Why drill for oil when you can stop by a local Starbucks?

In recent years humans have taken an interest in harnessing energy from the same sources our bodies do: food. Sugarcane, corn, and soy have all seen varying level of success, but now used coffee grounds are drawing attention for their 10-15% oil content.

It was an accidental discovery by Mano Misra, a professor of engineering at the University of Nevada. He noticed that some of his unused coffee grounds left out overnight had released an oily substance. “I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it. The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it,” he said. The next morning his team picked up 50 pounds of used grounds from several Starbucks stores.

Using straightforward chemistry techniques, researchers extracted the oil and transformed it into biodiesel, according to The New York Times. Sound familiar? It should. Corn has to be processed before it yields any usable form of ethanol and the energy output relative to the energy used in processing is marginal at best. Apparently the techniques used to process used coffee grounds this way uses little energy. It would also have a relatively low barrier to entry with biodiesel manufacturing costs of about $1.00 per gallon.

With 7.2 million tons of coffee produced worldwide every year, that’s a potential global output of up to 1.08 million tons of oil. It certainly wouldn’t address the world’s current need for traditional petrol oil but it’s a start. That only makes sense though if someone creates a good, efficient way to collect used coffee grounds from the myriad coffee shops on every corner.

Incidentally this discovery will also act as a positive spin on the Starbucks brand as consumers may begin to associate their coffee drinking habit with “repowering the future”. Of course, that also assumes that Starbucks keeps is prices in the same range despite a perceived additional value proposition.