Anaerobic Energy, Putting Bacteria to Work

A recent article in Technology Today talks about a prototype at the University of California Davis Campus, that is successfully turning food scraps into methane and hydrogen via anaerobic conversion by microbes. UC Davis is not the only school doing this sort of research. The University of Birmingham in the UK has done similar work with converting the byproducts of Chocolate production into hydrogen, and the University of Washington's work with turning Cow Manure into biogas, all of which are developments which show a lot more promise for sustainability and cleaning up the environment than creating gas from coal, which is not only an incredibly dirty process but also produces a product that pollutes more than gasoline does, or using scarce acreage to grow more corn to turn into ethanol, acreage which could be used instead to produce food.

The beauty of biogas from biological waste of any sort is that the energy is cleaner burning. The process uses material that would end up polluting if landfilled, so it's solving a problem on both ends of the chain. Feedlotted cattle that have been fed corn produce a more toxic manure which pollutes if put out in the fields. Though personally I'd rather see the end of feedlotting and the Farm Bill subsidy on corn which encourages it, thus returning us to the days of healthy manure fertilizer, this is another possible solution to at least a portion of the problem, and one which is more sustainable than using tax dollars to not only pay subsidies on corn grown for ethanol, but also for building those ethanol plants for a fuel that is much less efficient and would not be cost effective without those subsidies and so-called tax breaks at the pump.

One of the problems that we in the US face is that not enough work is being done, and not enough money is being spent for this type of research. Why? The Coal and Oil industries are powerful lobbies, as are the Automotive industry. Changes in any of them would cost these companies billions of dollars, which encourages them to lobby Congress against spending the money to finance this type of research. How can we help? Write your Congresspeople and let them know you prefer your tax dollars being spent on Anaerobic Energy research instead of Coal Gas or Ethanol subsidies, research, and production.