Biomass is old hat. Wood, peat, ethanol, methane - plenty of energy comes from that stuff. However, I had never heard of non-plant biomass use before, so this i

Biomass is old hat. Wood, peat, ethanol, methane - plenty of energy comes from that stuff. However, I had never heard of non-plant biomass use before, so this is interesting indeed. The trouble with biomass is that we're not great at extracting the energy yet, so it's not good for energy transport. For the same reason, I don't think we'll be seeing taco-powered robots anytime soon - although vegetable oil and ethanol do show promise as a swap-in for petrol, and cars have been adapted for straight-up biomass in times of crisis. Here, you might be interested in this: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/juan_enriquez_wants_to_grow_energy.html http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/juan_enriquez_wants_to_gro...