You
Brace yourself gas prices gas prices the price of gasoline has hit another new record
342 billion dollars in profits the absolute level of profitability is still not sufficient must have gas
patriotic Americans for cheap gas
America is addicted to oil
Suicide car bombers trying to storm a huge oil facility set pipelines and other oil facilities on fire to wean ourselves away from
From foreign oil is a great cut great concept their most innovative solution was what if we look in Alaska?
Well, I would like to survive long enough to see the effects of global warming George for signed into law in August 2005
Yes, huge energy bill. Yes in that energy bill. He spends five billion dollars
Yes, new subsidies to oil companies to finance new drilling for oil
When people find out about the history it's amazing, you know, they're actually very interested
The oil industry was born with a silver spoon of subsidy firmly wedged between its little teeth
It was not born in the spirit of free competition that they like to tell you about all the time
So energy is really political and it was always political from the very beginning
Here's an interesting little tidbit of history Rudolph diesel is the person that invented the diesel engine and when it came to market in
1898 that's 108 years ago
Do you have any idea what he ran that on at the time that he when he first invented that thing?
I can assure you it wasn't diesel fuel. He said ladies and gentlemen. I have two words for you and he lifted the
Tarp and he said peanut oil and he unveiled the diesel engine which was invented to run on peanut oil
So that farmers could grow their own fuel
Here's another thing that you may find interesting. Why do you think they call it diesel fuel?
And where do you think the diesel fuel came from that we have taken so much for granted?
It came from a guy by the name of John D. Rockefeller
Diesel fuel actually had nothing to do with Rudolph diesel himself
He probably turned over in his grave if he knew about it
But his engine was taken by the petroleum companies and modified to run on this toxic byproduct of petroleum
Which is what we call diesel fuel the European governments, of course are rather wary of the
Rockefellers and the Rothschilds and the others who control the international oil industry
So they want to encourage a domestic fuel industry and that happens in Germany and in France and a number of other countries
Farmers in America notice that a lot of European farmers have this brand-new market for fuel
And they are making fuel out of crops turning it into turning their crops into ethanol. We can get the power and get the light
We can get the things that we want today with neighbors working the self-save way
Working together to cut the corn
Ethanol was used as a transportation fuel very early on in the development of automobiles
Henry Ford and George Washington Carver and Thomas Edison
Alexander Graham Bell and really some of the greats of American invention
Saw this as a new way to provide a stability for American farmers
Along with energy security and along with safer cleaner burning fuel
All of those things were on the plus side on the negative side the oil industry didn't like it
And at the time when Teddy Roosevelt was president he was known as what's called the trust buster
And he wanted the oil trust or monopolies to be reduced somewhat in power and to be open up to more competition
So this seemed like a perfect idea. They lifted the tax on industrial alcohol and a lot of farmers were very enthusiastic
But as it turned out in 1906 that's a century ago
The enthusiasm for ethanol as a fuel was a little bit overdone because the oil industry was able to lower its prices very quickly
And knock the competition off the map
I'll myself
I'll to me
I'm the crowd who's out to change our history
I'll myself raise your hand
There's no greater dictator in the land
The Nazis during World War II fueled many of their transportation vehicles on ethanol
And so the largest deployment of ethanol prior to modern times was the Nazis during World War II
They had limited access to petroleum and so they developed domestic ethanol production
You know even in the run up to World War II
Steyard Oil Company and IG Farben signed an agreement that they called a full marriage designed to outlast the war
It was investigated by Senator Harry Truman in the Truman War Investigating Committee
And it was shocking. It bordered on treason
The oil industry had decided that maybe the Nazis were going to win and they wanted to stay in power
So they cut a few deals with them
One of them was to give away tetraethyl lead technology
Another one was to block synthetic rubber technology development in the United States
And you know by D-Day three quarters of the American Army was rolling on tires made from Midwestern corn from alcohol
And not from oil because the oil interest had not seen it fit to really work to develop synthetic rubber
In the run up to World War II even though it was obviously going to be a critical war material
And I think it's worth saying that again that energy is political and what the oil industry wants
Oftentimes the oil industry gets one way or the other
They always put profits ahead of patriotism
What happened in 1973 late and then through 1974 with the first Arab oil embargo
Shortages grew, lines of gas stations grew to be half a mile long
The price of oil went up four fold in less than a month
Suddenly we had acquired this huge dependence upon other parts of the world
From this vital central part of the American economy
There was President Carter on TV with this guy had an engine running off of vegetable oil
And talking about how that was a possibility and that could help
And then as soon as the gas prices dropped back down it just disappeared
It was like 1973 you know
This can happen again, we think oh expensive oil is here to stay, cheap oil is impossible
And I remember hearing that in the late 1970s as well
And they just simply over produced a couple of fields
And sure enough oil was cheap again and all the alternatives went bankrupt
What you need is political control over what is essentially a political market which is energy
For centuries ago everybody was using biomass mostly for everything
For heat, for cooking and for eating
Now we are basing our economies on fossil fuels and nuclear energy
Now we have six and a half billion people who are using energy at a rate
Which is unparalleled at any time in human history
Does the President believe that given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita
How much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world
Does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles?
That's a big no
The President believes that it's an American way of life
And that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life
The American way of life is a blessed one
And we have a bounty of resources in this country
A blessed one with a bounty of resources
Well if it's so blessed, why did God put all of our oil under the people who hate us?
A single source of energy is why we have the addiction and the problem that we have now
So we need a diversified portfolio of energy options
And renewable fuels that work, that you can blend into our existing conventional fuels
Like ethanol and biodiesel blended into diesel fuel and gasoline
Going into our existing infrastructure used in our existing vehicles
That's the very first thing that we can do, it's easy, it's now, it's available, we can grow it
If you really need your vehicle to get around
There are plenty of alternative fuels abound
In the past Mr. Diesel made his engine to run
Many types of oil grown under the sun
From peanut to olive, canola and corn
The engine run on vegetable, oil was born
You can also make it into biodiesel fuel
It'll need a simple process and a couple of tools
It is the future for agriculture
It's the future for the farmers
It's the future for the environment
It's the next big thing folks
I think it's very, very encouraging
Biodiso is very definitely a product that I think you're going to see a lot more of
In the United States in future years
I only see millions of acres and millions of farmers
New farmers, old farmers back out there growing fuel for America
We are trying to promote energy independence and domestic agriculture
And farmers supporting truckers and truckers supporting farmers
And together helping our overall energy supply
And lowering our dependence on imports
And imported petroleum, specifically imported petroleum from the Middle East if we can
I think in biodiesel it's an extremely interesting new product
I think in terms of the primary drivers of economic security
And oil independence, it's a crucial piece
But it has to be understood as a small piece
It would be unlikely that biodiesel would ever be able to
Surplant our 50 to 60 billion gallon a year appetite for diesel
We continue to see more and more soybeans harvested and then produced into biodiesel
It's an excellent product, we get very positive reports on it
We see biodiesel plants being built across the country
So I think it's very, very encouraging
We utilize a batch process on our plant
Because we use a lot of different types of oils
So we're able to run up to nine different batches simultaneously
Each batch can be up to 3,500 gallons
This is what some soy, see the color of it
It's almost like there's nothing in it
All of those tanks there and the wash and dry makes the biodiesel
It's our finished product
Biodiesel is a product of a vegetable oil
That is chemically combined with a methanol to make an oxygenated long chain hydrocarbon
It's similar to diesel fuel in its chemical composition
However, it has an oxygen molecule in there that helps it to burn cleaner
We plan to grow through selling mostly 2 to 5 million gallon sized plants
I think that's where the market is
It's a large decentralization close to the feedstock
And hopefully re-empowering the farmers
Small co-ops to take control of their grain sales again
And give some control of our energy sources back to smaller entities
So right now I'm just going to get ready to create another batch of oil
I'm going to start reading up on biodiesel on the web
And I said, well, with all my practical skills, this is a cakewalk
I can take care of that
Especially when somebody wants to give me the oil initially
So I decided to experiment
I see it as using basically a waste product and saving money at the same time
So I put 20 gallons of straight vegetable oil into the water heater
Then we add a mixture of methanol and lye into the water heater, heat it up
And then run the pump for about an hour and a half to mix it all up
And that reacts to the oil and separates the glycerin which you don't want
And you've got biodiesel
I haven't made exact hard numbers yet, but it's got to be under a dollar gallon out the door into the car
So it's substantial, so you're not probably saving $2,000 a year in fuel then
What we're doing in the Bay Area is, and hopefully other folks across the country are doing similar things
Is we're trying to make a network of locally owned, locally operated, sustainable stations
They're connected to the community
And what I'd like to see the future of biodiesel being is regional production, regional distribution
By community owned and community operated stations
I'd like things to be accountable to the communities that they serve
And I think that biodiesel really offers that
In the years 2001 through 2004 essentially
Most of the users of biodiesel were government fleets that were mandated to use clean burning fuels
And people that were just environmentally conscious that wanted to do the right thing and use a locally produced clean burning renewable fuel
This is Priscilla here behind me
She's a 1972 MCI MC7 Challenger, former Greyhound tour bus
We run her on 100% biodiesel and have been doing that for four years
You can buy a Mercedes that is a diesel engine or any kind of diesel car and you can run biodiesel
I was kind of blown away when I realized that you could run biodiesel with no modification to the engine at all
I figured there was some voodoo you had to do to the car to make it run it
Did you drive one of these cars that you can run the biodiesel on?
Yeah, I have a Volkswagen, no, it didn't have to adapt the engine at all and it runs off a biodiesel
And in what car do you drive?
I drive a 1984 diesel El Camino on B100
And I get about 40 miles to the gallon
About 80 miles an hour
I bought a Mercedes, did the same thing, put 100% vegetable oil in it
And the Mercedes people were very nervous and it has run wonderful
I get great gas mileage
Now all my buses and trucks and everybody on the road we operate, we use biodiesel, 100% when we can
And we converted our entire fleet of both stationary and mobile applications in the greater Yellowstone area
That's over 300 diesel vehicles, over 100 pieces of heavy equipment, boilers, standby generators
We now displace about 75 to 100,000 gallons of petroleum diesel every year
Time to work up an appetite for dinner, boo
Yogi, wait!
It should be a part of the top three of the most important tasks of a fleet manager
In a federal, state, county, local, municipal operation to use alternative fuels
We have approximately 1,300 buses that we run today
On biodiesel
Along with about 300 support vehicles that run on diesel fuel as well
Anything that the Clark County School District uses that runs on diesel fuel, runs on B20 biodiesel
Biodiesel was put in our fleet about five and a half years ago
We operate everything except fire services on biodiesel, whether it's light duty trucks, street sweepers, road graders, backhoes
Even parks equipment that operate small gaiters that are diesel powered
Everything runs on biodiesel
And the more of that you use, the more you displace an oil and the cleaner it burns
Look at this, this is my gas tank
It has a toxicity level somewhere between table salt and maple syrup
You know, you don't see that very often, do you?
No
To help reduce emissions and create better air quality and enhance better health for the residents of those communities throughout the United States
And we achieve this by having more biodiesel being used in our communities as well as other alternative fuels being used in those communities
To improve the air quality and lessen air quality emissions
If you got breathing problems with the old stuff, a lot of people used to wear masks when they used to check out the buses with the old diesel
Providing, you know, the healthier environment for the kids that we transport is what this is all about
You know, there's a lot of studies that say that the asthma and the particulars and stuff in the air
Effect asthma and breathing disorders and things that some of the kids have at the young age and the development stages
So we believe that by using the B-20, we're doing the best we can to provide a cleaner, healthier environment for the students that we transport
You're in a car behind a bus with the old diesel, you just want to get a big cloud when she steps on the accelerator
And in the mirror, you'll see the cloud behind you
Daddy, all the fumes are making me dizzy
Well, now Roddy the Lord wouldn't let us die this way
With this biodiesel that didn't happen at all
My guest tonight is a global warming alarmist and a climate change advocate
Tonight, he'll usher in the biggest storm of the season, Hurricane Buzzkill
Some things in America are just too big if I could put it that way
Okay
I don't know what sort of cow you drive
I'll buy what's too big
Cars for a start
Oh, we're all supposed to drive moped, is that it now?
Not no pets, no, I think you can move to biofuels
By all means, you're buying a lot of imported fuel to drive this incredibly large legal fleet
It took me forever to get here across New York
And the cars are the size of elephants out on the road
They're huge, you know, if most European cities just aren't like that
And in fact, most world cities aren't like that
But you're not in Europe, you're in America
We're used to abundance, that's what the President said
If the US had managed to maintain average transport fuel efficiency
At the levels that they had at the start of the 1980s
Which I think was 26 miles per gallon
Instead of allowing it to drop to around about 23, 24 miles per gallon
If they'd managed to keep it 26 miles per gallon
Then they would have avoided importing all of the oil they imported from the Middle East
Or the equivalent of that
Interestingly enough, in that period in Europe
We were roughly 26 miles per gallon in the early 1980s
And the Europeans have managed to improve fuel efficiency
To around about 30 miles per gallon in that period
Based on the consideration that the diesel engine is more efficient
European authorities and national authorities of the member states
Have been promoting diesel cars for a long time
And the result is that today there are more diesel cars running in Europe
And especially the new cars
So the new manipulation, new plates
For instance here in Belgium, more than 70% of the new plate numbers
Are going to diesel cars
In that situation, again, biodiesel constitutes a very important source
Of supply for diesel in Europe
If we can get vehicles out here
I know that there are representatives of General Motors
And Ford and others, they're all represented here
If we can kind of bend their ear and talk about light duty diesels
And the technology to bring light duty diesels to America
Because we are lagging behind the industrialized world
In terms of high efficiency light duty vehicles
And we need to respond to that
I'm looking forward to the day when I can buy a diesel hybrid
That gets 75 or 80 miles per gallon
So you've converted the vegetable oil into biodiesel
Through a chemical process
And then that is thin enough that it can be poured in any diesel car and driven on
The other idea is to convert the car
So that it can then run on the thick vegetable oil
Without having to do anything to the oil
So you either convert the fuel or you convert the car
A normal looking and sounding 44 ton articulated truck
At a depot just outside Oxford
But the owners believe it's the first of its kind in the UK
Because it runs on vegetable oil
I came across an article about Rudolph diesel
And running the first diesel engine on plant oil
Peanut oil in 1900
Looked at my old diesel engine
My old Peugeot thought well there's not a lot of difference
Really in engine technology
And said about converting my own car to run on used chip oil
Four years later the vehicle was still running very well
In fact even lower emissions than running on fossil diesel
I get about 35 to 40 miles a gallon
Between city and highway and on a renewable fuel
And I've actually now converted it over or upgraded it
So that it can run on multi fuel
It can use regular pump diesel if necessary
I can use biodiesel and I can use straight vegetable oil
If an engine is being operated say longer than 15 to 20 minutes
Then really you should be switching say from biodiesel
To operation on pure plant oils
Because you've got plenty of excess energy
In the terms of excess heat from the engine
To process the used vegetable oil into a form where you can use it
And therefore the environmental impact of straight vegetable oil
Is a lot lower than biodiesel
There's so much potential for people to be able to sustain themselves
In any kind of environment
And we're talking about places in the world that are so poor
That have nothing that don't have even the basic electricity or water
And they could still have without even any kind of serious infrastructure
With things that they have available to them there
They could still be able to create small production facilities
And grow things that are available within their climate range
Whether it's you know jojoba, whether it's a truffle plant
Whether it's rape seed, whether it's corn, soy, flax, hemp seed
You know you could literally just litter the sides of highways
With hemp seed it doesn't take any water
And you could just have fuel everywhere without anyone even maintaining it
We're headed off to Berkeley to meet two fellas who have figured out
That with a little bit of modification the engine in your car
Can actually burn olive oil
Who knew?
See it's really clear
These Berkeley guys got so tired of paying for high priced diesel gas
Actually it's not bad olive oil
No you can put that on the salad
They started using their cooking oil instead
I say about two and a half, three years ago
A contractor friend of mine came to me and asked me if I wanted to run my diesel car
On an Elzabeth conversion kit from Germany
That would allow me to power my Mercedes diesel on vegetable oil
Not diesel purchased from the gas station
Not biodiesel but straight vegetable oil
Over the last two years the experiment has been quite successful
Everybody's had some ups and downs
But truthfully I think it is a very good energy source for powering vehicles
Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy
And here we have a serious problem
America is addicted to oil which is often imported from unstable parts of the world
Well brace yourself gas prices are topping three dollars in places around the country
And the energy department says it expects them to stay high this summer
So we're paying really high prices at the pump
And all we're getting in return is nothing but huge profits by these oil companies
That's what you're wrong, they're extracting it from the ground for twenty dollars a barrel
Then they're selling it to themselves for seventy dollars a barrel
And then passing those savings on to us
They extract it, they refine it, they sell it, where are we in that equation?
Free gas!
Free fuel is great
I mean it's quite a feeling driving for free all the time
I really, there's nothing else quite like it
To know that you're driving on somebody else's garbage on their waste product as your fuel
My private vehicle was fueled literally from oil from the local chip shop and pub
Great for them, they were paying to have it collected
So I came along and said look, I'll take it off your hands for nothing
Bit of simple processing, dewatering, deacidification of filtering in my own garage
Basically gave me unlimited free fuel
This is Karl Fudd, I'm with a group called People for the Ethical Treatment of French Fries
Oh my God
My question for Charles is how many innocent French fries have to fry to make this fuel?
We'll be monitoring your process and save the fries
Okay, you gotta save the fries
We just went over to a Japanese restaurant and picked up their oil
Their excess used fry oil for free
And they're happy because they have to pay per gallon to have it hauled away
And so now they're not having to pay as much to get their oil taken away
And we're getting free fuel, they're getting free pickup
Everybody's happy except mobile and Exxon
We have four diesel engines on the farm
We have our delivery truck which is on a two tank system
Straight vegetable oil and diesel
The diesel is used to just to warm the engine up, warm the fuel up
And then we roll over onto straight vegetable oil
Then the other two tank system we have is our irrigation pump
Our small Toyota four-cylinder diesel engine
That does all our pressurizing of our water for all our sprinklers and drip irrigation on the farm
And we have 275 gallon tank of straight vegetable oil which that's sucking from
That's fabulous, the engine runs beautiful but all the engines run fabulously on the vegetable oil
With the straight vegetable oil we collect ourselves from two restaurants in San Francisco
And a tortilla chip factory
It saves them a considerable amount of money every week
So they're making money and I'm getting the oil for free
This is a community fuel filtering station
And you let it settle in this tank with a drop-in aquarium heater to warm it up to about 85-90 degrees
And then you just turn on the pump and pump it through a 10 micron filter
And that puts it into this which is a holding tank
This is where you put the fuel initially, the vegetable oil
And this is the fuel that's ready to go straight into the car
And you just put one of these five gallon, one of these five gallon car boys
Fits underneath there, fill it up and then pour it into the car
It's quite simple, you can also take these on the road
They fit in the trunk, strap them in with a bungee cord
And you've got fuel for days
So what we've managed to do is cut our diesel use on the farm from 7,000 gallons to just a few hundred gallons a year
So over 95% fossil fuel we have removed from this farm
We're learning all the time, which is great
The community of vegetable oil users
We're all sharing information and it's just a fabulous way to use this wonderful resource
Ethanol, a technical name, ethyl alcohol
But what it really is, is whiskey vodka purified to its purest form without any water
So a rather remarkable substance that that which we can drink can also be purified and used as a clean burning fuel
I know that when I'm at the pump using ethanol, I'm supporting a local economy
You know, I'm making sure that our air is cleaner
More kids have asthma today than we've ever had in the history of the world really
And in part that's because of pollution, and a major part of that pollution is particulate matters and carbon dioxide
And the use of ethanol reduces those
Ethanol today is produced from a variance of crops, whether it be grain sorghum, which is produced primarily on dry land
So no irrigation, very little fertilizer is used
Corn, which is the major staple that is used for production of ethanol
But wheat and very many other products can be used to produce ethanol
Hurricane, as we know in the southern region of the world, is the primary product that is used
In fact, Brazil gets almost half of its motor fuel from ethanol made from sugar
And it could export it to the United States
But Washington has imposed a 100% tariff in order to protect American farmers who make more costly ethanol from corn
What is our duty on crude oil?
Zero
It's no secret that record oil prices equal massive profits for oil companies
ExxonMobil made more than $10 billion in the second quarter
That's the second highest figure ever reported by a U.S. firm
The biggest ever profit was reported by, guess what, ExxonMobil in the last year's fourth quarter
If you want to blame someone for the gas thing
I would
It's partly the oil prices, but it's also some mistakes Congress made
This ethanol mandate that they put in place last year, this is infecting the prices of gas
But all this seems like bulls***
Because it doesn't
But the thing that, again, all those things don't explain why these guys keep having record quarters
Ethanol was always perceived as a threat and as a competitor as opposed to a product that really extended their own business model
But they've hit the wall on refining capacity, you know, we've hit peak oil, we're running out of oil
Running out of the ability to meet worldwide demand for growing demand for gasoline
So now ethanol is something that just, you write out of necessity, the oil industry is embracing
Because it is something that they can continue to blend into their gasoline supply, still sell it as branded shell product
Much less disruptive to their overall plan than, you know, moving towards new fuels, whether it be fuel cells or natural gas vehicles, electrical vehicles, etc
What in Europe needs to occur if there's going to be more E85 in the middle of the mill?
I understand, and your companies aren't necessarily real enthusiastic about, you know, selling carbon hydrations for a time
I think the bottom line is that if there's money to be made in E85, my companies will look at the bumps in
Fundamentally the problem, it could be what we're dealing here with
Well ethanol is blended in more than a third of the gasoline that's sold in the United States today
So it's literally sold from coast to coast and from border to border
Virtually every gallon of gasoline sold in New York is blended with ethanol
Virtually every gallon of gasoline sold in California is blended with 10% ethanol
Every auto manufacturer making vehicles today fully warranties 10% ethanol blends
Now ethanol can also be used in flexible fueled vehicles that are designed to burn a much higher blend of ethanol
85% ethanol, 15% gasoline, and those vehicles are increasingly being sold to the driving public today
GM already has 1.5 million flex fuel vehicles that can run on E85, and it's just the beginning
Right now there's about 5 million flex fuel vehicles on the road
Frankly I'm not sure people even know they've got a flexible vehicle
So there's some simple steps that we can take
Make sure people know that they have them
Make sure we're working with auto manufacturers to get those flexible vehicles
More of them produced on the road
The biggest problem is that there's not the distribution and the consumer awareness to make sure that those vehicles are being fueled on ethanol
Most of the time they're still running on gasoline
Particularly out here where we have 400,000 of these cars in California
Yet there's only one public E85 fueling station in San Diego
That has to change
The Midwest is further ahead
There's roughly 700 stations throughout the Midwest
Consumers just because they're in the part of the country where ethanol has been around a long time
There's real appreciation and support for the industry and the product and more consumer awareness
So people will seek out these vehicles and will seek out the stations to fill up with the E85
So it's a challenge
It's not as simple as just getting 10% ethanol in every gallon of gas
We look to Brazil as a great model where they started with blends 10%
They now have every gallon of gas at 20%
And also when you go into a station you have the option of buying the regular gasoline that has a minimum of 20% ethanol in it
Or you can buy the pure ethanol
And so full flexibility and full choice for the consumer and that really is the direction that we should move
We just last year have become the largest producer of ethanol on the earth
And with our 5 billion gallons of ethanol or so produced let's say in 206
We will replace 5 out of 140 billion gallons of gasoline which isn't much
And you also have to understand that while we're at it we are using gigantic quantities of fossil fuels to produce that ethanol
It's interesting, you know, we never do that analysis on coal or electricity
There is a large loss of energy in the production of electricity
But we convert energy in the form of coal into something that's more usable
We would prefer electricity to heat our homes or run our lights or run our cameras
It's not very convenient to carry a lump of coal around with us to do any of those things
And so as a society we tolerate that net loss of energy because it produces or creates a form of energy that's more usable
By 2007 all Indy cars will run at 100% ethanol
Race car driver Paul Dana says the fuel performs well in the Indy cars
From the league's perspective they were interested in moving their race series into a more environmental direction
And making a very bold statement about racing can be clean and sustainable
Because that's a big issue in the auto industry but it hasn't been so much in the racing industry
State Acts Secretary Patty Judge says the move is important for Iowa corn growers
But also in the effort to become more energy independent
We can stand here today in the middle of the United States on the steps of the Iowa Capitol
And talk about a promotion that is very important to Iowa corn growers
But it is also important to the security of this nation
The Indy Racing League has been working for the last three years to make the move to ethanol
They hope it will help reduce the need for foreign oil
Create more American jobs and provide a boost to rural America
We're coming into these rural areas that have some of the highest unemployment in the country
Providing very good paying jobs, multiplier effects into the local economy for all the support industries
So it's a very, very important part of it in our view
Is the economic development and very appropriate economic development
That this industry brings to the state and the country
There's a lot of criticism about the biofuel industry having a huge environmental impact
And certainly that can't be denied
There's a lot of plantations going in in very sensitive areas
To produce the oil feedstock we require for the industry
You see actually big business and industrial farming, ADM on Santos and those kinds of people there
Everyone's smelling money in the industry of biofuels in general and also alternative energy
The world's demand for energy will never stop
Which is why a farmer is growing corn and a farmer is growing soy
And why ADM is turning these crops into biofuels
The world's demand for energy will never stop
That can also be a problem because there are lots of unsustainable ways to produce biofuels
Sugarcane for ethanol is a huge player in this game
Because as the Brazilians expand sugarcane plantations in the Cerrado
They displace other crops into the tropical forest, into the Amazon forest
A harvest of soya beans, nothing unusual you might think
Except that this field used to be rainforest
Trees that play a vital role in the global climate have made way for farmland
Cultivating soya makes good money
We are studying the possibility of making compulsory the use of an environmental certificate
That gives us guarantees that the production of these biofuels do not harm the nature of the environment
One thing that I really want to work on is getting a sustainable certification program in place
Just like USDA Organic or Fairtrade or one of those kinds of things
So that people really know what kind of fuel they're buying
Because I see a lot of people saying, you know, we're going to do a biodiesel plant
And I'm like, yeah, that sounds great
And we're going to import all this palm oil from Malaysia and I go, you know
Basically the major problem with palm oil when it comes to orangutan conservation
Is that huge swathes of rainforests, millions of hectares of rainforests
Are being completely clear cut to make way for massive oil palm monoculture plantations
Stupid wildlife, serves them right
At the moment we're running a campaign targeting this end of the supply chain
We're trying to create a market for sustainable palm oil
Because that will have a knock-on effect down into the industry in Indonesia and Malaysia
And if there's a market for sustainable palm oil
Or palm oil that's been produced in a non-destructive manner
Then the industry will slowly begin to change
If we want to preserve the environment
This is as good as preserving ourselves and our lives
If we don't, we're going to die
Simple as that, and not tomorrow, not in big waves
But the earth will have ways of getting back with us
In ways that will make our lives very, very miserable
So it's better to wake up right now, just a little bit
Then keep on lying to ourselves and deluding ourselves
That somehow we can continue our lifestyles the way we do
Do you think we can reduce consumption, Fran?
Yes, not only can we reduce consumption, I think we have to reduce consumption
Energy efficiency is the first priority in the energy policy of the European Union
So we have published a green paper on energy efficiency last year
Which evaluates the potential of savings of 20% of all the energy consumed here
Unless we cut down our energy use in the United States
Which is a good example, by a factor of 10
And we should not stop there
Then it is not possible to replace our current sources of energy with biofuels and biomass
You as an individual can reduce your consumption, which is going to help
But as so many other countries are starting to become more and more industrialized
I think that their consumption is only going to go up
We probably in America could definitely take huge steps to reduce our consumption
But when you are talking about China or India or a lot of other countries
They want to catch up
Yeah, their consumption is never going to go down from where it is now
Growing numbers of rich Indian middle classes
Projected here to have something like 200 million cars on the roads in the coming decades
Many analysts say that in a few years time if China's economy keeps on booming
China will overtake the US as the number one emitter of greenhouse gases
Not a very welcome reputation
As supply goes down due to tensions in the mid-east
Lowering of our refining capabilities, etc
Demand has gone up due to seasonal changes
The world economy, India and China obviously play a role
Now these two factors combine to go up your ass
Can you see what I'm saying?
Good evening, at 9.17 this morning the future arrived
Years earlier than predicted
The future
We know that there are a whole range of new technologies waiting in the wings
That could potentially produce biofuels, ethanol or diesel
A synthetic diesel from biomass
Which is like a biodiesel but is chemically identical to mineral diesel
We know these technologies exist
And they potentially have a very very good greenhouse gas performance
They're very energy efficient
For instance the Department of Energy in America
Looked into growing a strain of algae called the diatomalgae
Which is probably one of the most oil dense plants we found yet
And this will literally grow in the desert on a small bed of liquid nutrients
Very easy to harvest, very low environmental impact to grow and harvest
Crush it, fantastic oil yields
So I think moving forwards there's fantastic potential for renewable energy
That don't require lazy solutions of leveling rainforest
Well second generation biofuels
It's one of the hopes for the development of biofuels
Because that will let the use of forest waste for instance or straw
To produce biofuels which is currently not the case
Lignose cellulosity or lignose cellulosic biomass
Well you know plants are made up of cell walls and a lot of different components
Which are basically proteins that can be broken down by microbes
You know enzymes that ferment stuff
And you want to capture those sugars and translate them into alcohol
And if you understand how under what conditions certain microbes can do that more effectively
You could make ethanol a whole lot more competitive than fossil fuel
Anywhere that it's possible to grow either trees or grasses in the future
That'll be possible to turn all of that material into cellulosic material
And maybe equally importantly a lot of our waste, our municipal waste
Is cellulosic material
Wait a minute, what are you doing Doc?
I need fuel
And it could be used as a feedstock for producing ethanol with cellulosic technologies
And there's lots of places of course around the world where this waste is simply disposed of
Sometimes it's recycled but sometimes it just goes to landfill
And we can do better than that by making fuel out of it
It's going to take a lot, it's going to take hydrogen fuel cells and biofuels
And solar and wind power for our electricity in our homes
And a whole conglomerate of things together
If you're looking for a silver bullet solution to our energy supply and our energy dependence
You're just going to keep looking because there is no silver bullet solution
It's going to be what I call a silver buckshot approach
It's not going to be solved in the short run by some silver bullet
Unless it's werewolves who are using all the gas
I think it's really bright for biofuels, the economics are sort of tight right now
But as we go down this road I think they have an absolutely mandatory role in where we're going
We have a great opportunity here to change our bad patterns
To look at, examine our history and also do something the right way
Do something that would benefit everybody, ourselves, our planet
And also it doesn't mean that everyone's not going to make huge amounts of money
And that the earth can't thrive, it could support local farmers
It could support our soil system, it could support all of these wonderful things
But we just have to be really cautious about the way we go about it
It's really in everybody's best interest to find solutions
That enhance everyone's lives and everyone's health and everyone's future
For you to see, you won't sleep
You don't agree with the wild road
It's all you need and it goes on and on
And all you want to know is why I can't close my eyes
And all you want to know is why I can't close my eyes
And all you want to know is why I can't close my eyes
Why I can't close my eyes
