In the United States, the Agriculture Secretary is Tom Vilsack. He’s offering money to develop commercial-scale biorefineries or retrofit existing facilities with appropriate technology to develop advanced biofuels.
‘Advanced biofuels’ means that these fuels are to come from non-food sources. Sources such as algae and waste food. You could scroll down the article I’ve linked to here, for a success story about each of those. It’s not made clear what is used as feed for the algae, and it’s not made clear whether the waste food could have been conserved in some other way. But I’m not jumping to conclusions. Surely these advanced biofuels are better for the land than clearing forest to grow palms and maize that will go straight to biofuel.
Advertisements
Reblogged this on The Noah Project.
Thank you.
Funnily enough in mid-Wales and west-Wales the councils are sending “waste” food to Oxfordshire for anaerobic digestion. It’s a 15 year contract. So, where does that leave any message about trying to reduce the waste in the first place:(
Nevertheless, in principle, the concept of energy from waste is a good thing, but maybe the focus should be on unavoidable waste rather than careless waste.
Good point. I think that for many people, ‘doing their bit’ consists only of sending rubbish to destinations other than landfill. There’s even rumour that our carefully conserved paper and cardboard are shipped to China where they’re burned in horribly polluting ways, or chucked into landfill.
No doubt you’re familiar with The Three R’s http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/rrr.html
Having heard about such things on Farming Today and FWI, AD technologies are receiving a fair amount of funding right now. From the outside looking in, I would suggest these are a reasonable way forward in dealing with at least, some of the farm waste. I wonder what can be achieved in our own homes.
So do I. The Three R’s as I mentioned upthread.
Reblogged this on Dr. B. A. Usman's Blog.
Thank you.
Pingback: Food security and biofuels | Science on the Land