What is Bio-fuel?


     The term biofuel is generally used to refer to fuels which are derived from materials that have been alive recently, as compared to fuels derived from materials which were alive millions of years ago.


     There are a variety of issues that touch on the use of biofuels, such as:

Food-based or Waste-based?



  
  
     At first glance, the desire to move away from depending on fuels that are non-renewable and imported would seem to be a good thing, but there are significant differences in how that move is made. Many people see the growing use of food as a vehicular fuel as very problematic in a world in which a billion people are going hungry.

     People living in the third world are unable to compete financially when it comes to buying corn for their tortillas. The ethanol that first-worlders put into their gas tanks is made from corn, and the demand for corn drives up the market price of tortillas. When the cost of fuel increases, first-worlders often can't drive around as much; when the demand for car fuel goes up and drives up the price of corn, third-worlders often can't afford enough to eat.

     This is a key reason why the B2M project is focused solely on the production of fuel using biomass that would otherwise go to waste. Future generations may well look back in shame and wonder at a culture that placed a higher value on their being able to commute than on the ability of others to eat.


Sustainable versus Renewable Biofuel

     Those two terms are often used as though they're interchangeable; they're not. Automotive ethanol, for example, is promoted as a renewable resource; a key problem is that it's often being grown in an unsustainable manner that some see as the agricultural equivalent of strip mining the topsoil. The recent increase in the number of acres planted to hard corn generally has come at the expense of other, more sustainable crops.

     A key factor here involves the rate at which biomass, both in the form of plants and in the organic content of the soil, is being consumed. If that rate exceeds the long term capacity of the land‒base to renew itself, such a practice is not sustainable. While much of the current focus is on the exhaustion of the world's non-renewable resources, and rightly so, it's still important to remember than renewable resources are also limited. Taking biomass faster than the land can replace it leads to the same ecological consequences as taking away the resources the land can't replace.

  
  
     Biodiesel is commonly produced from oil obtained by pressing palm nuts. As demand for these oils rises, more acres of the Indonesian rain forest are being bulldozed and planted as pine nut plantations, a process that is destroying much of the oranatang's habitat.

      At the least, by converting waste biomass into replacements for diesel fuel, communities can use B2M technology to stop participating in the destruction of the wild lands yet remaining. At the best, they can help point the way for other rural communities to stop supporting this process through the purchasing of products of deforestation.

Local versus Imported Biofuel



Mr. Peabody's coal train?
  
     One goal of the B2M Project is to enable rural communities to stop having to sell off more of their resource base, year after year, in order to purchase energy supplies. By converting local biomass into more concentrated forms that meet local needs, a host of hidden costs and damages can be avoided.

      Even if all other aspects of a given biofuel are equal, it would be better to work to build one's local community rather than continue to drain away its raw resources. This is true regardless of whether non-renewable fuels are being imported from another state, another country or another continent, and the farther away the source, the more important local production becomes.



Stationary versus Mobile Biofuel



  
a car modified to run on wood
  
     Modern society has a huge investment in cars and trucks designed to use liquid fuels. While it is possible to convert some of these vehicles to use either solid or gaseous biofuels, doing so can involve an expensive conversion. One result of this ease-of-use limitation of modern vehicles is that as long as they're around, liquid biofuels will continue to be in high demand and sell for more than solid forms of biomass.

     A key component of a system's overall sustainability is its effiency. The more efficently a system uses its resources, the less demands it has to place on its environment in order to sustain itself. A key project goal is to enable a community to market the biomass it grows in the most value-added form, thereby obtaining needed funds with a minimum of ecological impact.


Free Market versus Subsidized

     It's important to evaluate different systems using the same metric, something which is difficult to do with energy systems because of the tortured web of subsidies involved. For example, it's unlikely that there would be any significant conversion of corn into bio-ethanol without the significant agricultural subsidies and the subsidies made available for building industrial-scale ethanol plants.

the International Energy Agency's
analysis of global fuel subsidies
  

     Comparing the sustainability of various forms of transport is similarly complex because of the web of direct and indirect subsidies involed in, for example, the construction of Interstate highways or the maintenance of railroad right of ways.

     Compounding the problem is the way that fuels are widely used as a means to collect taxes of various sorts. Generally speaking, fuel that is produced for over-the-road use needs to be accounted for and road taxes paid even when used by the producer. Selling fuel to others could create the need to collect sales tax.

     We'll leave sorting out that mess to folks more familiar with the tax regulations than we are, knowing that the only thing certain in life is change. The goal of B2M is not to challenge the status quo since a culture based on limitless growth in a finite world is self-defeating. Rather, our goal is to prepare a viable option for when things which can't continue as they are, no longer do.