London buses to run on biofuels from coffee waste

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that it is partnering with Bio-bean, a clean technology company which produces biofuels from coffee waste, to power some of its thousands of buses.

Reportedly, Bio-bean has so far produced enough coffee-based biofuel to power all the routes of a bus for 365 days.

Arthur Kay, co-founder and Chief Executive of Bio-bean, told The Independent: “It’s got high oil content, 20 percent oil by weight in the waste coffee grounds, so it’s a really great thing to make biodiesel out of”.

He explained that this type of biofuel offers  many advantages and most importantly does not require engines to be modified.

The company has partnered with coffee chains, such as Costa and Caffe Nero, and collects 50,000 tonnes of grounds per year, able to produce 6,000 litres of fuel.

Every tonne of recycled coffee contributes to saving 6.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

According to Mr. Kay, the UK produces 500,000 tonnes of coffee waste annually, indicating that there is room for such initiatives to scale-up.

Londoners alone consume on average 2.3 cups of coffee a day, accounting for 200,000 tonnes of coffee waste over a year.

The coffee waste will be converted into biofuels at the company’s factory in Cambridgeshire and it will then be sent to a central tank where London buses refuel.

Transport for London (TfL) has shown increasing interest in biofuels as a way to reduce transport emissions; it already uses biofuels made from waste products such as cooking oil and tallow from meat processing to fuel some of London’s 9,500 buses.

Bio-bean also produces other products from biomass, such as pellets and briquettes to be used in home heating and in stoves; Mr. Kay explains that “coffee grounds are also a good feedstock for our other products  because  it’s packed full of energy and has a higher calorific content than wood”.

He added that the company is aiming to expand saying: “We’re basically looking for places where they drink a huge amount of coffee. Our primary expansion plans are based on where there are instant coffee factories”.

The company is targeting countries such as France, which consumes approximately 38 billion cups of coffee per year.