3. Economics of biofuel from food waste
Many countries in US, Europe and Asia have formulated economic
policies keeping the biofuel based energy demand in mind.
In the coming decades, biofuel will be a major driving force for the
economic growth of many countries in a similar way development
of fossil fuel rich economy happened. There are many economic
benefits for biofuel production. Academic investigations using
economic tools reveal that biofuels can lower greenhouse gas
emissions compared to conventional fuels [80,81]. Furthermore,
production of biofuel could reduce dependency on petroleum fuel
which may lower the cost of fossil fuels. Biofuel production will
also make countries energy independent and this will have a
positive impact on economy since there will be less dependecy on
politically unstable fossil fuel rich nations.
Two liquid biofuel biodiesel and bioethanol are in the process
of replacing diesel and gasoline. Biodiesel and bioethanol from
foodwaste as transportation fuels will be benificial. Availability
and cost of the starting materials are known to affect the price of
biofuels. At present, food waste is labeled as no-cost resource since
it is discared without further use. So, from the resource point of
view main costs are sorting, transportation and pretreatment of
food waste. To the best of knowledge of this author, there are no
reports on the techno-economic analysis of viability of food waste
based small or medium scale biodiesel and bioethanol plant. A
techno-economic study will provide information on (i) design and
cost estimation of biofuel plant, (ii) development of the methodology,
(iii) real market data, (iv) financial analysis of the production
facility and (v) cost of the biofuel [82].
There are also economic disbenifits for biofuel production [83].
Because of the high cost of feedstock, biofuels is more costly than
conventional pretroleum fuels. Economic analysis show that the
demand for biofuels can result in high food prices; which can lead
to higher rate of malnutrition in the developing countries [83].
Nevertheless, this theory is not valid for biofuels from food waste.