and the pressure and time over
Speaker 1: the course of these millions of years break down that
Speaker 1: organic material and it transforms into stuff like coal and
Speaker 1: oil and natural gas. But it takes millions of years
Speaker 1: for that to happen. So that is why we call
Speaker 1: this a non renewable resource, a non renewable source of energy.
Speaker 1: It's not that they're truly non renewable, right, Not if
Speaker 1: you were able to live forever in the super super
Speaker 1: long term, over the course of millions and millions and
Speaker 1: millions of years, you could renew those resources. But for
Speaker 1: our purposes for humans, they're non renewable, I mean, for
Speaker 1: all practical purposes. Because keep in mind that modern humans
Speaker 1: have only been around a few thousand years, nowhere close
Speaker 1: to a million, let alone hundreds of millions. So there's
Speaker 1: no way we could wait hundreds of millions of years
Speaker 1: more were for the Earth's supply of fossil fuels to replenish.
Speaker 1: By the time stuff from the dawn of humanity has
Speaker 1: transformed into fossil fuels, we may very well be extinct
Speaker 1: as a species, so we can't really think of it
Speaker 1: as renewable. It doesn't make any sense. Oh and when
Speaker 1: we say organic material, we're chiefly talking about carbon. Carbon
Speaker 1: is king here. Burning these fossil fuels unleashes that carbon
Speaker 1: that had previously been locked away inside coal or gas
Speaker 1: or oil and deep under the Earth's surface. Now mainly
Speaker 1: it gets unlocked and released in the form of carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and contributes to climate
Speaker 1: change in a really big way. So when we talk
Speaker 1: about fossil fuels from an environmental perspective, uh, we're really
Speaker 1: talking about dumping an enormous amount of carbon dioxide along
Speaker 1: with some other not so healthy gases into the environment.
Speaker 1: And this is carbon that had previously been saying fulle
Speaker 1: locked away, and moreover, it's into an environment that cannot
Speaker 1: easily process this excess amount of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: is part of a natural cycle on Earth, but that
Speaker 1: cycle is dependent upon the steady supply of carbon diox
Speaker 1: are really a stable supply, not an increasing supply, But
Speaker 1: we are unleashing yet more carbon dioxide that had previously
Speaker 1: been locked away down underneath the Earth. Now, on top
Speaker 1: of that, there are many other things that go into
Speaker 1: the extraction, processing, refining, and distribution of fossil fuels, and
Speaker 1: all of that also adds into the environmental impact overall,
Speaker 1: as well as the cost of the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 1: Some extraction methods cause greater environmental damage than others, but
Speaker 1: none of them are exactly eco friendly. They are just
Speaker 1: levels of bad and to be fair, biofuels are not
Speaker 1: magically immune to this. We will look at how bio
Speaker 1: fuels can also have a negative environmental impact. They do
Speaker 1: not get a free pass on this um. Again, critical
Speaker 1: thinking is key here. We need to look at all
Speaker 1: the different factors of all the different options. Now, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that fossil fuels are non renewable and that
Speaker 1: we're dumping tons of carbon into the atmosphere every day,
Speaker 1: we depend heavily on these fossil fuels. According to the
Speaker 1: World Bank, fossil fuels account for about eight of all
Speaker 1: energy consumption around the world, so they represent the primary
Speaker 1: energy consumption path we humans rely upon today. So why
Speaker 1: is that? Why do we rely upon it so heavily
Speaker 1: if we see these potential negative consequences to using them. Well,
Speaker 1: for one, these fuels are dense with energy, which means
Speaker 1: you get a lot of oomph when you burn the stuff. Plus,
Speaker 1: we've built systems and infrastructures around the idea of harvesting, processing,
Speaker 1: and burning these fuels. Now, some of the elements in
Speaker 1: those systems we might be able to adapt so that
Speaker 1: they can handle a change to a different fuel source. Right, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the stuff we've already established we might
Speaker 1: be able to repurpose. But some things we probably couldn't repurpose,
Speaker 1: so that would mean that switching the to a different fuel.
Speaker 1: It's not just as simple as saying, hey, this stuff
Speaker 1: is pretty bad for our environment, because it may also
Speaker 1: mean having to make really big systemic changes across the board,
Speaker 1: which is difficult and it's expensive. Now, that's not to
Speaker 1: say it wouldn't be worth the investment. When you look
Speaker 1: at the alternatives, especially if you look at the consequences
Speaker 1: of climate change over the long term, you could make
Speaker 1: a very convincing argument that this is an investment we
Speaker 1: have to make. But it's hard to get that ball
Speaker 1: rolling because when you've already got another option that's easier,
Speaker 1: the tendency is to go to the easier option, and
Speaker 1: even if that option isn't you know better, it's just easier. Now.
Speaker 1: Over time, the supply of these fossil fuels will dwindle,
Speaker 1: particularly as we see our consumption trends globally on the rise,
Speaker 1: and we'll see the price for them go up because
Speaker 1: supply will go down, demand will be increasing. In order
Speaker 1: to reflect that, you're going to see prices go up,
Speaker 1: not even in order to reflect it. That's just the
Speaker 1: way the world works of economics. So We've already seen
Speaker 1: global conflicts that hinge at least in part on access
Speaker 1: to fossil fuels. Those will likely escalate should our dependency
Speaker 1: remain steady while supplies decline. So in other words, we
Speaker 1: can see instability across the world as a result of
Speaker 1: this dependence upon fossil fuels. Okay, but what are biofuels then, well,
Speaker 1: these are fuels that come from biological materials organic material biomass.
Speaker 1: In other words, they can be solid fuel uh wood
Speaker 1: is an example of US solid biofuel or poop you know,
Speaker 1: manure that can be a solid fuel. They can also
Speaker 1: be liquid fuels, such as grain alcohol also known as ethanol.
Speaker 1: They can be gases like various synthetic or sin gas products,
Speaker 1: which in itself is sort of a shorthand for synthetic
Speaker 1: natural gas. Now, like fossil fuels, these fuels also release
Speaker 1: carbon when you burn them, though not necessarily as much
Speaker 1: as fossil fuels might. But more importantly, you can replenish
Speaker 1: these fuels much faster by growing new biomass new feedstock,
Speaker 1: and changing to a reliance on biofuels would mean having
Speaker 1: to plant the stuff, and while it's growing, it's essentially
Speaker 1: a carbon storage unit. It's taking carbon into itself, so
Speaker 1: it's taking it out of the environment, and so you're
Speaker 1: actually locking it down for the duration of growing the stuff.
Speaker 1: So rather than dumping new carbon into the environment by
Speaker 1: unlocking stuff that had previously been stored the way in
Speaker 1: petroleum racle, you've got a cycle of carbon in the
Speaker 1: form of your fuel crop. At least ideally so. Prehistoric
Speaker 1: humans relied on biofuels like woold, but even some early
Speaker 1: inventors in the era of internal combustion experimented with biofuels.
Speaker 1: Rudolph Diesel, for whom the diesel engine is named, built
Speaker 1: his engine to run on peanut oil. He imagined a
Speaker 1: future in which engines would run on various vegetable oils. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, I'll talk about more about biofuels
Speaker 1: and divide them up into two big categories and talk
Speaker 1: about some of their pros and cons. But first I
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Speaker 1: So the two main forms of biofuel are biodiesel and ethanol. Now,
Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, bio diesel comes from stuff like
Speaker 1: vegetable oils or fats or greases. You can run diesel
Speaker 1: engines on this stuff without having to alter the engine
Speaker 1: at all, which is pretty darn handy. Now, that's not
Speaker 1: to say a gallon of vegetable oil has the same
Speaker 1: energy density as a gallon of petroleum based diesel fuel,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you can run diesel engines on
Speaker 1: vegetable based fuels is a huge plus. You can take
Speaker 1: used oil from stuff like a fryar and with a
Speaker 1: minimum amount of processing, and use it as fuel for
Speaker 1: something like a diesel engine. Now there's also work being
Speaker 1: done on what's called third generation biodiesel, which would come
Speaker 1: from stuff like algae and cyano bacteria. Now, these sources
Speaker 1: could potentially yield an enormous amount of biodiesel with respect
Speaker 1: to the amount of area they take up on Earth.
Speaker 1: So in other words, you need to think about factors
Speaker 1: like how much physical space is the uh production of
Speaker 1: these biofuels going to take, because we have a limited
Speaker 1: to that, right, we don't only have so much space
Speaker 1: on the planet, and we have to dedicate it for
Speaker 1: various things, so we have to reserve only a certain
Speaker 1: portion of that for the production of fuel. Well, you
Speaker 1: want your fuel to be dense, and you want to
Speaker 1: be able to get a lot of it in as
Speaker 1: little space as possible, so you can dedicate the rest
Speaker 1: of that space for other things. That's one of the
Speaker 1: potential benefits for using things like algae and sano bacteria.
Speaker 1: You could grow a great deal of the stuff that
Speaker 1: could yield a good amount of energy for the amount
Speaker 1: of area it takes. But right now, the process to
Speaker 1: convert that stuff into biodiesel is a little bit on
Speaker 1: the expensive side, and that means it's not as attractive
Speaker 1: so if that expense comes down, it could become an
Speaker 1: economically viable option. But if it doesn't, then from a
Speaker 1: financial standpoint, you could argue that makes more sense to
Speaker 1: use a different source for biodiesel or using petroleum based diesel,
Speaker 1: even though the alternative would make less use of space.
Speaker 1: Biodiesel fuels do create pollutants on burning. They do not
Speaker 1: burn totally clean. They aren't some sort of magic material,
Speaker 1: but the amount of pollutants is significantly lower than you
Speaker 1: would find with the petroleum based diesel. On top of that,
Speaker 1: biodiesel is non toxic and it's also biodegradable, so the
Speaker 1: fuel is safer to handle and dispose of than petroleum
Speaker 1: based diesel is. There are other issues, but we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. Let's look at the other type of biofuel, ethanol.
Speaker 1: So ethanol is alcohol like it. It's the toff that
Speaker 1: makes alcoholic drinks alcoholic. It's the same alcohol as you
Speaker 1: would find in beer or wine or hard liquor. It
Speaker 1: comes from fermented sugars and it's used as an additive
Speaker 1: in fuels around the world. The three main types that
Speaker 1: you tend to find in the United States are E ten,
Speaker 1: which is ten percent ethanol and nine percent gasoline E
Speaker 1: fifteen which no big surprise, fiftcent ethanol and eighty five
Speaker 1: percent gasoline and e eighty five which is not eight
Speaker 1: five percent ethanol. It's actually somewhere between fifty one and
Speaker 1: eighty three percent depending upon the blend UH and the
Speaker 1: rest of it is gasoline, so it's more than half
Speaker 1: ethanol as opposed to gasoline. Now, unlike biodiesel, to use
Speaker 1: ethanol and engine has to be designed to handle it
Speaker 1: above a certain percentage, otherwise you're gonna get some problems
Speaker 1: as you try to burn the fuel. You might get
Speaker 1: damaged to the engine or various engine components, and at
Speaker 1: lower percentages the performance issues are negligible, and so in
Speaker 1: the United States all gasoline powered ins are rated to
Speaker 1: run E ten ethanol without any real issue. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 1: you would need a fuel flexible vehicle to take advantage
Speaker 1: of higher percentages of ethanol without causing damage to the engine.
Speaker 1: Ethanol comes from fermenting various plants. In the United States,
Speaker 1: it's almost exclusively corn, so it makes up the vast
Speaker 1: majority of all feedstocks used to create ethanol in the US,
Speaker 1: but farmers have also tried other stuff like sugarcane, potato skins, beats,
Speaker 1: yard clippings, rice, and switch grass. Now in Brazil, sugarcane
Speaker 1: is far more common as a feedstock, and nearly all
Speaker 1: the cars in Brazil can run on pure ethanol rather
Speaker 1: than on a mixture, although mixtures of gasoline are also
Speaker 1: still sold in Brazil, but you could run most Brazilian
Speaker 1: vehicles on pure ethanol. Ethanol also traces its history as
Speaker 1: a fuel for cars way back to the early days.
Speaker 1: Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on a
Speaker 1: mixture of gasoline and alcohol way back in night. Mixing
Speaker 1: ethanol with gasoline reduces the amount of pollutants emitted when
Speaker 1: burning the fuel. In the United States, in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the oil crisis led to large investments in producing and
Speaker 1: distributing ethanol, so that it became a standard type of fuel,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much stayed that way since. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, they were looking at, well, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: fuel shortages unless we can make up some of that
Speaker 1: volume of fuel with another substance that we can produce.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, that substance was ethanol. Now,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, it gets way more complicated than
Speaker 1: all this, you can't really go apples to apples with
Speaker 1: fossil fuels and bio fuels. So let's get down to
Speaker 1: some of the sticking points that make this a tricky
Speaker 1: debate right. One of those is the amount of energy
Speaker 1: that's stored within these fuels, because not all fuels are
Speaker 1: created equal. A gallon of gasoline and a gallon of ethanol,
Speaker 1: for example, contain different amounts of energy. A unit we
Speaker 1: used to measure the amount of energy within fuel when
Speaker 1: it's you know, burning released when you burn it is
Speaker 1: b t U or British thermal unit. This unit, in turn,
Speaker 1: is based off the amount of heat needed to increase
Speaker 1: the temperature of one pound of water by one degree
Speaker 1: of fahrenheit. And I can hear all the folks in
Speaker 1: other countries rolling their eyes right now. I hear you
Speaker 1: rolling your eyes. I can't see you, but your eye
Speaker 1: rolling is making noise. Because this is a very non
Speaker 1: you know, metric way to go about things. So the
Speaker 1: metric system would use units like the calorie, which describes
Speaker 1: the amount of heat needed to heat one gram of
Speaker 1: water by one degree celsius, and the unit to measure
Speaker 1: energy would be the jewel one b t U is
Speaker 1: equal to around one thousand, fifty five jewels more or less. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you can really think of bt U s a
Speaker 1: shorthand for how much energy is stored within this given fuel.
Speaker 1: And so you want a bigger number, right, The bigger
Speaker 1: the number, the more energy is in that fuel, the
Speaker 1: more work you can do with that on the fuel.
Speaker 1: And here's where we see one of the big differences
Speaker 1: between fossil fuels and bio fuels. So a gallon of
Speaker 1: gasoline contains approximately one four thousand, eight hundred b t U,
Speaker 1: so nearly a hundred twenty five thousand b t U.
Speaker 1: A gallon of ethanol would represent only eighty thousand BTU,
Speaker 1: so eighty thousand, two hundred twenty five thousand. So the
Speaker 1: amount of energy within a gallon of ethanol is less
Speaker 1: than what you would get with a gallon of gasoline.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's take a slightly bigger picture. Look,
Speaker 1: we're using fuel to do something, right, Like, let's say
Speaker 1: we're using it to power a car, and let's say
Speaker 1: we're operating the car as steady demand for energy. There's
Speaker 1: no point where the engine is going to require more power,
Speaker 1: So we're just thinking of it as like a nice, smooth,
Speaker 1: steady road. Now, granted, this isn't really how stuff works
Speaker 1: in the real world, but simplifies things for the purposes
Speaker 1: of our discussion. You'd be able to drive the car
Speaker 1: further on a gallon of gasoline, then you would be
Speaker 1: able if you were using a gallon of pure ethanol.
Speaker 1: In fact, you would need one point five six gallons
Speaker 1: of ethanol to get you as far as a single
Speaker 1: gallon of gasoline could take you, assuming all other factors
Speaker 1: remain the same. So this makes the discussion about greenhouse
Speaker 1: gases also a little more complicated, because burning a gallon
Speaker 1: of ethanol will release less carbon dioxide than burning a
Speaker 1: gallon of gasoline. But remember the ethanol does less work,
Speaker 1: so really you have to burn one point five six
Speaker 1: gallons of ethanol to represent the same energy released as
Speaker 1: one gallon of gasoline, and that starts to shave away
Speaker 1: some of the advantage of releasing less c O two
Speaker 1: because you're in fact burning more fuel to make up
Speaker 1: for the shortfall in energy density. Even so, you're still
Speaker 1: producing fewer pollutants in just that strictly the burning of
Speaker 1: the fuel itself, so there's still benefit to using ethanol.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to point out that doesn't quite make
Speaker 1: sense to go gallon for gallon when you're talking about pollutants,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna need to use or ethanol to do
Speaker 1: the same amount of work you could with gasoline. Still,
Speaker 1: another thing to keep in mind is ethanol is carbon neutral,
Speaker 1: which means that the amount of carbon released equals the
Speaker 1: same amount of carbon that the organic material absorbed during
Speaker 1: its full lifespan. And with ethanol in the US, like
Speaker 1: I said, we're really talking about corn here, right. So
Speaker 1: if we were to stop all fossil fuel generation right now,
Speaker 1: like we we no longer harvest it, refine it. We're
Speaker 1: done with fossil fuels. We're just using biofuels magically, somehow,
Speaker 1: we would be working with a more or less closed cycle,
Speaker 1: right because we wouldn't be dumping new carbon dioxide into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. We would be locking it away in whatever
Speaker 1: fuel stock we were growing, and then we'd be releasing
Speaker 1: it again when we burn the fuel stock. But then
Speaker 1: we'd have a new generation of fuels of feedstock growing.
Speaker 1: I keep saying fuel stop, I mean feed stock. We'd
Speaker 1: have a new generation of feed stock growing that would
Speaker 1: lock that carbon away again, and you would just have
Speaker 1: the cycle, it's like the water cycle at all, stay
Speaker 1: the same. You wouldn't have an increase in carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: because you're not unlocking carbon that was previously locked away
Speaker 1: deep under the earth. Now, according to the U. S.
Speaker 1: Department of Energy, taking the full life cycle of ethanol
Speaker 1: into account amounts to an average reduction in greenhouse gas
Speaker 1: emissions of assuming you're using corn based ethanol, because that
Speaker 1: factor matters a lot. If however, scientists can produce ethanol
Speaker 1: efficiently using cellulose based feedstocks, meaning more woody parts of plants,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't have to grow corn, You could grow
Speaker 1: lots of different stuff, and you wouldn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: use good farmland for it because the stuff is really
Speaker 1: hardy and it can grow in lots of different conditions.
Speaker 1: Then you could see a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 1: go up as high as a hundred eight percent taking
Speaker 1: in to account the full life cycle of ethanol. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason I even bring this up is to point
Speaker 1: out that this is a more complicated discussion than just
Speaker 1: fossil fuels are bad. I didn't mention earlier. There are
Speaker 1: other considerations too, like national security. So what do I
Speaker 1: mean by that, Well, let's say you live in a
Speaker 1: nation that is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels, and that
Speaker 1: to meet the demand that your country has, you have
Speaker 1: to import fuel from other parts of the world because
Speaker 1: you don't produce enough of it at home to meet
Speaker 1: your needs. Now, that means that the day to day
Speaker 1: operations in your country are dependent upon the exports of
Speaker 1: other countries. And should you have any, say, diplomatic issues
Speaker 1: with those other countries, or if the oil industry in
Speaker 1: those countries were to somehow be impacted by regional issues
Speaker 1: like a war or something like that, you could be
Speaker 1: in serious trouble. Your supply could be in jeopardy. So
Speaker 1: imagine rolling power outages across an entire country because there
Speaker 1: are fuel shortages and those were all brought around because
Speaker 1: of some international dispute or a conflict. These things can
Speaker 1: and do happen, and it's a big reason why the
Speaker 1: United States began to use ethanol on a widespread basis
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Or imagine that you're limited in
Speaker 1: options as to where you get your oil from, and
Speaker 1: the best source of oil, meaning the most plentiful or
Speaker 1: least expensive, or however you wanted to find. Best. In
Speaker 1: this particular scenario, it happens to be in a country
Speaker 1: that either engages in or supports efforts that are in
Speaker 1: opposition with your own. So in a drastic example, you
Speaker 1: might be feeding money into a country that is using
Speaker 1: that money to fund military operations that threaten your country
Speaker 1: or your allies, or it might be a country that
Speaker 1: helps fund terrorists cells that clearly you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: hand over cash to someone who wants to see you
Speaker 1: brought down. But at the same time, you have needs
Speaker 1: that have to be met. Now that's what I mean
Speaker 1: by national security. Unless you are in a country with
Speaker 1: plentiful fossil fuel reserves, you're gonna be at least partly
Speaker 1: dependent on what other nations are able to produce, and
Speaker 1: that is a security vulnerability. And if you have plentiful
Speaker 1: fossil fuels in your country, then you might be attempting
Speaker 1: target for other countries that do not have those fossil
Speaker 1: fuel reserves. Biofuel advocates argue that biofuels can help migrate
Speaker 1: a country into energy independence as long as the country
Speaker 1: is capable of growing the right feedstocks, then it can
Speaker 1: wean itself off of fossil fuels and depend more on
Speaker 1: biofuels to meet its energy needs. It creates industry within
Speaker 1: the country itself as farmers grow the feedstock for the
Speaker 1: rest of the nation, producing the basic fuel needed and
Speaker 1: freeing up the country from depending upon potentially unreliable partner nations.
Speaker 1: But again, to do that, you have to take a
Speaker 1: lot of other things into consideration. You have to consider
Speaker 1: the actual needs of the public. How much energy is
Speaker 1: the public consuming on a daily basis. How much biofuel
Speaker 1: would you need to grow in order to meet the
Speaker 1: demand of the public. Is there actually enough capacity within
Speaker 1: your country to grow that feedstock while still dedicating sufficient
Speaker 1: farmland for other purposes, you know, like growing food. If not,
Speaker 1: then you're trading energy dependency for food dependency. Instead of
Speaker 1: being in danger of blackouts, now you're in danger of starving,
Speaker 1: or the very least, you're in danger of affecting the
Speaker 1: economics of food prices, because if you have less land
Speaker 1: for food production, you're going to have a smaller supply
Speaker 1: of food. The demand for food is going to remain
Speaker 1: high because people gotta eat, so you would this will
Speaker 1: most likely be reflected in rising food costs. Beyond capacity,
Speaker 1: you have to take into consideration the environmental impact of
Speaker 1: growing feedstocks in the first place. So the actual process
Speaker 1: of farming and harvesting and then refining the stuff into fuel.
Speaker 1: So farming on its own just requires a lot of water,
Speaker 1: and it also can create a lot of pollutants. Uh So,
Speaker 1: while the process of burning the fuel could be cleaner
Speaker 1: than fossil fuels are. Like if you put a gallon
Speaker 1: of gasoline and a gallon of ethanol and a gallon
Speaker 1: of biodiesel, and you measured all the polutants that came out,
Speaker 1: you would say all the gasolines producing more pollutants. That
Speaker 1: might be true, but you have to take into consideration
Speaker 1: all the other contributing factors, and you have to consider
Speaker 1: these factors as they grow to scale as well. It's
Speaker 1: possible that at a smaller scale the environmental impact isn't
Speaker 1: really that severe and biofuels come out as a clear
Speaker 1: superior choice over fossil fuels. But then as you start
Speaker 1: to scale up in order to meet all the energy
Speaker 1: needs of a country, it's possible for that to actually change. Now,
Speaker 1: for one thing, farming equipment still largely runs on fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: so you still have to burn fossil fuels to create
Speaker 1: the alternatives to those fossil fuels, which seems like that's
Speaker 1: a problem. Means that maybe you need to start developing,
Speaker 1: you know, farming equipment that runs on biofuel to help
Speaker 1: alleviate that. But then you also stuff like fertilizer. You
Speaker 1: need fertilizer to help grow things like corn, and fertilizer
Speaker 1: requires fossil fuels in its manufacturing process. Then there's the
Speaker 1: transportation of all this stuff, like the trucks that are
Speaker 1: taking it to and from places, whether it's raw feedstocks
Speaker 1: or refined fuel. All of this is part of that
Speaker 1: infrastructure I was talking about earlier. Now that's one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons that scientists are working to improve the
Speaker 1: efficiency of cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol comes from those more
Speaker 1: woody parts of a plant, and it's more challenging to
Speaker 1: get a big yield from that type of feedstock. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, it's way easier to grow that
Speaker 1: stuff and it requires less of an investment in resources,
Speaker 1: and it also produces fewer pollutants. Right because if you
Speaker 1: don't have to use as much heavy equipment to farm
Speaker 1: the stuff, then you're not burning as many fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: So you can also use low quality land to grow
Speaker 1: cellulosic feedstocks stuff like switch grass, for example. That allows
Speaker 1: you to reserve the higher quality land for food production farming,
Speaker 1: so you don't have that conflict between do you grow
Speaker 1: food here or do you grow fuel here. But unless
Speaker 1: you can get the conversion rate high enough, that is
Speaker 1: the rate of fuel you get from the amount of
Speaker 1: biomass you're growing and processing, then you're fighting a losing
Speaker 1: battle because if it if it costs less and requires
Speaker 1: less work to use something like corn or sugarcane, then
Speaker 1: it may not make sense to switch over to cellulo
Speaker 1: sick feedstock. Right. You have to look at all the
Speaker 1: different pros and cons. Now that being said, a lot
Speaker 1: of work is going into improving the conversion rates for
Speaker 1: this stuff, and if it works out, it could be
Speaker 1: a huge game changer. In fact, it will be a
Speaker 1: big game changer if it works out, because the amount
Speaker 1: of work would be low compared to stuff like corn,
Speaker 1: and you would be looking at a big energy game,
Speaker 1: meaning that the energy represented by the fuel would be
Speaker 1: sufficiently higher than the amount of energy that was spent
Speaker 1: creating the fuel in the first place. Like, if it
Speaker 1: takes you x amount of energy to produce the fuel,
Speaker 1: and the fuel represents plus one, you could argue, well,
Speaker 1: that wasn't really enough of a gain. It was negligible,
Speaker 1: and therefore we barely broke even. We just barely got ahead. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want you want to have a sufficient gain of
Speaker 1: energy based on you know, how much you've put in. Now,
Speaker 1: when we come back, we'll go into a few more
Speaker 1: considerations that we have to take into account when we
Speaker 1: talk about biofuels. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So I've covered some of the big concerns that we
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind with biofuels have a couple
Speaker 1: more dimension But first I thought to be interesting to
Speaker 1: talk about the actual methods used to create more advanced
Speaker 1: biofuels from biomass. Uh, you know, beyond just fermentation, Like,
Speaker 1: what are the processes we're talking about? Why is there
Speaker 1: this block between uh, the harvesting of biofuels in the
Speaker 1: processing it. So generally speaking, the first challenge is breaking
Speaker 1: down the cellular walls and plants cells, which contains stuff
Speaker 1: like cellulose and lignant, and this material is tough and
Speaker 1: it represents sort of an energy barrier. Right. You want
Speaker 1: to get at the sugars that are inside these plants
Speaker 1: in order to ferment them, for example, for for the
Speaker 1: purposes of ethanol. You want to ferment those sugars and
Speaker 1: and produce ethanol, but you have to get this to
Speaker 1: to the sugar first, and you've got these tough barriers
Speaker 1: in your way, so you have to break those down.
Speaker 1: There are a couple different ways of doing that. In fact,
Speaker 1: they are too broad approaches to breaking down the material
Speaker 1: high temperature deconstruction and low temperature deconstruction. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about low temperature first. Actually, typically in this approach, you
Speaker 1: would mix this biomass with some chemicals or some biological enzymes,
Speaker 1: and their job is to break down this uh cellular
Speaker 1: material so that you know, break down those barriers, the cellulos,
Speaker 1: the lignant, that kind of stuff, so that you can
Speaker 1: actually get to the sugars. Uh. It creates a new
Speaker 1: kind of material that is typically called an intermediate because
Speaker 1: it is in between the raw feedstock and the processed fuel.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a stage in the middle. So the
Speaker 1: chemicals or enzymes breakdown the exposed sugar polymers into simple
Speaker 1: sugar building blocks, and that can then go into a
Speaker 1: further fermentation process to produce ethanol. Then you have the
Speaker 1: high temperature deconstruction method, which actually has a few different
Speaker 1: ways of of working. All depends on your specific approach.
Speaker 1: So one of those approaches is called pyrolysis, in which
Speaker 1: you put the biomass into an oxygen free chamber and
Speaker 1: you heat that chamber very quickly to a very high
Speaker 1: temperature between like five hundred and seven hundred degrees celsius. Now,
Speaker 1: remember earlier I mentioned if you want to have a fire,
Speaker 1: you need three elements. Right, You've gotta have fuel, you
Speaker 1: have to have heat, and you have to have an oxidizer. Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, you only have two of those three.
Speaker 1: You've got fuel and you have heat, but you don't
Speaker 1: have an oxidizer. Now, that means the material heats up
Speaker 1: but doesn't burn. It goes through pyrolysis. This process means
Speaker 1: that the cell walls actually do break down, and then
Speaker 1: you can take the material after you've gone through this
Speaker 1: process and put it through fermentation to create sin gas.
Speaker 1: You could take the biomass and heat it in the
Speaker 1: presence of a small amount of oxygen, and you would
Speaker 1: increase the temperatures beyond what you would use for pyroalysis.
Speaker 1: You're going in excess of seven degrees celsius. This creates
Speaker 1: a gas that's mainly a mixture of carbon monoxide and
Speaker 1: hydrogen and can be used as sort of a synthetic
Speaker 1: natural gas. Then, if you wanted to make biodiesel from algae,
Speaker 1: you could use a different high temperature method called hydrothermal liquefaction,
Speaker 1: which I'm pretty sure the spa right down the road
Speaker 1: offers as a luxury treatment, but maybe they just don't
Speaker 1: understand what words mean. Anyway, What it actually means is
Speaker 1: that you would be using the biomass with a little
Speaker 1: bit of water, and you put it inside a pressurized chamber,
Speaker 1: and you would heat that pressurized chamber up between two
Speaker 1: hundred degrees celsius, and that would rapidly turn the biomass
Speaker 1: into a sort of synthetic crude oil. You have a
Speaker 1: bio oil. Now, typically after deconstruction, you have to take
Speaker 1: this intermediary material and then put it through another process,
Speaker 1: or maybe a two processes in order to get actual
Speaker 1: usable biofuel. This is where we start running into not
Speaker 1: just energy barriers, but cost barriers and also potential environmental impact. Right,
Speaker 1: all of these processes require energy, they all have byproducts.
Speaker 1: This is why you have to look at these systems
Speaker 1: as a whole, as opposed to narrowing your focus down
Speaker 1: on just the simple burning of fuel, because if you
Speaker 1: do that, you might be ignoring other challenges. They have
Speaker 1: real world impact, and you could be in a position
Speaker 1: where you're no better off than where you started from,
Speaker 1: or you might be better off in some ways but
Speaker 1: worse off than others. That's why you have to take
Speaker 1: this sort of big picture approach. I find the whole
Speaker 1: process actually pretty fascinating for creating biofuels. Now, a few
Speaker 1: other factors that play into the debate around biofuels are
Speaker 1: that as farmers clear land to produce the feedstocks, you
Speaker 1: start seeing a decrease in biodiversity, particularly in places like
Speaker 1: the United States where you know they're clearing out enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of land in order to grow corn. Cutting down
Speaker 1: biodiversity is pretty bad for ecosystems. Just generally speaking, you
Speaker 1: you want to have a lot of biodiversity, and you
Speaker 1: want you don't want to decrease it if you can.
Speaker 1: There's also the danger of cutting down rich, eco diverse
Speaker 1: environments like the rainforest. You can see that in parts
Speaker 1: of South America where there are areas of ancient rainforests
Speaker 1: getting cleared away in order to create like an oil
Speaker 1: palm production facility. That's not great either. H Then again,
Speaker 1: if we are able to use stuff like algae for
Speaker 1: biodiesel and more grasses like switch grass for ethanol production,
Speaker 1: we reduced the need to clear forests and reduced biodiversity.
Speaker 1: We could use land again that isn't quite as rich
Speaker 1: in order to grow this stuff. But the breakthroughs have
Speaker 1: to come first, and they have to be economically viable,
Speaker 1: which can be helped significantly through stuff like government subsidies.
Speaker 1: So brings a political element into this as well. In addition,
Speaker 1: engineers and scientists are working on ways to capture carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide from things like power plants. Now, the captured CEO
Speaker 1: two could then be stored in some long term storage technique,
Speaker 1: like pumping it into geological formations deep under the earth
Speaker 1: or in sediments under the ocean floor, essentially locking the
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide away inside the earth, kind of like how
Speaker 1: it was locked away before we started digging up all
Speaker 1: those fossil fuels to begin with, we'd essentially be returning
Speaker 1: the carbon to underneath the surface of the planet. And
Speaker 1: if we use biofuels to do all this, like instead
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels, we're just using biofuels to run our
Speaker 1: power plants and the equipment we use to generate electricity,
Speaker 1: we could begin to see an overall reduction of c
Speaker 1: O two in the atmosphere right because the feet stock
Speaker 1: would pull CEO too out of the atmosphere as they
Speaker 1: were growing. They would essentially be capturing and locking away
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. And then you could further capture c O
Speaker 1: two as it was being produced when you're burning it
Speaker 1: at the power plant. Then you could pump it down
Speaker 1: beneath the earth and lock it away and see an
Speaker 1: overall reduction in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. You would
Speaker 1: actually be removing c O two, reversing that trend. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty darn good goal to strife for considering
Speaker 1: the current trajectory we're on with regard to climate change
Speaker 1: and greenhouse gas emissions. But it requires a whole lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to fall into place properly, and a lot
Speaker 1: of work done on our behalf uh in order for
Speaker 1: this to all actually work out. It's not a technological
Speaker 1: problem so much as it is a person problem, like
Speaker 1: as social problem, political problem. There's a lot of complicated,
Speaker 1: messy stuff beyond the technology. Now, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: people who argue we should not be focusing on bio
Speaker 1: fuels anyway, that really that's almost a lateral move off
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels when you take the big picture into account,
Speaker 1: I would argue that fossil fuels overall are more environmentally
Speaker 1: harmful than bio fuels, but I also admit bio fuels
Speaker 1: themselves are not perfect. They have a lot of of
Speaker 1: contributing factors towards environmental damage as well. So there are
Speaker 1: people who say we don't need to be thinking about
Speaker 1: any of this at all. Instead of talking about feedstocks,
Speaker 1: we should be relying on stuff like wind power, solar power,
Speaker 1: thermal hydro power, that kind of stuff. Many of those
Speaker 1: solutions would require that we use some sort of energy
Speaker 1: storage technology, essentially batteries. We would have to have batteries
Speaker 1: because we wouldn't always have access to the stuff that
Speaker 1: was generating the electricity, and that's one of the big
Speaker 1: drawbacks for those technologies because right now, we essentially produce
Speaker 1: electricity when we need it. So when the demand is there,
Speaker 1: we have power plants to produce the electricity and it
Speaker 1: gets distributed throughout the power grid, and the power plant
Speaker 1: goes into heavier production at times of higher demand, and
Speaker 1: it can slack off a little bit when the demand
Speaker 1: is lower. And many of the green energy solutions produce
Speaker 1: electricity according to some external force. So for example, solar
Speaker 1: panels obviously produce electricity when they're exposed to sunlight. When
Speaker 1: it's night, they're not producing electricity, but people still need
Speaker 1: electricity at night, so you have to have a storage system.
Speaker 1: You have to have batteries to store the electricity that
Speaker 1: you can use later on, and you would have to
Speaker 1: make sure that you can produce enough electricity during the
Speaker 1: day to meet everyone's needs, plus produce excess electricity that
Speaker 1: could charge up batteries so that you would have a
Speaker 1: supply whenever it's dark or overcast. Also, with these green
Speaker 1: energy solutions, they obviously won't work equally well everywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. Right if you live near the equator and
Speaker 1: you typically are in an area that gets a lot
Speaker 1: of sun exposure, solar panels make a ton of sense.
Speaker 1: But if you're closer to the polls and you don't
Speaker 1: get as many hours of sunlight during parts of the year,
Speaker 1: or maybe you get more overcast days than sunny days
Speaker 1: on average, solar power might not be a great solution.
Speaker 1: And if you don't live near a river, hydropower becomes
Speaker 1: less viable and so forth. Right, if you aren't in
Speaker 1: an area that regularly gets steady winds, wind power is
Speaker 1: an issue. All of these have drawbacks. There are other alternatives,
Speaker 1: such as nuclear power, but nuclear plants that rely on
Speaker 1: fission have their own set of problems, both practical and political.
Speaker 1: They produce nuclear waste, some of it is extremely dangerous
Speaker 1: and needs to be disposed of in a secure location
Speaker 1: far from many people and kept sequestered from everybody else
Speaker 1: for thousands of years. But as you can imagine, not
Speaker 1: many folks are eager to have such a disposal facility
Speaker 1: located nearby, So even if nearby is still a hundred
Speaker 1: miles away, most people are like, I'd rather that goes
Speaker 1: somewhere else, so that's become a big issue. Nuclear plants
Speaker 1: are way more efficient, especially more efficient than they used
Speaker 1: to be. They do not produce greenhouse gases the way
Speaker 1: coal fired plants or natural gas plants do, but they're
Speaker 1: still as there's still this big issue, right, there's still
Speaker 1: this perception problem of them being unsafe, and there's a
Speaker 1: practical problem with the nuclear waste, Like even the safest
Speaker 1: how nuclear power plant is still going to be generating
Speaker 1: waste that you have to deal with. Uh. That is
Speaker 1: something you just can't get around now. If we ever
Speaker 1: get around to making nuclear fusion work as an economically
Speaker 1: viable means of generating electricity, we'd be all set for
Speaker 1: a good long while. Nuclear fusion does not produce nuclear
Speaker 1: waste the same way nuclear fission does. Uh, it's the
Speaker 1: same nuclear process that we see in stars. Right, the
Speaker 1: sun is a nuclear fusion power plant. Essentially, if we
Speaker 1: could replicate that, and we could harness that sort of
Speaker 1: energy economically, we'd be able to produce all the electricity
Speaker 1: we would need for a really good long while. We'd
Speaker 1: likely see a huge change, like we'd see a migration
Speaker 1: to more electric vehicles, for example, because the energy source
Speaker 1: would be plentiful compared to more traditional fuels. But the
Speaker 1: big problem we face right now is that nuclear fusion
Speaker 1: requires an awful lot of energy to start. It requires
Speaker 1: a lot of energy just to get a fusion reaction
Speaker 1: going in the first place. Sustaining a reaction, or being
Speaker 1: able to do multiple reactions to generate electricity on a
Speaker 1: regular basis remains a really big challenge. So while we
Speaker 1: have had a few research fusion plants create reactions that
Speaker 1: produced enormous amounts of energy, we haven't quite cracked the
Speaker 1: problem of making it something practical that we can repeat
Speaker 1: without costing as much or more energy to start as
Speaker 1: we get out of it. So if you're having to
Speaker 1: pour more energy in then you're getting out, that's a
Speaker 1: losing proposition, right, You're you're at a net energy loss.
Speaker 1: If you're getting more out than you put in, but
Speaker 1: it's incredibly expensive. That's a different challenge, but still a challenge.
Speaker 1: So we have a lot of hard decisions to make right.
Speaker 1: We need to select one or more strategies for meeting
Speaker 1: our energy needs, and we need to move away from
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. That seems to be pretty darn clear from
Speaker 1: multiple reasons, and we need to acknowledge that these challenges
Speaker 1: each alternative has that they exist, we have to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that we need to consider how to overcome or mitigate
Speaker 1: those challenges in order to make the best choice for us.
Speaker 1: And we have to commit toward the action of moving
Speaker 1: away from fossil fuels instead of doing the sort of
Speaker 1: wishy washy, well this area, this, this is maybe not
Speaker 1: as good because of X, Y and Z, and this
Speaker 1: one maybe not as good because of A, B and C.
Speaker 1: Eventually we have to say, here, let's make a plan,
Speaker 1: Let's identify and prioritize our approach, let's diversify it, Let's
Speaker 1: not put all of our eggs in one basket, and
Speaker 1: let's actually do this. We have to do that at
Speaker 1: some point. The question is when do we do it now.
Speaker 1: I don't bring up all the challenges or drawbacks in
Speaker 1: an effort to persuade anyone from pursuing alternatives to fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: I do it so we can move forward with our
Speaker 1: eyes on a solution and not just rhetoric. Uh. That
Speaker 1: is the biggest challenge I see is that we because
Speaker 1: we're looking for the perfect solution, we're not moving at all,
Speaker 1: and at least not as fast as we need to.
Speaker 1: Particularly the United States but other parts of the world
Speaker 1: also fall into that category. So that wraps up this
Speaker 1: discussion of bio fuels. Like I said, it is complicated.
Speaker 1: It's something. Ut if you think about all the ins
Speaker 1: and outs, you realize, Okay, I can see why there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of debate on the subject. Uh. You
Speaker 1: can also see where there are potential arguments to be
Speaker 1: made by interested parties. Let's say that you're, you know,
Speaker 1: a representative of the oil industry. Well, you can see
Speaker 1: plenty of opportunities to object to alternatives by pointing out
Speaker 1: their shortcomings. Uh. And you don't even have to address
Speaker 1: the problems of your own industry, right, You just hammer
Speaker 1: home that these alternatives have their own drawbacks, and that
Speaker 1: can be enough to halt progress. We have seen that
Speaker 1: as well. I don't think it's so much a conspiracy
Speaker 1: as it's just people trying to protect their own interests, um,
Speaker 1: and not being terribly obtuse about that. It seems pretty
Speaker 1: transparent to me, But we still have to get past
Speaker 1: it somehow. UM. It's imperative. Really, I want to see
Speaker 1: a world where my nieces when they're adults, aren't struggling
Speaker 1: in an increasingly hostile environment. Due to environmental and fuel
Speaker 1: related problems. That's the world I want to see, and
Speaker 1: the only real way of making sure we get there
Speaker 1: is to find this alternative to fossil fuels. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up this discussion. I hope you guys got
Speaker 1: something out of it, and if you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: future episodes, feel free to reach out to me. The
Speaker 1: email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or to get in touch on Facebook or Twitter, the
Speaker 1: handle at both of those is tech Stuff hs W.
Speaker 1: You can pop on over to our website that's tech
Speaker 1: stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an archive of
Speaker 1: every single episode we've ever recorded there. Go check that out.
Speaker 1: And also you'll see a link to our online store.
Speaker 1: If you go to the link, you will be able
Speaker 1: to see all sorts of merchandise that has tech Stuff
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Speaker 1: purchase you make goes to help the show, and we
Speaker 1: greatly appreciate at it, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Hext Stuff is a production of I Heart
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