- Biofuels use chemical reactions, heat, and fermentation to break down different plant

elements (like starches and sugars)

- Can be divided into 2 categories: Primary and secondary

- primary biofuels are unprocessed, like fuelwood, usually used for heating or
cooking
- secondary biofuels are processed, like biogas and ethanol, and are usually used
for transportation

- Biofuels also are categorized through three generations:

- First Gen: typically biomass that comes from a food source (see: ethanol from
starch/sugar-based products)
- Second Gen: biofuels that come from non-food mass but still compete with food
production in terms of land mass (see: pulp mass)
- Third Gen: newly added category that includes algae, produces much more than
other generations

- 80% of biofuels are used for homes, 18% for industry, 2% for transportation

- Most common form is ethanol, made from corn and sugarcane

- used mostly in USA and Brazil
- most gasoline in USA has 10% ethanol
- USA and Brazil combined produces 84% of ethanol in the world (USA primarily
uses corn, Brazil uses sugar cane)
- ~14% of corn harvest in USA used to produce ethanol

- biodiesel alt to diesel, comes from animal fat, recycled cooking grease, soybeans
- also "renewable diesel" which comes from vegetable waste and fats, but is
different chemically from biodiesel
- biodiesel can contribute to acid rain despite having no sulfur
- 1 billion gallons of biodiesel are produced every year

- Biomethane/Renewable natural gas can be used for electricity and heating

- it comes from wastewater, landfill, livestock, and others

- Biogas is another alt, however it comes from methane from animal manure and other
digested organic matter

- Green Diesel from biofuels are chemically identical to fossil fuels

- Vegetable oil is a type of biofuel

- One of the arguments against biofuels is that it takes up too much space which could be
used for agriculture purposes and it takes more ethanol to power something gasoline
can in less.
- This could cause food prices to go up and damage the environment more due to
pollution and reduced biodiversity
- However, the counterargument for this is to farm biofuels from algae, which
ExxonMobil claims “can be cultivated on land unsuitable for other purposes with
water that can’t be used for food production.”
- counter-counterargument: that the amount of space it takes to farm algae
is massive as well, the amount of space it would take to replace the
aviation industry would be 68000km, and the aviation industry is only 13%
of energy resources
- This means that it perhaps is better that biofuel does not replace the
entirety of energy production, yet we use other renewable energy sources
alongside it.
- Other sources for biofuel can be animal waste, grasses, cooking grease,
and sludge from wastewater.

- Biofuels produce same CO2 emissions as fossil fuels, but since that CO2 goes back into
plants and get reused, it has net zero emissions
- biofuels do not disrupt the carbon cycle as much as fossil fuels do, since the
carbon emitted by biofuels has not been stored in the ground for hundreds of
years
- some research says that using more biofuels can reduce carbon emissions by
12% when using ethanol and 41% with biodiesel

- Biofuels are much safer than fossil fuels. if they spill, the damage done to the
surrounding area is not nearly as harmful as their fossil counterparts

- Biofuels, although not easy as fossil fuels, are much easier to transport than other
renewable energy sources are

- biofuels can make a good stop gap replacement to fossil fuels before other renewable
technology is better developed

- Biofuels could potentially be sustained indefinitely

- Biodiesel is being used in BC, the province holding 1 of the 9 biodiesel plants in Canada
and 14 of the 40 solid biomass (wood pellets) plants in Canada. (note: this may have
changed, this article was written in 2016)

- The way biofuels work in BC is as an extension from our lumber industry, biomass is
created from pulp waste, followed by landfill gases
 - According to Clean Energy BC, biomass was accepted into the province in order
to replace beehive burners and also find a use for lumber devastated by the
Mountain Pine Beetle. Roadside lumber is also a viable material to use for this.

- The woody material is turned into gas via an oxygen-starved vessel to create synthetic
gas (syngas). After travelling through a pipeline or directly transported into an oxidized
vessel which either utilizes the heat right away or turns the syngas into steam. The
steam then can be used to power a steam turbine.

- BC uses a combination of First Gen (ethanol from sugar and starch-based crops) and
Second Gen (cellulosic ethanol made from wood biomass, landfill wastes, crop
residues).
- Biogas are used, but account for a miniscule amount of energy used in BC,
biogas amounting to 3% of energy demand in Canada.

- From 2018 to 2019, biofuel production increased by 6%

- 161 litres produced in 2019

- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/biofuel/
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/biofuel.asp
- https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Biofuel
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/274168/biofuel-production-in-leading-countries-in-oil-e
quivalent/
- https://www.bcsea.org/biodiesel-0
- https://www.greenfacts.org/en/biofuels/l-2/1-definition.htm
- https://www.cleanenergybc.org/about/clean-energy-sectors/biomass
- http://biofuel.org.uk/
- https://www.sfu.ca/ceedc/databases/Biofuels.html
- https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/economics-biofuels
- https://www.pnas.org/content/103/30/11206
- https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agsci.oregonstate.edu/files/bioenergy/generations-of-
biofuels-v1.3.pdf
- https://www.iea.org/reports/transport-biofuels
- https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10331
-