How a Tortilla Crisis is Causing an Energy Innovation

The ‘Great Tortilla Crisis’ of 2006 is having an unexpected effect two years later – helping to determine the fate of ethanol as an energy source. Ethanol got the blame for rising food prices as American farmers used the corn they grew for fuel instead of food, making it too expensive for Mexico’s poor. Now, biofuel producers are searching for sources of energy that don’t take food off the table, turning to grass, grain stalks left behind by the harvest, garbage dumps and dinner table scraps.

From The Huffington Post:

Carlo Bakker’s tiny biofuel operation, World Mobile Plants, avoids edibles. He says his mini-refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck, roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. He says he plans eventually to use organic household waste as well.

Bakker says one mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which he sells for the equivalent of US$3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.

“We don’t compete with the food chain,” Bakker said during a biofuels conference in Amsterdam. “We see opportunities not only to make money but to help people.”

Now, we’re seeing a shift toward second-generation biofuels – those that use waste streams. Universities and corporate research laboratories are pouring millions of dollars into finding a way to break down woody or grassy biomass into cellulosic ethanol. We’re still a few years away from commercial plants, however.

Biofuel proponents are upset that all biofuels have been lumped together in this backlash, when some forms made from things like sugar cane don’t have an effect on the food supply. In Europe, biodiesel is made largely of rapeseed grown on disused land. Only 40% of crushed rapeseed is used for biodiesel while the rest is processed into animal feed.

However, biofuel still requires plenty of water and is sometimes grown on fertile cropland which, many argue, could be put to better use for food.

A long-term solution could still come from the biofuel industry, if they can solve these problems. Many people view biofuels as a ‘band-aid’ solution, however – only useful until we can move on to something that’s truly sustainable. There are those who believe that turning to genetic modification is the answer, but that’s a whole other can of worms and one that we hope will not be opened any time soon.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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