Easy conversion of biomass to oil for transportation fuels and other purposes? It’s a fine thing, particularly if you are using waste products like forest or agricultural wastes, or garbage. I have two caveats, though: (1) Why not make the biomass into biochar? It does more good than just providing fuel. It also provides char for agricultural and horticultural purposes, with a negative-carbon footprint. (2) Or if you want to burn the biomass, or the oil produced from it, it would be infinitely more efficient to use it in a cogenerating power plant, and then use the electricity you’ve generated for powering cars. The internal combustion engine remains as woefully inefficient as a central thermal power plant: It loses two-thirds of its energy input to heat. Nuts.
In any event, here’s the story from Reuters.
