In addition to producing a beautiful fiber, swallowing tons of CO2 and feeding animals and humans, hemp can be transformed into 2 types of fuel: biodiesel and ethanol. Will weed power the cars of tomorrow? Could ganja be the docile energy source that will replace fossil fuels? Some answers.
Hemp can provide 2 types of fuel; biodiesel, made from pressed hemp seed oil, and ethanol, made from fermented hemp stalks. And it turns out that the beautiful plant could well be the planet’s greenest fuel source. Crude oil and natural gas are the two materials that provide almost 70% of the world’s energy consumption.
Two products that come from reservoirs thousands of meters underground. Both are fossil fuels formed over millions of years by the decomposition of dead organisms. Their production is expensive and has a huge impact on the environment.
Hemp, on the other hand, is a plant that can be grown almost anywhere, producing high biomass yields for fuel production in just a few months.
And while hemp fuels are around 50% less efficient than gasoline, the environmental benefits of growing hemp for fuel far outweigh those of seeking out crude oil or natural gas (which are themselves most negative). Here again, finding an environmentally-friendly alternative to crude oil or natural gas is not really difficult.
Hemp, a solid base for alternative fuels such as biodiesel and ethanol?
Biodiesel is made by blending vegetable or animal fats with ethanol. Today, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), over 50% of biodiesel is made from soybean oil. Ethanol, on the other hand, is generally produced from corn or sugar cane.
As a crop, cannabis offers many advantages over soy, corn and sugarcane. The plant density per hectare for corn, sugarcane and soya, for example, is 44,000, 50,000 and 200,000 kilos respectively. Hemp, meanwhile, can be grown at a density of up to 2,400,000 kg/hectare, according to Manitoba Agriculture.
Hemp also triumphs over soya, corn and sugar cane on several crucial issues: it can be grown in almost any climate, can be ready for harvest in just 4 months, and is particularly resistant to pests and disease. It can even help extract heavy metals and other contaminants from polluted soils, which is more than we can say for soya (which kills biodiversity and contributes to soil erosion).
At harvest time, hemp produces a LOT of biomass. According to Manitoba Agriculture, industrial hemp grown for fiber can produce up to 6 tons per hectare, while cereal plants (grown for seed) produce around 1000 kg per hectare.
So why can’t Shell or BP make cannabis gasoline?
With so many benefits to growing hemp for fuel (in addition to its countless other uses), it seems hard to understand why we’re still not reaping the rewards of this miracle plant.
What’s stopping the world from going hemp?
Above all, turning the world over to hemp biodiesel would require huge amounts of farmland. According to Medium, half the United States would have to be covered in hemp just to meet the country’s demand. Not to mention that hemp biodiesel would cost around 13 times more than regular diesel. Hemp ethanol, on the other hand, could be produced for less than $2 a gallon. Now that’s interesting.
Unfortunately, hemp is still held back by the fact that it’s still a crop in the making, and reaches its highest prices when grown for the food, cosmetics and CBD industries. And also the fact that Standard Oil, Gulf Oil and DuPont were linked to cannabis prohibition in the 1930s might also have something to do with why we don’t fill our cars with hemp.
But that’s another story.
