When we say biofuels, what do we actually mean?

There are at least eight different types of biofuels made from different feedstocks and made in different ways. In this blog, we define the eight types and the issues associated with their production.

Did you know that the simple three-letter word “set” has the most definitions of any verb in the English language? The Oxford English Dictionary lists 262 definitions of its use as a verb and 64 as a noun although it grudgingly concedes that maybe some of these definitions are a tad obscure. Still, it is an astonishing number of meanings, followed closely by another three-letter word, “run”, which is coming up hard on the rails with 245 uses as a verb and 109 as a noun. In our small micro-world of renewable energy, a similar tiny word “bio” is increasingly gaining a plethora of meanings and seems to prefix pretty much any one of eight different renewable fuels. This gives rise to a lot of confusion; for example, between biomass and biogas or bioethanol versus biomethanol. They are all different things so in this brief blog, we shall try to make sense of what the eight different biofuels actually are, how they are made, what they are used for and why, in their different ways, they may not be quite such the good thing they are commonly perceived to be.

Read the rest of the article on our website: Biofuels differences - Green Giraffe Advisory