Why Biofuels Are Terrible

This video was made possible by Curiosity Stream and the Nebula Bundle Sign up and get the extended, ad-free version of this video available only on Nebula The United States is a powerhouse in corn growing When you drive through the upper Midwest you will be They encounter vast fields of corn that stretch to the horizon in any direction. This industry was the basis of the American diet. Cornmeal. Cornbread. Today, nearly half of all corn production goes into the production of ethanol, a biofuel that is blended with gasoline with the goal of reducing the carbon footprint of the average American's daily commute. 10 of their gasoline is now made up of ethanol and corn farmers across the United States are earning more than ever thanks to the government-mandated gasoline ingredient, increasing the value of their crop with the rise of electronic vehicles and the effects of the pandemic in fuel consumption that affect the hydrocarbon fuel industry.

Hired ethanol lobbyists are now putting pressure on the Biden administration. make an even greater percentage of our fuel made from this ethanol, but this raises an important question: why there is nothing inherently wrong with burning fuel as long as we have a method of absorbing its products, but we have become like yeast trapped in a brewer's fat it eats up the fuel it was given and releases toxic byproducts until at some point the alcohol it produces reaches a concentration at which a closed system can no longer survive without corrections to maintain the balance

biofuels

are unsustainable The fuels we create using organic material from plants and animals that, unlike fossil fuels, can be restored in a short period of time seek to address this imbalance.

Then, when we restart the cycle of regeneration of organic material, the carbon we release into the atmosphere by burning them is theoretically absorbed once again, restoring our balance. With nature, theoretically, being the key word in 2019, the US received about five percent of its total energy from biomass, 45 of which was generated from synthesized

biofuels

, primarily ethanol, the primary method of producing ethanol It is with our little doomed friends of yeast above when they are deprived of oxygen. Yeasts and bacteria use an anaerobic form of respiration where instead of converting sugars into energy and carbon dioxide they convert it into energy and ethanol.

The United States is the largest producer of bioethanol thanks to its abundant supply of corn, and the amount is increasing in the production process. It's not terribly complicated, the corn is simply ground into flour and used as a feedstock for our microbial friends to convert into ethanol. What we need to worry about are all the extra steps required before and after this. First let's do a simple calculation of how much farmland we would need to grow enough corn this is a map of farmland in the united states the breadbasket or cornbasket of the united states is the upper midwest so the largest Some of the infrastructure for ethanol production is located there to avoid the transportation costs of shipping corn that has a large amount of unusable non-sugar waste.

This map is super interesting. The green area totals approximately 166 million hectares. 22 percent of that land area, approximately 37 million hectares, are used for corn and 40 of that corn are used to produce bioethanol. 8.8 percent of this map goes to producing ethanol to provide just 10 percent of the fuel that fills American fuel tanks. The ethanol industry wants that number to increase to 15 and is ultimately aiming for 20. If we extrapolate that 8.8 cropland figure, we can see what it would take. about 17.6 of the current total farmland in the United States to reach 20 with current gasoline use, almost a fifth of all farmland in the United States dedicated to producing something we can't eat seems extreme and already we can see the effects in a fraction.

Of that figure, at the turn of the millennium, more than 90 percent of substantial U.S. corn production went to feed people and animals, only five percent was used to produce ethanol, so the average price of a bushel of corn, whatever a bushel is. it was two dollars today the price of corn has risen with the additional demand from the biofuel industry the price of a bushel of corn wait alexa what the heck is a bushel a bushel is a US customary and imperial unit of volume okay, no, alexa, stop, stop. Hi Alexa, how much is a bushel?

One bushel is approximately equal to 35 liters. Thanks, oh, hit my glasses. Okay, the price of 35 liters of corn today fluctuates between four and seven dollars. That's great for farmers, but the bottom line is that it encourages more natural farming. Habitats that will be converted to cropland over the last decade. Farmland in the United States has expanded at a rate of more than 1 million acres per year, much of it in important natural habitats. Corn was the main crop planted in these recently destroyed natural habitats. Despite this expansion in corn growth, food prices have increased not only for corn-based products but also for products that depend on corn as a raw material.

For animals, eggs, milk and meat have increased in price, costing Americans millions without them realizing it, but the price for the average American citizen is much higher. More than just higher grocery bills, this industry simply would not exist without government subsidies to illustrate the inefficiency of this industry. One researcher, the late Professor David Pimentel, who was the first agricultural researcher to call for a ban on the toxic insecticide ddt, did the math and counted them all. of the inputs for ethanol production, including seeds, labor, machinery, fuel, fertilizer, insecticide, water, electricity, and transportation, found that an energy input of 6,600 would be needed to produce one liter of fuel-grade ethanol. kilocalories, we have a big warning sign from the stairs.

One liter of ethanol alone contains 5,130 kilocalories of energy. This process requires 29 more energy than it provides. This is a negative energy process. If it were energy neutral, the energy we extract from sunlight through photosynthesis would match the total energy we input to obtain a usable product. a former farmer working the land without machinery irrigating his plants removing weeds harvesting grain only to have spent more calories than he received would starve to death this is not a green technology the reality is that photosynthesis is an incredibly inefficient way of converting sunlight into usable energy The energy efficiency of photosynthesis is typically less than one percent for plants, meaning that, on average, plants can only capture and convert about one percent of sunlight.

Humans can now do it with cheap solar cells that can achieve 12 to 20 percent efficiency. The corn is even smaller than the plant. average of 0.25 If humans could consume electricity, we would Growing plants for food is a necessity Growing food for energy is completely and utterly irrational Not only is it a waste of energy, but it is also a waste of water, a resource incredibly scarce in this modern world compared to fossil fuels and renewable energy. Energy sources like solar biomass energy use substantially more water on average. Biomass crops have a water footprint 72 times larger than fossil fuels and 240 times larger than solar energy.

More than 80 percent of our freshwater use already goes to agriculture. The rise of biomass energy crops would drive this further. higher, putting more pressure on an already limited resource, 240 times more water than solar energy and 48 times less efficient at converting sunlight into energy. What is the problem here? Why is the government subsidizing this industry when that money could be going towards real renewable technologies like solar wind batteries? and hydrogen fuel, the reality is that this industry exists because it represents 300,000 jobs and those jobs are represented by one of the largest lobbying groups in the United States.

Any responsible scientist or engineer would see that this industry should not exist and that we should invest in alternatives. There are better versions of biofuels, ethanol derived from sugar cane is energetic, but its success in Brazilian agriculture is helping to drive the destruction of the Amazon, a researcher found using satellite images to estimate the exact percentage of agricultural land expansion towards forested areas in Brazil that it would take 20 years for the carbon released due to deforestation to be recovered through emissions reductions derived from the use of bioethanol from sugar cane and that does nothing to help biodiversity losses if our point of view equilibrium is 20 years from now, what is the point we should surely have?

Our goal is to be fossil fuel-free in cars within 20 years. By the time we have paid for the carbon we invested in the effort, we should have completely transitioned away from fossil fuels and lost valuable natural habitats in the process. States are helping to drive demand for this sugarcane ethanol, as they are the largest importer. There are other alternatives such as cellulosic ethanol, which aims to solve the problem of competing with food products such as corn and sugar cane. Their goal is to use grasses like switchgrass because it grows fast and is cheap, but even though ethanol made from it can be even more expensive and energy-intensive due to the extra steps needed to convert cellulose into sugars, microbes can facilitate another method that aims to use algae grown in ponds, certain strains of algae double their mass in just 6 hours, so the creation of large amounts of biomass can occur 30 times faster than food crops.

They also flourish when carbon dioxide is pumped into their tanks, which is why algae are responsible for more than 40 percent of global carbon fixation. There are many strains of algae that grow in saltwater or wastewater as well, which would help us conserve our precious freshwater supplies, but the quantities of water are immense and using saltwater or wastewater involves additional steps for extraction of useful products such as corn. From the ethanol derived, the energy extracted is much less than the energy we need to invest to make it unsustainable and unprofitable. Algae-based biofuels currently cost between $300 and $2,600 per barrel, but because of their great potential to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, researchers like these at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who have set the goal of reduce costs to three dollars per gallon by 2030, they are working on ways to improve and make algae biofuels an affordable possibility, mainly by developing new strains of algae that are perfectly suited to our needs.

Algae have a much higher fat content than food crops, meaning they can be converted into much higher energy green crude oil instead of ethanol. This green crude oil could potentially be converted into transportation fuels. that needs much higher energy densities that ethanol cannot provide as jet fuel the future of aviation fuel is incredibly confusing we do not have a clear answer to replace kerosene in that process aviation fuel needs particular properties that the Ethanol simply does not have and we do not have a clear answer on how to decarbonize the aviation industry. Batteries are too heavy for anything other than small, extremely short range aircraft.

The low energy relative to volume characteristics of hydrogen make it It is a nightmare to integrate into aircraft structures and biofuels are either too expensive or not carbon neutral. I dive into this topic a little deeper in the extended version available exclusively on nebula and if I see a lot of people signing up for nebula for that extended version, I may make a full episode for youtube as well. You'll get a lot more than just extended cuts when you sign up for nebula. Through the Curiosity and Nebula Stream Pack, you'll get access to our exclusive content, such as the nine-part, two-hour long D-Day Logistics series, along withoriginals from wendover Productions mustard tom scott and city beautiful, add free versions of our videos and podcasts and this is all included for free when you sign up to Curiositystream for the extremely low price of 14.79 per year. 1,479 for a year of access to award-winning documentaries on Curiosity Stream and supporting your favorite video creators in the process.

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