#biofuel

Excerpt from this story from Sentient:

Croplands around the world produced enough calories in 2020 to meet global food needs, but only half of that output was available and suitable for people to eat, a new study finds.

As more crops are grown for livestock feed and biofuels rather than food for people, the food system becomes “less efficient over time,” says Project Drawdown researcher Paul West, one of the authors. Published in Environmental Research: Food Systems in March, the study warns that the growing gap between what is produced and what people actually eat has major implications for food security, land use and climate change, especially as demand for meat continues to rise.

Researchers from Project Drawdown and the University of Minnesota found that although global calorie production of 50 different crops rose by 24% from 2010 to 2020, the calories consumed by people eating these crops grew by just 15%.

In the study, calories are used as a standard measure of energy derived from crops to track how it moves through the food system and how much of that energy ends up as human food, livestock feed or nonfood uses, like biofuels, fuels made from plants and other organic materials. Their data shows that a growing share of crops is being funneled into livestock feed and nonfood uses, which increased by 31% and 36% in 2020, respectively.

Combining algae and oyster shells for biodiesel born in the bayou

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel and offers a sustainable and potentially carbon-neutral alternative to petroleum products. Yet production costs remain a hurdle to its widespread use. Now, researchers have developed an inexpensive way to make biodiesel from materials found along the banks of their Louisiana bayou: algae and oyster shells. The researchers will present their results at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS Spring 2026), held in Atlanta from March 22 to 26. Biodiesel is manufactured and used around the world, but its production is not without challenges. The plants, such as soy and rapeseed, that provide the initial oils require vast areas of land that could otherwise be used for food crops, and in some regions, expanding farms can damage and destroy valuable natural ecosystems. Production can also be expensive because of the high cost of components such as calcium oxide-based catalysts.

Prices of palm oil and soyabean oil have surged after the conflict between Israel and Iran pushed up energy costs and the Trump administration proposed increasing the amount of biofuels mixed into diesel and petrol. Soyabean oil has jumped 11 per cent since Thursday, hitting its highest level since October 2023 at more than 55 cents a pound. Palm oil, which had been falling this year due to a supply glut, has gained more than 6 per cent to almost 4,100 ringgit a ton this week. These edible oils are in demand amid a hunt for cheaper energy sources, driven by a roughly 8 per cent jump in the price of Brent crude since Israel launched air strikes against Tehran’s nuclear programme and military facilities at the end of last week. “The major factor for this jump is due to energy prices, prices of crude, because of this conflict,” said Darren Lim, a commodities strategist at Singapore-based brokerage Phillip Nova, adding that edible oil prices are tracking the grains in crude.

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Jake grinned as he pulled up in his beat-up panel van at the back fence to the junkyard.  Grabbing his bag of tools and walkie talkie from the passenger seat and headed over to the fence.

“Made it, Bill.  No guards, no cameras.  Should be able to harvest a good few catalytic converters before I have to bail.”

“Good work.  Just keep an eye out.  Been some weird stuff going on out there.”

“Got it, going over the fence.”

He grinned hooking the radio to his belt and tossing his bag over the fence before clambering up to the top.  Very carefully, he twisted on his side, squeezing between the coils of barbed wire before sliding down the far side of the fence and dropping to the ground.

Wasting no time, he pulled a cordless reciprocating saw from his back and wriggles his way up under the nearest car.  Turning on the small flashlight in his shirt pocket, he grinned as he spotted his prize.

“Jackpot!”

He rolled onto his side to shield the rest of the yard from the glow of the sparks that rained down as he cut the part free.  Racing back to the fence, he tossed it on the ground next to the chain link before racing a bit deeper into the yard to search for more.

After about an hour in the yard he had nine stacked up by the fence and he radioed in.  “Just one more to hit the quota for the night.  Hell, I could grab a few extra if you w…”

There was a screech of metal on metal coming from nearby, causing the thief to jump, nearly dropping the radio.  It crackled and let out a squeal of feedback before he could hear Bill’s voice again.  “..on out there?  You still there?  Where are you?”

Jake’s voice was a hoarse whisper as he asked.  “Shit, did you hear that?  I think someone’s here!”

“Then get outta there!  You can grab the last one somewhere else!”

“Not just yet.  Lemme see if it’s actually someone or just junk shifting around.  This place has been a gold mine tonight.”

“Dammit, Jake, will…  …  just get…  .. th..”  Static overwhelmed the signal and Jake shut it off to kill the noise.

Using the moonlight to see where he was going, Jake made his way through the junkyard, keeping an eye open for any sign of life.  He slipped around a stack of cars and into an opening in the yard itself, his jaw dropping at what he saw.

There, bathed in the silvery moonlight was a gorgeous red Astin Martin with gold highlights.  He slowly stepped closer, his heart racing.  He reached out a hand to caress the glistening paint before reaching for the door handle.

Quickly, the entire car seemed to fold in on itself, panels shifting and sliding as a huge metal hand reached out from within the engine block, wrapping around Jake’s waist, gripping him painfully tight, squeezing the breath out of him.

Within seconds he was lifted high into the air, held in the vice-like grasp of a towering humanoid robot.  Just looking at it, it looked like it was made from the pieces of the beautiful sports car.  Despite the pain, he was still in awe of what he was seeing.

Knockout looked at the human with disgust at first, then he felt a little flattered at the look on the human’s face.  He obviously had good taste in cars.  Shrugging, he reached up with his free hand, tapping the side of his head to activate his comm.

“Shockwave.  I have another human for your little “Pink Alchemy” project.  How many more do you think we will need before all is said and done?”

So what could it be like fixing chili with the Hair Bear Bunch?

Crazy. And then some.

Witness a rather amusing little episode the other night with the crew at Crazy Claws' retreat on Lake Delton, one which saw the Hair Bear Bunch (led, naturally, by the ever-unpredictable Hair Bear) prepare quite the pot of chili for supper.

One, mind you, which required getting no less than three pounds of ground beef and two modest-sized cans of chili beans, let alone a small jar of Pleasoning Chili Seasoning for the spice. Not to mention having to make sure the grease from the frying beef was properly disposed of, and in such a way that, over time, such wouldn't stink up the place with the sheer rancidity.

"And you wonder how waste hamburger fat would react to leftover peanut oil used for deep frying turkeys come Thanksgiving," as Crazy Claws put it, "at the local waste fats recycling point. Especially since it's bound to become biofuel anyway ... and just hope that the exhaust on cars actually using biofuel don't smell rancid in the end."

"Which has us thinking about redoing the engine on our motorhome," Huckleberry Hound added, "to use biofuels."

"Especially," added I, "when we're with Peter Potamus and his band of divers come the winter. Down in the Caribbean, even!"

"And you wonder where biofuel can be easily obtained," Square Bear quipped, "what with service stations not making such all that easy to obtain."

But at any rate, the discussion of turning waste hamburger grease into biofuel as a byproduct of fixing chili was but bound to come aside as the chili was bubbling away, the Southwestern aromatics bound to infiltrate the retreat in the face of a clear, but chill autumnal-type day for Wisconsin, the kind where the mail is bound to include a Swiss Colony or Figi's catalogue of mail-order cheeses and other food gifts screaming "WISCONSIN!!" at its cheesiest. And even Pixie and Dixie couldn't resist paging through one such for gifting-type ideas, content in the knowledge that their planting genetically-modified catnip was giving Jinksie the fits.

And by the time sunset came along--which turned out to be as much the time for serving the chili, right down to the whole wheat saltine crackers and shredded cheese complementing the whole, as well as some decent ginger ale to stimulate appetites and complement the spiciness of the chili ... you'll never guess who was the most enthused for the chili: Dum-Dum, the boon compadre unto Touché Turtle, he as would over the summer enjoy houseboating with Bristlehound on the Mississippi in search for Friday fish fry.

Not to be outdone, the Hair Bear Bunch "themselves" had quite the fill of chili on their account. After all, it was their idea to get the chili supper started, even with the jokes about how the grease from the frying hamburger would be disposed of in the end ... though Hair Bear admitted that he probably had a hankering most serious for some old-school chili himself.

And who could imagine the smell of flatus ensuing, enough for the Ozium to be deployed to keep the air sweet, even if it was bound to be a hospitals-in-winter sort of smell?

*************

Globally, the biofuels industry has been witnessing a major boom since 2021, driven primarily by increasing demand for biogas, energy-from-waste, renewable natural gas (RNG), and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) in the transport and power generation sectors. The adoption of fuels and electricity produced from organic waste is also helping with efficient waste management and disposal, a growing issue in virtually every developed and developing country. As per Enerdatics’ research, there has been more than $25bn worth of corporate takeovers, asset acquisitions, and strategic partnerships in the biofuels space globally, since the start of 2021. While the US dominates the observed rise in deal value and volume, biofuel assets in the UK have quietly come to the forefront as the highest-valued onshore renewable energy source in the country.