Feeding our cars

General Motors turns food waste into fuel

It seems that everybody wants a share of our household food waste. Over in the US, General Motors is planning to transform the stuff into ethanol to fuel cars.

The carmaker already manufactures vehicles that run on 85% ethanol and 15% petrol, and argues that using food waste as the source of biofuel reduces pressure on land and food prices because there is no need to grow grain to make it. The process should produce nearly eight times the amount of energy that is taken up extracting the fuel – and cost as little as 11p a litre. A pilot plant is planned for Illinois for the end of this year.

Mike Pepler, technical manager at the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, is encouraged to see new approaches to getting energy from waste, but estimates that even if all the UK’s biodegradable waste went through this process it would replace only about 6% of UK oil supply. – Hannah Bullock

25 March 2008

Hannah Bullock