For ages, gasoline has been the
primary source accounting for
80% of the world's energy consumption: from cooking to driving
vehicles to generate electricity. However, for quite some time, especially in
the last few years or so, driven by the desire to secure energy supply in the wake
of fast depleting traditional oil resources, combined with concerns over
global warming (and also tense geopolitical situation), the western world, in
particular, has been on a great hunt for alternative energy sources,
notably biofuels. This is a far cry from yesteryears of recent times when the
world leaned towards ethanol from corn and other food crops, sending alarm
bells ringing across the globe among food scientists, governments and general
public, who feared it would escalate food scarcity further.
According to BBC, biofuels are any kind of fuel made from living things
or from the waste they produce. Examples include pellets or liquids made
from wood, biogas (methane) from animals' excrement, etc. Biofuels are
different from fossil fuels in the sense that the latter is driven from plants
decomposed millions of years ago, while biofuels
are derived from current plants. Biofuels are not only cheaper than the
conventional energy sources like gasoline but also environment-friendly. USA
and Brazil are leading the biofuel revolution, developing it from a wide variety
of feedstock, ranging from corn, maize, sugarcane. etc. Companies like
BP, DuPont and Shell are on the verge of cracking what many also call the
`wonder fuel' by using varied technologies on a wide range of feedstock from Prairie Grass to cornstalks to Algae; the last one appears more promising of the lot
as various oils can be generated from it by varying the production environment.
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