the.com/bioenergy
Sunlight, stored in plants, burned to boil water again — the universe's longest workaround.
means Energy produced from organic materials like plants, crops, and waste — grown, harvested, or collected, then burned or converted to generate power or fuel.
from A straightforward modern compound: 'bio-' from Greek 'bios' meaning life, fused with 'energy' (from Greek 'energeia,' activity or operation). The word itself is 20th-century, gaining real traction from the 1970s oil shocks onward, when searching for alternatives to fossil fuels turned scientific attention back to wood, crops, and organic waste as fuel sources — ancient practices rebranded with a Greek-rooted modern label.
- origin
- Corn, wood chips, cow manure, used cooking oil
- irony
- Often less carbon-efficient than the fossil fuels it replaces
- scale
- Supplies about 10 percent of world energy, mostly wood
- tradeoff
- Crop-based biofuel competes with farmland for food