Agriculture’s most significant role in the transition from depletable to renewable fuels lies in its waste stream. Hydrocarbons in agricultural wastes provide a volumonous source of hydrogen and carbon. In the US alone annual concentated animal waste from agricluture could cover an area of roughly 1000 square miles to a depth of roughly one foot. About 18% of this waste could be converted to hydrogen and much of the rest could be used to sequester carbon in new, light weight, long lasting materials that would further advance sustainability and provide a positive net energy and greenhouse gas production balance.

With today’s technology hydrogen fuels and new light weight carbon composite materials, materials that are several times stronger than steel and and twice as light as aluminium, can be produced from these waste materials with a negative net greenhouse gas production. The same is true for the hydrocarbons in municipal waste streams.

These hydrocarbon resources are abundant, can be harvested economically, and do not deplete so long as humans continue to eat and produce waste.

When hydogen burns it burns clean therby improving air quality. In internal combustion engines burning hydrogen actually cleans the air as the engine operates. The technology to make this tansition is here and now; government, industrial and financial sector policies are not. We have to change the latter –Now!