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Fuel from garbage
Source: Science Daily, Date: , 2009
Converting the rubbish that fills the world’s landfills into biofuel
may be the answer to both the growing energy crisis and to tackling
carbon emissions, claim scientists in Singapore and Switzerland. New
research published in Global Change Biology: Bioenergy, reveals how
replacing gasoline with biofuel from processed waste could cut global
carbon emissions by 80%.
Biofuels produced from crops have proven controversial because they
require an increase in crop production which has its own severe
environmental costs. However, second-generation biofuels, such as
cellulosic ethanol derived from processed urban waste, may offer
dramatic emissions savings without the environmental catch.
The team used the United Nation’s Human Development Index to
estimate the generation of waste in 173 countries. This data was then
coupled to the Earthtrends database to estimate the amount of gasoline
consumed in those same countries. The team found that 82.93 billion litres of cellulosic ethanol could
be produced from the world’s landfill waste and that by substituting
gasoline with the resulting biofuel, global carbon emissions could be
cut by figures ranging from 29.2% to 86.1% for every unit of energy
produced.
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