Is bio-fuel a good idea?

Question

thats fuel for cars and machinery made from plants.

i used to think so but having seen the facts. i'm shocked that this is going ahead.

acres of rainforests are being chopped down for room to grow these crops and the comunities who live there are being forced out.

also the same amount of grain used to fill a land rover once, could feed a poor person for a year.

by 2020 the EU has drafted legislation that states 10% of all transport fuels should come from biofuels. this is to be debated in parliment and could soon become law.

does this bother you?

Answer 1

It is a rotten idea, and one pushed by Bush. It is a classic case of an idea with disastrous unintended consequences, although some economists did point them out, to deaf ears. You are right that acres of forests will be sacrificed for it. But more importantly, acres of food-growing land will be turned over to it. Already, it is driving up the prices of staple foods such as flour and rice. All this to fuel the American dream of driving gas-guzzlers.

Answer 2

at last we are starting to realise that our oil reserves are running out & now we need to all get down & work out a soloution no sorry make that plural [theres more than 1 way to skin a cat] At last we are starting to debate & try to do something about it lets keep asking questions talking & doing practical things about it

Answer 3

Bio fuel is more of a pollutant than petrol from what i can gather.There is a desperate race to find alternative fuels now as oil runs out and petrol and diesel will cease to be available.There will certainly be food and veg shortages as more farmers switch to rape seed etc. resulting in a tremendous rise in the cost of living.The industrial gas giant AIR PRODUCTS was experimenting and developing a hydrogen driven car along with several other companies,years ago,only water comes out of the exhaust,the only problem involved was the storage tankage.This should,by now, have been solved,only the big oil companies can be repressing the manufacture of this system in bulk.

Answer 4

depends on the feedstock.

at the two ends of the scale;

corn uses about the same energy to grow and process as the energy value of the fuel produced, so bad idea.

wood alcohol from wood chips and other wood waste produces about 15 times the energy used in production and uses something that would be rubbish otherwise, so thats obviously good.

Answer 5

Not really, bio-fuel is a step in the right direction. However, it is only a step. The best way forward is the use of a hydrogen cell which only produce water

Answer 6

Biofuels is a terrible idea in my opinion.  The only way it can even become reasonable is if we use non-food crops, and waste materials to make the fuel so that we arent causing the food prices to skyrocket.  Plus, now that soybeans are becoming more expensive, more of the original rainforest in the amazon is being cleared so the brazilians can grow soybeans for $$.   But who are we to say they cant, America destroyed like 97% of its old growth forest for the same reason hundreds of years ago.

Answer 7

Oh yes, it bothers me a great deal.  You are right, bio fuels as a supposedly 'green' alternative are insane.  There is no carbon saving because you need to grow the stuff using fossil fuels, and people are going hungry because the price of food has gone up so much.

This is why I, along with a bunch of other people, (hopefully) are going to London on the 15th April to protest to Gordan Brown.  Join us if you can.  Google Bio fuels protest or use the website address below.

Answer 8

We need to get all available that we can ,as the Arabs will eventually use oil as a weapons.

Answer 9

Well, well the Biofuel lobby must be frightened by the sum of all knowledge in this forum. Biodiesel ethically grown is a very good alternative and unless you come up with something better (that normal people can afford) then stop! the negative drivel and help with the solution.

Unless the big companies are stopped from buying up the biofeed stock plantations and creating a situation where the morally corrupt, rape and pillage rain forest for profit then biodiesel will become as environmentally distastefull as fossil fuels.

So support ethically grown biofeed stock and winge when you hear another plantation bought by Shell or BP (Or D1 as they like to be known by the environmental lobby) try look beyond the "negative one liners" as 90% of the authors are directly or indirectly "fossil oil spokes persons".

Research don't Rant!

Answer 10

While it is not possible to replace oil-based fuel with biofuels, it is a good idea to reduce the demand for oil.  The worst biofuels are those made from things people eat, but there are other ways to make fuels from plants people do not eat.  It is also necessary to make those biofuels using biofuels or solar power in their production.  Hybridising or actual genetic manipulation could also make plants easier to turn into fuels.

Unfortunately due to hysteria and fear we are forced to ban the sources of biofuels and even cease producing them by the modern equivalent of the Luddites and the bleeding heart types.  The dream of modern environmentalists is to have fewer people on the planet, all of them eating raw organic vegetables, no meat or use of animals, without fire and having almost no impact on the environment;  that is- a new Stone Age.  From the wording and tone of the question it is obvious that the questioner is one of these environmentalist, bleeding heart, Luddites.  

Steve would have everyone feel guilty by implying that use of biofuels guarantees the end of the rain forests and the expulsion of the natives  and that use of biofuel to fill a vehicle once will starve one person for a year.  That is the same as saying that if everyone eats a slice of bread in the UK, then thousands of Africans will starve.  So we should not eat bread.

Most of the starvation  in the world is the fault of the people who live there, their ignorance, their stubborn resistance to change and their corrupt governments and stupid politicians.  Remember that as Rhodesia the nation of Zimbabwe exported food.  The soil and climate are the same, but the people are starving.  The government stupidly killed off and drove out  the white farmers who knew how to grow the food, saying the land belonged to the black Africans.  Fine, so they can't eat the land,  it's their own fault.  But Steve's little heart bleeds and he would have you go about on foot so some ignorant sod can be fed free food and never have to learn to feed himself and his governing corrupt politicians can drive around in big cars.

Does this bother me?  Yes, Steve, you and all your ilk bother me with this nonsense!

Answer 11

Bio fuel is a much bigger field than corn ethanol! Ethanol from cellulose is far more efficient, and uses inedible crop parts like corn stalks and cobs. Or grass! And it only takes about 200 lbs of grass to fill a gas tank, not a year's worth of food!

Answer 12

Well I use waste vegetable oil.I buy it for $1. a gal. to encourage Rest. Owners to sell me more.

Hey a $1. versus $3.89 for diesel. And veggie causes no Cancers.

Answer 13

Everything has good abd bad points.  This is why we need to know what we are doing before we jump into doing something for the sake of doing something.

Many times in the course of history we have caused greater problems when trying to resolve small issues, even when the intent was nobel.

Answer 14

Algae is the only good biofuel.

Algae Biofuel

-With our current biodiesel feedstocks, like soy and palm, there’s no way we could grow enough to supply all of our transportation needs.  In fact, it would actually require twice the land area of the US devoted to soybean production to meet current heating and transportation needs.

-Algae, on the other hand, could supply all U.S. diesel power using a mere 0.2% of the nation’s land.

-Enough algae can be grown to replace all transportation fuels in the U.S. on only 15,000 square miles or 4.5 million acres of land.

- Algae is the highest yielding feedstock for biodiesel, producing 24 times more oil per acre, on average, than the next leading feedstock--palm oil at 635 gallons/acre/year.

-One company can produce 180,000 gallons of biodiesel every year from just one acre of algae. That comes to about 4,000 barrels, at a cost of $25 per barrel or $.59 per gallon.

-To put that in perspective, it takes 3,750 acres of soy to make the same amount of biodiesel at a cost of about $2.50 per barrel for 4,000 barrels.

-It is possible to use human sewage and wastewater from agricultural endeavors to enhance the growth of algae.  In fact, when done right, algae can double and even triple overnight with the addition of these fertilizers.

-Plus, as algae grows it absorbs C02 from the air.

-In addition, fertilizer for other food crops can be produced by using the leftover nutrients that aren’t used to make the biofuel.