When it comes to living “green,” Bay Area residents are usually pretty on top of things. We ride bikes, we compost, we use energy-saving light bulbs.
Professor Yuval Shoham, a scientist with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is a few steps ahead of us. As the director of the Lorrey I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering in Haifa, he’s been researching ways to turn wood and crop waste into eco-friendly liquid fuel, taking the concept of renewable energy one step further.
“When we talk about renewable fuel, there are a number of issues we have to bear in mind,” said Shoham on a recent visit to the American Society for Technion, based out of San Francisco.
“When we’re talking about the release of CO2 to the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming, one of the relatively short-term solutions is to get liquid fuel from biomass that’s easily degradable … and the two main sources are sugar and corn,” he explained.
“The catch there is, for one, you’re using food — and it’s no secret that sugar prices have risen because of that — and also, you’re actually only using a small portion of the biomass in the plant. About 80 percent of it goes to waste,” he said. “And that’s where my research comes in.”
To that end, he and his researchers have had success with hydrolyzing wood and leftover crops — ones that can’t be used for food — for more efficient conversion into liquid fuel.
But without government funding to set up plants for alternative fuel production and without a real change in the average person’s energy consumption, these solutions won’t go very far, according to Shoham.
“There’s always a fight with the traditional industry that doesn’t want change, with the car industry in particular, so some of this really does have to do with policy,” he said. “But maybe the biggest element that we can really control is education. All we’re talking here is saving energy.”
Shoham pointed to European countries, many of whose energy levels are well below that of the U.S.
“It comes down to realizing, maybe we don’t have to drive the largest cars anywhere, lights can be turned off during the day, air conditioners shouldn’t be on all the time,” he said. “All those small things, they will make a big difference.”