When you fill up at the gas station, you may have noticed labels stating the percentage of ethanol in your gasoline. Ethanol is a kind of biofuel made from sugar, corn, or other plant sources that have gone through a fermentation process.¹ Other kinds of biofuels include oils and gasses derived from plant and animal matter.²

Unlike gasoline, which is derived from oil that has been locked up underground for millions of years, biofuels are derived from living matter that is part of the above-ground carbon cycle. Because the carbon in biofuels comes from the atmospheric CO₂ used by an organism to grow, when biofuels are burned, the net CO₂ in the environment does not change.³ This makes biofuels far more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels.¹

Since supplies of fossil fuels will eventually dwindle, interest in renewal energy from biofuels is growing.¹ In the near future, we may all be filling up our cars with fuel that started out on a farm, not deep in the earth.

1. Zhouhui Tong, Pratap Pullammanappallil, and Arthur A. Teixeira, How Ethanol Is Made from Cellulosic Biomass, AE493, Gainesville: University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 2015, https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ae493
2. Ann C. Wilkie, “What is Biogas?” Biogas—A Renewable Fuel, November 13, 2013, http://biogas.ifas.ufl.edu/biogasdefs.asp
3. J. A Stricker, G. M. Prine, D. L. Anderson, D. B. Shibles, and T. C. Riddle, Energy from Crops: Production and Management of Biomass/Energy Crops on Phosphatic Clay in Central Florida, CIR 1084, Gainesville: University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, 2015, https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/eh213

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