Amid the push to develop clean energy, new research suggests plant-based biofuels could meet 30% of global demand for transportation fuel and slash the greenhouse gas emissions that come from burning fossil fuels.
Recent scientific advances raise the possibility that biofuels can be made from non-edible plants engineered to grow on land abandoned for agricultural use and thus not compromise food production, according to Chemical Process Expert Witnesses.
Many of the concerns about the use of food crops for biofuels do not apply to the use of the inedible parts of plants that are the focus of the review. New dedicated energy crops are a particularly promising area of research.
To break U.S. dependence on fossil fuels, the President has repeatedly embraced the development of biofuels, and his Department of Energy is funding multiple projects with the help of Environmental Experts.
In January, DOE awarded a $4.9 million, three-year grant to its Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to re-engineer tobacco plants so they use energy from sunlight to produce fuel molecules in their leaves. Those leaves would then be crushed and the fuel can be extracted.
DOE awarded a $17.7 million grant last year to DuPont and Berkeley, Calif.-based Bio Architecture Lab to develop a process that converts seaweed's sugars into an affordable biofuel. The BAL announced it had achieved this milestone last year.
In November, United Airlines flew the first U.S. commercial passengers on a Boeing 737-824 powered partly with Honeywell biofuel made from algae. Also that month, Alaska Airlines made its first biofuel-powered passenger flights.
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