interview > heywood > heywood 19

Heywood 19 (1:26)
Topic(s): Biofuels / Environment
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Video Transcript

One can ask, "Can you provide fuel from other than petroleum sources?" There's a fair amount of petroleum there, but we need to be concerned about its long-term availability. There are alternatives; some aren't so good. We can make petroleum-like fuels out of coal, we've got heavy oils, we've got oil sands, tar sands, we've got several options. They have extra greenhouse gas emissions because of the processing extra energy involved in making those fuels. They'll happen because they're looking economic. But yes, they do provide fuel, but they'll increase the greenhouse emissions per mile traveled.

Then we got biofuels. Now, that's promising. It certainly can supply a really useful component, 5 percent, perhaps 10 percent, perhaps more. And 5 percents are hard to come by, so we need every one that looks real and makes sense. Could they grow bigger? Maybe. But there are some issues we need to sort out. We've got to get a very effective technology of converting this biomass to fuel, so that we don't waste any energy along the way. So a lot of issues there. But that's one of the good things, with some cautions. Maybe developing parts of the world can develop that as an alternative fuel stream. These will mitigate the impacts. They won't remove them. So we've still got lots of hard work and lots of careful, thinking decision-making ahead.