Helping to power London’s buses with coffee

We believe that cleaner energy solutions can come from anywhere. Gravity. Footsteps. Even the food we eat. All it takes is a bright idea.

For years coffee has been energising our morning commute. Today, thanks to the power of collaboration, it is helping to fuel London buses too.

Drinking over 20 million cups of coffee a day, Londoners can’t get enough of the stuff. However consumption on that scale brings with it a lot of waste. 200,000 tonnes of grounds are produced by the capital alone each year. Where some might see an issue of waste, bio-bean’s Arthur Kay saw potential.

While studying, Kay was determined to look differently at coffee culture and in particular the process of collecting and using coffee grounds.

High in calories, he recognised the energy potential it offered and the role it could play as a residential and industrial fuel source; instead turning waste into a valuable resource.

The result is bio-bean, today creating a coffee-derived B20 biofuel on a scale large enough to help power some of London’s buses - one of the busiest and most iconic networks in the world.

So how does bio-bean turn coffee into biofuel? The company’s factory can recycle 50,000 tonnes of waste coffee grounds each year. The coffee is sourced through partnerships with high street coffee shops and factories across the UK. From this coffee oil is extracted.

Blended with other fats and oils to create a 20% biocomponent, this is then mixed with mineral diesel to create a coffee-derived B20 biofuel.

Without modification, bio-bean’s biofuel is placed directly into select London buses, providing a smarter solution to the inevitable waste product of a metropolitan city. By rethinking waste, we can continue to decrease emissions from the transport sector through innovations in second-generation biofuels.

This has huge potential of this for a brighter energy future. Coffee makes up a component of the bio-fuel used in selected London buses today. But as a pure-blend, the 6,000 litres of coffee oil provided in this project by bio-bean would be enough to help power a bus for a year. What’s more, London produces enough waste coffee grounds to create a pure-blend B20 biofuel – made from coffee oil and mineral diesel – on a scale large enough to help fuel around a third of the London bus network.

So there it is. A simple coffee bean can transform your morning and now it could also help change the world. By collaborating to support bright energy solutions, we can together create a cleaner and brighter energy future.

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Biofuels are a renewable energy source, made from organic matter or wastes, that can play a valuable role in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Biofuels are one of the largest sources of renewable energy in use today. In the transport sector, they are blended with existing fuels such as gasoline and diesel. In the future, they can be particularly important to help decarbonise the aviation, marine and heavy-duty road transport sectors.