Advancing the Future of Energy -Renewable Fuels | Biomass Energy | Hydropower | Ocean Energy
Renewable fuels are made from sources that are constantly regenerating and therefore will not be depleted within the foreseeable future. The most common are biodiesel, biogas and ethanol. Renewable fuels are part of a closed cycle and do not create a net surplus of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases when used.
What is renewable fuels?
Renewable fuels are fuels that are produced from renewable resources. Renewable fuels include fuels that are synthesized from renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind. Renewable fuels have gained popularity due to their low contributions to the carbon cycle, sustainability, and in some cases, lower amounts of greenhouse gases. Renewable fuels are bound to replace fossil fuels, gradually.
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Introduction
Renewable fuels have been one of the hottest topics so far in this millennium’s energy debate. The reason for the growing interest is obvious: the ever-increasing concern about CO2 release to the atmosphere and its impact on global warming. Another significant factor is political instability in the areas where crude oil is produced. And thirdly, local agricultural economics and trade deficits, partly due to historically high crude oil prices, provide an additional driver to get more energy from domestic sources among quite a few of the leading consumers of petroleum.
During past centuries, flora has been the source of fuel as well as many valuable and vital substances and constituents. In the oil era, many of those products became cheaper and performed better when derived from fossil feedstocks. For renewable fuels, the sustainable way would be to encourage benefiting first from the value chain of the biomass constituents and to produce fuel only from the residues, or from an entirely different feedstock such as algae — not part of the food chain or the traditional green industry. This method of switching from pollution to solution is already on the research agenda of many enterprises.