Fuels of the Future

While debate rages on over the pros and cons of offshore drilling, car efficiency standards, and crude oil imports from the Middle East, a new business sector is quietly pioneering the future of America’s energy resources.  After over a century of reliance on fossil-fuel based energy sources for everything from electricity to automobiles to barbecues, incredible new technologies are opening doors to new fuel sources that are carbon-neutral (won’t contribute to global warming), and 100% renewable.  The fact is, these new fuels are right under our noses.  Algae, chicken waste, and everyday garbage are just a few of the ordinary materials that are more valuable as energy sources then most of us have ever imagined.

Green crude Photo: Reuters/Sapphire Energy

In mid-September, billionaire Bill Gates attracted attention to a private firm called Sapphire Energy when his venture capital company, Cascade Investments, LLC, announced that it would back Sapphire with tens of millions of dollars in investment capital.  Sapphire declares itself “at the forefront” of green crude production–green crude being a synthetic crude oil made from algae.  Green crude is actually green in color, and is made through algae’s natural process of photosynthesis from sunlight, carbon dioxide (C0₂), and water.  According to the company, they have created green crude that is identical to the light, sweet crude oil used to manufacture gasoline, jet fuel, diesel, and heating oil.  “San Diego-based Sapphire Energy said last year that it has successfully made its product, Green Crude, which yielded 91 octane gasoline from algae,” reported Cnet News on September 17.  Future utilization of green crude could solve nearly all of the problems currently tied to America’s reliance on fossil-based crude.  Because green crude is made from living organisms (algae), the carbon dioxide released when the fuel is burned is the same carbon dioxide the algae took out of the atmosphere to make the fuel.  Green crude can be produced anywhere–water tanks and ponds where the algae grows do not use up valuable farmland used to grow food.  Finally, since green crude is identical to fossil-based crude, it can be used in the existing refining infrastructure, meaning all of the factories and refining facilities that currently make oil products out of fossil-based crude will not have to change or replace any of their expensive equipment in order to process the new crude product.  The final obstacle that Sapphire must overcome before green crude can begin to enter the oil market is cost of production.  Green crude is currently more expensive per gallon to synthesize than it is to extract fossil-based crude from underground.  Once the production cost of green crude drops to equal to or less than the production cost of fossil-based crude, the renewable oil revolution can begin.

Municipal solid waste Photo: Rockingham County, NC www.co.rockingham.nc.us

Remember the opening scene in Back to the Future II where the DeLorean appears in the sky, lands in front of Marty, and Doc Brown begins filling up the time machine’s gas tank with pieces of garbage from the McFly’s trash cans?  Whether or not you are a Back to the Future fan, it’s a powerful idea.  Fuel made from household trash–it has the potential to solve our energy crisis and reduce the millions of tons of refuse that Americans stuff into landfills every year.  Apparently, that scenario is not so far from becoming reality.  Sustainable Power Corporation, a Texas company, announced in September that it had successfully created biocrude (a synthetic crude oil, brand name: Vertroleum™) from municipal solid waste–the stuff that you and I throw away.  Although biocrude is more similar to ethanol (corn fuel) than fossil-based crude, it has the same potential as green crude to be refined into ethanol flex fuel (for cars), jet fuel, diesel, and heating oil.  Biocrude is also carbon-neutral, because the waste being burned was recently a part of the environment, unlike fossil fuel carbons, which have been trapped deep underground for thousands of years.  In an open letter to presidential candidate Senator John McCain, Sustainable Power claimed that their processing plants could soon produce gasoline at the cost of $1-$2 per gallon.  If this claim is true, Vertoleum™ could create a dream scenario for America’s energy future: trash is burned to create carbon-neutral and non-polluting biofuels that could be be utilized to create gasoline that would retail for $2-$3 per gallon.

Delaware poultry farm Photo: Britannica.com

Anyone who has lived in or even driven through rural areas with large livestock farms is familiar with the powerful and inescapable odor that surrounds each farm like a thick cloud.  Most of us recognize that odor as the product of thousands of cows, sheep, chickens, or turkeys and their waste.  What most of us don’t know is that that livestock’s leavings are actually a source of energy.  Fibrowatt, a Pennsylvania-based renewable energy company has built a plant in western Minnesota that generates electricity by burning huge quantities of “poultry litter.”  The plant is the first of its kind in the US (the concept was first executed in the UK in the mid-nineties), and is also carbon-neutral because the carbon released in the burning process was recently part of the living environment in the form of feed plants.  Even better, the ash that is the byproduct of the process can be used to fertilize crops.  In this way, the Fibrowatt plant creates its own self-contained energy cycle: crops are used to feed chickens, chicken litter is is used to create electricity, the waste from energy creation is used to fertilize crops, and the cycle begins again.  The Minnesota plant generates enough electricity to power 40,000 homes, and Fibrowatt is currently working to construct new plants in four other states, including Maryland.  Clearly, the power-from-poultry litter model is the perfect affordable, self-sustaining, and environmentally responsible energy resource for any community with a large poultry industry.

The above companies are just three examples of hundreds of companies in the US that are currently seeking out cheap, green, and sustainable energy sources.  With the amazing progress being made by these companies every day, it is reasonable to expect that sources of energy once seen only in the future of the movies could be the fuel that powers America in the next 10 to 20 years.