New fuel options could offer long-term solutions

Now that the shine of biofuels has been tarnished, and oil prices continue, big surprise, to hit new records, what are we going to be fuelling up with in the future?

Thankfully, there are a few new options on the far-off horizon that developers hope will not take the much-needed farmland away from food crops.

Don't get me wrong - these options aren't going to serve as fixes for our current price problems in the near future. But they are possible long-term solutions.

At some point, fossil fuels will run out and we'll have to rely on other forms of fuel. Of course it isn't going to happen soon, but getting in on the ground floor of new fuel development is probably going to be a smart investment.

And there are some cool new possibilities on the horizon. In Japan, spoiled milk is dumped into a bioreactor, where it produced eight times its own volume in biogas in a one-week period. The company is now looking at the possibility of feeding nuisance jellyfish, which are attracted to the warm waste water of a nearby nuclear power plant, into the bioreactor.

Meanwhile, at the University of California at Davis, the Biogas Energy Project has been turning everything from food waste from restaurants to grass clippings into enough electricity to power 80 homes for a day.

While both projects are currently limited in scope, the technology allows anything that is biodegradable to be transformed into biogas without sacrificing precious farmland.

Another hot prospect is algae. Yes, that nasty green sludge that builds up in poorly aerated water and smells terrible also appears to be a great source of high-grade oil for biofuel, as well as edible oils and protein that could serve as animal feed.

Once again, algae doesn't take land away from food farming since it can be grown in some pretty tough conditions. Dirty air and poor quality soil? No problem, apparently. And the rootless waterborne plant, also called algae biomass, can double its size in 24 to 48 hours.

So far, on a small scale, the concept has been borne out by several small plants which are up and running.

Even Airbus and Honeywell have said they are planning to develop a new biofuel - created in part from algae-based oils - that could power a third of all commercial aircraft by 2030.

More and more big companies look like they are trying to get in on the ground floor of what will someday be a vastly different energy industry.

DuPont, which makes everything from Kevlar to dishes, is sinking $140 million into a joint venture that aims to make ethanol from the leftover remnants of corn and sugarcane.

This is painting an interesting, and diverse, picture of what our energy industry may look like down the road.

Rather than one killer application that will solve all of our fuel problems, there is a good chance that we'll be producing gas and oil from a wide variety of processes.

Someday soon, or at least at some point in the near future, your fuel source may be more dependent on the climate and industry in your area, rather than what is being pumped out of the ground in Opec nations.

Do you live in a metropolitan area like Dubai? Then the fuel at the ENOC or EPPCO station might come from restaurant scraps or algae tanks. In rural farm areas grass clippings and leftovers from crops could power cars and trucks.

The only sure thing is that the future is rapidly becoming the now.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Alaska, USA.

Rather than one killer application that will solve all of our fuel problems, there is a good chance that we'll be producing gas and oil from a wide variety of processes.