How Grassoline Works

This is an iHeart Podcast, Guaranteed Human. Hey, it's Joel and Matt from How To Money. If your New Year's Resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back. Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place, but 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Break off the year with confidence, listen to How To Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mine control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? They gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. When you get someone to join your cult, NLP was used on me to access my subconscious mind games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka Neurolinguistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to mind games on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know From HowStuffWorks.com. You're getting smarter. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. I'm a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. And with me today is my trusty editor, Chris Palette. Chris and I don't always see eye to eye on what should or shouldn't go into the article, but I can tell you one that we both agree on and find fascinating. It's an article that I wrote and he edited called, "Can we fuel cars with grass?" So Chris, why don't you tell the folks about this article and what it says? Well, basically, switchgrass is one of the feedstocks for a biofuel, and of course, that's something that pops up in the news all the time now, is ethanol or biodiesel. But instead of using corn, which is something, of course, that people and animals eat, or sugar cane, which is delicious. Oh, yes. Absolutely. But very hard to find in the continent of the U.S. We can use switchgrass, which is a great source of cellulose, which is the substance I believe you told me that cell walls are made up of, and basically what they do is they break it down and make it into a fuel, just like you refine oil into gasoline, except you can't find fossil fuels just anywhere where you're possibly approaching peak oil, as you mentioned in another one of your articles. And so this is something that might be grown all over the world, and lots that aren't good enough to grow crops on, it might be a really good solution. Well, not only that, switchgrass has the wonderful trait of being able to improve soil where it grows. So like you were saying, it grows in these marginal scrub lanes that can't be used for farming anyway. And it actually improves the soil. So you grow some switchgrass in an area for about a dozen years. And next thing, you know, Presto-Changeo, that's arable farmland now, so it would definitely help Africa out quite a bit, which is one of the regions where it can grow wild, too. So tell us what switchgrass is specifically. Well, switchgrass is, as its name suggests, a grass, it's not particularly pleasant to look at. It's, you know, I think some people consider it invasive and more like a weed than anything else. Yes, farmers especially. Yeah. And I don't know, I didn't even find this out, do animals eat switchgrass, or is it just something that's irritating to farmers? I think it's generally irritating. It's used in some circumstances as an ornamental grass, some types are. But I think ultimately it was clearly put on the earth here to be used as a cellulose to gethenol. Well, I suppose that's one interpretation of it. It'll be interesting to see what happens with it, because right now it's very expensive to refine switchgrass into cellulosic ethenol. And of course every proponent of every different biofuel has a reason why we should be using theirs. But one thing, Josh, that I found out recently, since we published the article, is that converting fields to be used for biofuels, for example, to grow soy or corn or sugarcane or palm or palm can actually be more trouble. Because in the conversion process, it can release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I read an article in the new scientists that said 10,000 square meters of Brazilian rainforests converting that over to grow biofuel stock crops. That would actually release 700,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which is amazing. You have to use biofuels for years, hundreds of years, in some cases, to recoup the carbon debt that you do by converting it. So it seems like switchgrass might be a great solution to that problem. Switchgrass is an excellent solution, but I don't think it's the only solution. You can't grow switchgrass in Indonesia. You can grow palm in Indonesia and make oil from it. Sure, there's a carbon debt, and that is something clearly that we're trying to get around is to put any more carbon or any other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. But I think even more than, maybe more important than climate change is war and regional autonomy. Imagine if Indonesia didn't have to import any oil from anywhere else, they were energy self-sufficient. Imagine if the US were energy self-sufficient. How much more peaceful would the world be, do you think, Chris? If we all grew our own energy supply. That's true. It makes regions more stable. There are fewer things to have political conflict over. Sure. And I'm not putting fingers, but wars are far out of our oil. Oh sure. And all sorts of other resources. Well, thanks for joining us this week. You can read, can we fuel cars with grass on howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Let us know what you think, send an email to [email protected]. It's ready. Are you? Prices, they're still high and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right. In the week, we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence, listen to How To Money on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind games. A new podcast exploring NLP, aka neuro-linguistic programming. Listen to mind games on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.