Coffee to help power London buses starting Monday

Do you like your coffee strong? How about strong enough to power a bus?

Starting Monday, the city of London plans to fuel public transit buses with a biofuel produced by blending oils extracted from coffee waste with diesel, reported the BBC. For now, Bio-bean, a technology firm, says it has produced enough coffee-based biofuel to power one bus for a year.

Biofuels produced from cooking oil and tallow from meat processing already powers some of London’s 9,500 buses, according to the BBC. The city has increasingly turned to biofuels to reduce carbon emissions.

Bio-bean collects and processes 50,000 tons of coffee grounds a year, reported The Times. The blended fuel can save 6.8 tons of carbon dioxide emissions for each ton of recycled coffee.

On average, Londoners consume 2.3 cups of coffee a day, contributing to 200,000 tons of coffee waste over the course of a year, according to The Daily Star. Bio-bean collects the unwanted grounds, mostly from London coffee shops, for processing. The final product consists of about 80 percent diesel and 20 percent biofuels.

Bio-bean founder Arthur Kay, a Stanford University graduate, told the site that the company hopes to expand next to France, which consumes 38 billion cups of coffee a year, but recognizes there will always be more diesel than coffee in the world – at least, for the time being.

“We’re not saying that it’s going to totally replace fossil fuels overnight,” Kay said.

This story was originally published November 19, 2017 at 11:55 AM with the headline "Coffee to help power London buses starting Monday."