In these times of global uncertainty, spiralling energy costs and climate change, Governments, NGOs and special interest groups across the globe have begun to believe that bio-fuels are the Holy Grail; the much sought answer to the question of strategic energy security and our dependency on fossil fuels.
The potential of bio-fuels has alerted the likes of ExxonMobil, who recently announced a $600 million partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by biotech entrepreneur Craig Venter, aimed at developing fuel from algae. If successful, the research will create an economical, renewable oil substitute to replace fossil fuels in cars and airplanes and for other uses, such as making plastics.
ExxonMobil is the world's largest publicly traded company when measured by revenue, with reserves reaching some 72 billion oil-equivalent barrels by the end of 2007 – a stockpile which, at current rates of production, is expected to last over 14 years. The company has 38 oil refineries in 21 countries, contributing to a daily refining capacity of 6.3 million barrels. To diversify in bio-fuels then, represents a significant advocacy of the technology.
Craig Venter, best known for his role in sequencing the human genome, said the new partnership was the largest single investment in technology aimed at producing bio-fuels from algae, yet noted that the challenge when creating a viable next-generation fuel, was not the ability to simply produce it - but to produce it in large volumes. His company, Synthetic Genomics Incorporated (SGI), will develop fuels that can be used by cars or aeroplanes without the need for any modification of their engines.
"Meeting the world's growing energy demands will require a multitude of technologies and energy sources," said Emil Jacobs, vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil. "We believe that bio-fuel produced by algae could be a meaningful part of the solution in the future if our efforts result in an economically viable, low-net carbon emission transportation fuel."
Venter has spent several years trawling the world's oceans in search of environmentally-friendly microbes that could be used, in one way or another, to bring down the world's carbon emissions. The organisms he has found include those that can turn CO2 into methane, which could be used to make fuels from the exhaust gases of power stations, and another that turns coal into natural gas, speeding up a natural process and reducing both the energy needed to extract the fossil fuel and the amount of pollution caused when it is burned.
Yet it is algae that is considered the most efficient vehicle for the harvesting of solar energy because it reproduces, can live in areas not useful for producing food and does not need clean or even fresh water. In addition, it occupies far less space than traditional bio-fuel crops such as corn or palm oil. "Algae consumes carbon dioxide and sunlight in the presence of water, to make a kind of oil that has similar molecular structures to petroleum products we produce today," said Jacobs. "That means it could be possible to convert it into petrol and diesel in existing refineries, transport it through existing pipelines, and sell it to consumers from existing service stations."
Photosynthetic algae, a species of single-celled, plant-like organisms, living mainly in the ocean, supply much of the Earth’s oxygen. If they can be engineered into an oil substitute, algae would be at the hub of an industry potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Exxon says the algae could make up to 2,000 gallons of fuel per acre, compared to 450 gallons from sugar cane and 250 gallons from corn. Moreover, the algae can be grown on land and with water not suited for food production. Fuels made from algae would reduce the impact of CO2 emissions, because the algae absorb carbon dioxide when growing. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that algae farming for bio-fuels is scientifically possible, but major engineering and logistical problems must be solved before it becomes feasible on the scale needed for fuel production.
The Carbon Trust, a UK Government-backed agency that promotes low-carbon technologies, has forecast that algae-based bio-fuels could replace more than 70bn litres of fossil fuels used every year around the world in road transport and aviation by 2030, equivalent to 12% of annual global jet fuel consumption or 6% of road transport diesel. In carbon terms, this equates to an annual saving of more than 160m tonnes of CO2 globally with a market value of more than £15bn.
The development of the bio-fuels industry has the potential to create hundreds if not thousands of jobs and give agricultural producers new, reliable crop markets, while all the time decreasing demand for fossil fuels. First generation bio-fuels are produced directly from feedstock; note the use of sugar cane to produce alcohol. Second and third generation bio-fuels offer an increasing degree of complexity; cellulose alcohol produced from cornstalks is considered a “second generation” fuel and generally requires considerable preparation and refining of the result. Third generation fuels are produced from specifically engineered feed stocks, such as algae. Indeed, bio-fuels comprise one of the key components of the Government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan.
In 2006, Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin Group pledged to invest $3 billion dollars over ten years in order to ‘fight global warming’. This will include all the profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains. Boeing and Virgin Atlantic, in conjunction with the US Military and BAE Systems, are conducting trials using cellulose-based ethanol derived from waste corn stalks, a so called second generation bio-fuel, in commercial airliners mixed with conventional jet-fuel. Branson’s commitment to this cause is commendable; only the largest corporations such as Virgin, Boeing and ExxonMobil have the resources to pursue the development of alternative fuels – technology that offers the only credible solution to global climate change.
Yet the pursuit of alternative fuels has not been without its victims. In 2005, the indigenous tribes of Borneo, collectively identified as the Dayak, stumbled upon a clearing in which the trees had recently been felled. That was how they discovered that Perseroan Terbatas Ledo Lestari, or PTLL, a subsidiary of an Indonesian company named Duta Palma Nusantara, was seizing their ancestral land to establish a massive plantation of oil palms, a tree whose oil is rendered and refined into bio-diesel.
Over two years, 15,000 acres or three quarters of their natural habitat was destroyed. The plantation also uprooted monkeys and wild boar, which began raiding the community's food supply and because PTLL replaced diverse forest with a mono-crop, pests invaded and rice crops failed.
Bio-diesel emits less than one quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by regular diesel once it's burned; but when production - and the destruction of ecosystems in the developing countries where most bio-fuel crops are grown - is factored in, many biofuels may actually emit more carbon dioxide. Oil palms do not absorb as much CO2 as the rainforest or peat lands they replace, meaning that palm oil can generate as much as 10 times more CO2 than petroleum, according to the advocacy group Food First. Thanks in large part to oil palm plantations, Indonesia is now the world's third-largest emitter of CO2, trailing only the US and China.
Despite this, Indonesia aims to expand these plantations from some 16 million acres currently, to almost 26 million acres by 2015. If deforestation, which is due largely to oil palm, continues at the present rate, 98 percent of the country's forest—one of only a handful of large rainforests remaining in the world—will be gone by 2022.
Ethanol, particularly that originating from the US, is likely to come from maize and uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilisers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind. Using ethanol rather than petrol reduces total emissions of carbon dioxide by a mere thirteen percent, due to the pollution released during the production process and because ethanol only yields approximately seventy percent of the mileage obtainable from the same quantity of petrol.
Thus far, bio-fuel solutions have focused on the use and exploitation of currently commercially produced feed-stocks, such as corn, sugarcane and palm oil, mainly because of their ready availability and abundantly exploitable nature. Yet food prices have already been affected by the development of bio-fuels; with just ten percent of the world's sugar harvest being converted to ethanol, the price of sugar has doubled; the price of palm oil has increased by fifteen percent over the past year, with a further twenty-five percent gain expected next year. Rising food prices severely affect those on a low income, who spend the majority of their earnings on food. Indeed with the global political agenda now firmly embracing the concept of climate change, Governments need to provide leadership in the form of economic incentives to minimise competition between food and fuel crops.
One of the greatest potential benefits of bio-fuel is the ability to produce and consume it locally, thus reducing shipping costs and CO2 emissions. As energy security is a major concern for the developed world, in particular the US and the EU, it follows that a country’s choice of bio-fuel should be dictated by whichever feedstock offers the highest comparative advantage, rather than importing bio-fuel and consequently transferring energy dependence and environmental impact from one state to another.
Unlike most other bio-fuels, bio-methane (bio-gas) promises to meet all criteria for future development - production, adaptability and practicality. Bio-methane is essentially natural gas in composition, CH4; the same gas we burn in our boilers, stoves and power stations. Yet natural gas takes millions of years to produce – bio-gas is produced easily from decomposing waste, vegetation and sanitation. Methane is, infact, itself a significant greenhouse gas, produced by large flocks of sheep and cattle.
In some developing countries, bio-gas has been used for decades. Natives produce the gas artificially, in clay jars, with a seal made from goat excrement. The jar is sealed until sufficient pressure has built-up and there is no more oxygen present for microbial action. At this point a small hole is made in the seal and the gas is ignited and used to cook food. Some farms in the UK also employ a similar method on a larger scale, using cattle slurry, to heat out-sheds. When compressed, methane can also be used in boilers, cars, motorbikes and other internal combustion engines, which are converted to use gas as opposed to conventional liquid fuel.
Bio-methane collected from landfill sites is currently being exploited as a waste product across much of the US, used to power small scale power plants and heat local federal buildings. Bio-gas production could be integrated into the human waste-treatment infrastructure, from where it could be used to produce energy on a local level, circumventing the power loss in transportation and extraneous fuel consumption that afflicts the current system of centralised electrical power generation. The by-products of this process are also lucrative, water, significantly reduced CO2 emissions and a rich fertiliser.
The effects of local bio-gas production could be felt immeasurably in developing countries, where there is insufficient finance for large-scale investment projects, such as centralised power generation. The integration of power generation and delivery systems with sanitation systems could allow communities to generate local power, from local waste, whilst producing local fertiliser that could improve local crop yield and provide clean, fresh water. This could lead to a dramatic increase in the efficiency, sustainability and autonomy of developing communities
Whilst the design and implementation of such proposals would represent a significant infrastructure investment, private sector partnerships such as that of ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics are among the first, crucial steps toward energy independence and a significant reduction of CO2 emissions. The task now, is to prove that bio-fuels can offer a credible alternative to fossil fuels and that large-scale production of such fuels is a distinct possibility. There is a requirement for bold and sometimes painful gestures from the private sector if there is to be a solution to the dilemma posed by global climate change; yet Government must now to its bit to encourage those firms digging their heels in the ground behind the likes of Virgin and ExxonMobil. There will be no solution whilst money is spent on encouraging citizens to travel less frequently and use less power. Fossil fuels will, one day, run out. Mankind has never looked backward; new technology and enterprise has always forged the path ahead. It is a Government’s job to lend a spade or two…