Dressed in casual street clothes with an impressive Beatles haircut, a short, baby-faced, Canadian, nineteen-year old Philippe Noel took the stage for his TED talk inside the ornate and historic Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. Noel’s presentation followed talks from former presidential advisors, former astronauts, and Ivy League professors. After staggered applause, the Harvard prodigy gave a talk about the eco-friendly energy source of the future, biofuels.
Open landfills contribute about seven million tons of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-five times more harmful than CO2, into the atmosphere each year according to the EPA. Noel is researching how to capture that methane, preventing it from entering the atmosphere, and turn it into biofuel to power things from rockets to trucks.
“Bio-Fuel is a much cleaner alternative to fossil fuels,” said Clark Bullard, a seventy-year old Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois. However biofuels would, “require a government subsidy to compete in the short term to be profitable,” according to Bullard.
Bullard said with so much established oil, it is tough for biofuels to compete. Bullard also said, solar power produces energy more, “efficiently,” compared to biofuels. Bullard does not see oil being used heavily in the future, thus forcing bio-fuels to compete with solar.
Noel see’s similarities in the developmental stage problems of biogas to the beginning stage problems of solar power. He said there was much skepticism regarding solar power, but it is now being innovated, crafted, and more widely used. Similar to solar, biofuels will need heavy investment, but will evolve and become more efficient as time goes on, says Noel.
Born and raised in Quebec, Noel has seen first hand how a process to produce bio-fuels can be efficiently run. Much of the organic waste of Eastern Canada is sent to the outskirts of Quebec to a biogas plant where it is turned into a fuel source. This is where Noel became inspired to pursue and further innovate in the field of biogas.
Noel wants garbage trucks to collect organic waste, disposed food from supermarkets, homes, and restaurants. Then, the waste would be taken and dumped inside a large warehouse-like holding facility. This is where the waste would be treated and left to decompose for thirty days to produce methane, which would then be captured and used as fuel.
An advantage of the process is that the starting material is free, i.e. the food we throw out, meaning no expensive extraction process, says Noel. The transportation is already established as the trash company would only have to collect another barrel. All of this contributes to the economic feasibility of the project, says Noel.
Liang Wu, a twenty-three-year-old Harvard MBA, offered his expertise to assist Noel on the business side of the project after he was impressed by Noel’s TED talk at Harvard. Wu’s goal is to, “add some structure” to Noel’s research. Wu is helping Noel identify what options are best to gain funding for the project, like allowing venture capital firms to invest in Noel.
Noel’s next goal is to win Harvard’s upcoming President’s Innovation Challenge, finalists will be announced in early March. According to Harvard, the competition focuses on ideas that have the potential to “change the world.” Winning this competition will give Noel the attention from influential Harvard faculty along with investors from around the country, in addition to a $75,000 cash prize.
Winning the competition will provide a solution to a problem Noel is currently facing which is receiving cooperation from decision makers. Even after emailing his home University multiple times, Harvard, staff stopped responding to his emails. When one of the most forward thinking institutions in the world struggles to collaborate, it is a sign of future struggle to come, said Noel.
One of Noel’s main obstacles is receiving the necessary funding to build a factory to produce biofuels which would run in the area of around five million dollars according to Noel, making the project capital intensive. This would require investment or cooperation with large investors or corporations.
Noel admittedly is not focusing on the business side of his research quite yet. He says he wants to devote as much time as possible to crafting and researching biofuels.
However, driving Noel to compete is the urgent need for solutions in a world plagued by climate change. “Everything in life is a circle, for the simple reason that, it’s the only way to keep things going forever,” says Noel. Noel wants to learn and use the ways nature has given us to sustain ourselves on this planet.
“I think it is inevitable we become a zero waste society, we need to — to be able to sustain life on this planet for future generations,” said Noel.
Juggling the workload of a Harvard Freshman, researcher, and crew team member is a challenge for Noel. However, he seems to be just fine as he jokes how he, “occasionally sleeps.” Rowing about five days a week with the crew team is helping Noel adjust to the school and make friends.
“We all have a role to play in making this world better,” says Noel. Noel exemplifies a driven college student working towards the dire change necessary to better life. Students like Noel are what makes Boston the intellectual and innovative hub of the world. A city where students like Noel collaborate and study to eventually branch out, spread their influence and make the world a better place.
