The Problem with Biofuels

Biofuels make a great deal of sense, when they're made out of waste products. They don't make a lot of sense when they're the raw material is produced just to turn it into fuel. Extracting the potential energy out of things like human waste or used deep frying oil is sensible.

“If humans could eat electricity, we would” That kid who licked batteries: My goals are beyond your understanding

This should be renamed "The Problem with Ethanol". Also, I would love to see a similar study on the energy inputs for producing gasoline.

6:50 Energy negative process 8:15 Photosynthesis efficiency of plants vs solar panels 8:40 Biomass uses water

From central Midwest and my dad is a farmer...and an important and negative side effect that didn't get mentioned directly is that the increased demand for bio fuels drives increased demand for all inputs. Inputs such as chemicals and farm equipment where those chemicals (namely fertilizer and herbicides/pesticides) are being used more heavily and driving up costs. Farmers take on more agriculture operating (ag-op) loans (I worked in a bank on these loans) and their debt level increases as well increasing dependence on biofuels and continuing the cycle of increasing the use of double cropping and yet even higher inputs costs.

Brazilian here. What distroys the amazon the most is actually soybean plantation. Most of Brazil's sugarcane fields are further south in the state of São Paulo, nowhere near the amazon rainforest.

In Brazil we use 27% of sugarcane ETHANOL in our gasoline

I'm surprised. Just an en passing mention to Brazil, despite we using Ethanol since the 80s? Plus pertty much all cars made/sold here nowadays can run with either Gasoline OR pure Ethanol, and it has been that way for over a decade.A little more detail on the maths for sugarcane would also be great. Honestly, Ethanol has been working REALLY WELL in Brazil. To the point pretty much everyone can power their cars with only Ethanol, as I myself do (Can't recall the last time I put Gasoline in ANY vehicle, probably over a decade ago. I always go for ethanol). Sure, Ethanol is nowhere near perfect, but it works well enough that Brazil can pretty much do away with Gasoline for fueling cars (We still need it for trucks and planes though, so there's that). And being able to stop using petrol, while not a solution in itself, seems like a pretty good step forward. In Brazil, when gas prices go up, people simply use Ethanol. It would be really nice to get your input on how that changes things, and what that can mean in the grand scheme of moving away from fossil fuels, after all, despite all problems with Ethanol, it is definitely not "fossil".

10:15 If you look closely, most of the sugarcane area is concentrated in the São Paulo countryside, which is about as far from the Amazon as Ireland is from Italy. The main drivers of deforestation in the Amazon are cattle ranching, soy farming, logging, and mining. The Brazilian southwest itself was mostly devastated by agriculture during the 20th century.

"Siri, what is a bushel?" "You will arrive at your destination in 200 meters".

Excellent video and very well presented. I find the stuff fascinating so thank you mate.

You forgot to mention, corn can be feed to livestock and also kind of important in food security while petroleum is not. Huge petroleum refinery also destroys the land, not to mention sometimes it bring disaster to marine life.

Rural Kansan here: The rise of ethanol has driven a lot of farmers to install water pipes so they can turn wheat/soy fields into corn fields. That means the demand for corn is high enough you can make more money with one corn crop than you can with the double crop per year the wheat/soy method offers.

Sugarcane production isn’t destroying the amazon. The map you showed at 10:11 says it all, the main growers of sugarcane are located on Centro-Oeste, South and Southeast regions of Brazil hundreds of kilometers from the amazon. It is destroying the cerrado(A savanna like biome) and the almost entirely destroyed Atlantic Rainforest.

5:08 😂😂😂😂😂😂 that imperial uni

If you're using the cost to produce ethanol out of 1 bushel of corn, should you be looking at the net energy of the bushel as a whole? Distillers grains is used as feed for animals and DCO is being used for biodiesel, which would have a energy impact. Not sure if it would make a difference, but I'm curious...

Thank you for mentioning aviation. I work on aircraft, and it's always so frustrating when people just recommend things like "ban fossil fuels" or "just make them electric" as viable solutions for aviation. They have been trying to find a good alternative to kerosene-based fuels, but there just isn't any other cheap fuel that has the same properties, namely the energy density. You not only need to bring fuel to carry the plane, you need to bring fuel to carry the fuel in the plane. Most biofuels just don't have that energy density, which means we would either have less range, or need to carry more fuel, and more fuel to carry that extra fuel. And batteries' energy density is laughable compared to Jet-A. The other thing that drives me nuts is suggestions to "be more fuel-efficient." In aviation, fuel is money. We already design the plane with fuel efficiency in mind. Winglets? Fuel efficiency. Weight reduction? Fuel efficiency. Ultra-high bypass turbofans? Fuel efficiency. Now, some airlines are even looking at flying planes in formation, like birds, to reduce drag, and increase fuel efficiency. I'm not one of those guys who think fossil fuels will always be the #1 supply of energy, but I also don't think it will ever truly go "extinct," at least not for a long time. I like to use the example of horses. Used to be, almost everyone owned and used a horse. In the US, there was probably more horses than people. However, cars came along, and suddenly the demand for horses plummeted. There was no longer a stable in every town, and roads were redesigned for cars, not horses. But, even to this day, there are some regions, especially rural areas without roads or infrastructure, where horses are better than a car. Even off-road vehicles still need fuel, and it's hard to get fuel in the middle of a grassy field. Although the demand for horses has plummeted to 1% of what it was, there is still a market. I don't think fossil fuels will go the way of the dodo, but more the way of the horse. In the next 30 or so years, I'm sure fossil fuels will almost entirely disappear from people's lives. Their cars will be electric, their houses powered by renewable energy. But there will still be niche markets that use fossil fuels, such as parts of aviation, automotive hobbyists, and certain industrial processes. The fossil fuel industry will still collapse, since the demand will be a fraction of what it was, but I doubt it will entirely disappear for a long time.

I first recognized there was something wrong with the ethanol industry when they announced they were building a coal fired ethanol plant near my home. Yes, they were going to burn coal to produce biofuel. Not green at all.

You say sustainability is a problem but that's only if we also use land to still drill for crude oil as well as produce bio diesel. Bio diesel is more sustainable than any other fuel source since CO emissions are taken from the air to make the methanol and soy bean crops are sustainable when planted from seed - and water doesn't just disappear; it literally falls from the sky after a sunny day. Once the chemical reaction occurs in lithium cells which degrade them they are not renewable.

In Brazil, our gasoline has aproximately 27% of ethanol, made from sugarcane