Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

[MrMxyzptlk]

It's about time this came to public light....

It also is a HUGE increase in the use of even more endangered resources: potable water to grow the crops currently in use for biofuels.  (Only the prospective Switchgrass crops are truly "greener" and require NO fertilizers and much less water use, but alas: they have yet to successfully transform Switchgrass into fuel....  )

[Daigoro]

Yep, let alone all the fertilizer used for the corn.

[JôkÖr]

guess were gonna have to start riding our horses to keep emissions down 

[panoze]

It's about time this came to public light....

It also is a HUGE increase in the use of even more endangered resources: potable water to grow the crops currently in use for biofuels.  (Only the prospective Switchgrass crops are truly "greener" and require NO fertilizers and much less water use, but alas: they have yet to successfully transform Switchgrass into fuel....  )

Mxy do you think that study is fair?  How can they assume that it is all wild land that will be cleared to raise biofuel crops?   I agree that Switch Grass is easy to grow, it is beautiful here in the wild and in my garden, and it can thrive without any care and if they can convert that into anything then we will be fine.   There is a cultivar called 'Northwind' that I am very fond of, it stands up straight and will not, ever, flop over like the rest of em.    Dallas Blues is a very nice one too with pink seed clouds and blue foliage, but if it gets any irrigation here at all it will grow too fast and flop.  On dry soil it is perfect.  Seedlings of it pop up everywhere.

guess were gonna have to start riding our horses to keep emissions down 

No horses have emissions too, and many people don't know that animals are the biggest greenhouse gas contributors on earth.

[ThE BrIcK]

No horses have emissions too, and many people don't know that animals are the biggest greenhouse gas contributors on earth.

How about bikes then?

[JôkÖr]

No horses have emissions too, and many people don't know that animals are the biggest greenhouse gas contributors on earth.

How about bikes then?

well there are still emmissions from the factories that produce the bikes
P.S 100^th  post 

[BFM_Edison]

It was a bad idea from the beginning, using corn to make fuel (I'm aiming most of this at corn). I'd rather have corn used to feed animals, which in turn I would eat. I'd also prefer eating the corn myself, because face it, corn is good.

Anything you do produces emissions in some way, usually indirectly.

[Jam]

Biofuels are just a big red herring.  The image of hippies driving around in VW buses powered by french fry oil makes biofuels seem cool.  However, biofuels derived form terrestrial sources cannot be scaled up economically or environmentally to power the energy demand for developed nations. There is some small hope for algae-derived biofuels.

I actually have installed 3 kW of solar powered photovoltaic cells on my house and they work great.  I general 10-22 kW-hrs of electricity every day, depending on sunlight.  The system will pay for itself in under 9 years.  If the government had spent $600 billion dollars on solar cells and solar cell factories instead of war in Iraq, we'd actually be much more oil-independent right now.  Too bad...

So it goes...

-Jam

[MrMxyzptlk]

panoze:

Short version: Go to Popular Science magazine's website aqnd search for "Biofuels" and look around at some of the articles. (The ones on fuel from algae are pretty cool!)

But for the full-on "green energy" story, search for "Tom Clynes" and read through his Ten Steps we need to take to achieve a green energy future. (Step 4 is about biofuels.)

Finally, here's the US DoE's webpage on switchgrass.

(I can't find an on-line version of the excellent article I recently read about switchgrass for biofuel, which is too bad because it covered the 4 different angles of attack being taken to solve the problems with it right now, including the chemistry involved. FYI Here's a Google search for it too....)

[HastaLaVista]

Eat corn, don't drive with it!

-Loq

/vegetarian for 20 years (I skip the cow middle man and put those calories directly into mah belly with no overhead)

[Bleach]

the only good use for Biofuels are small scale personal useage that use used vegitable oil refined into something useable. Thats the only way it makes sense.

[IamaCamper]

I agree with Loqii, while I am about as much of a vegetarian as Ted Nugent is, I don't see the logic of using our futile land to make fuel.  There is only so much growing area on the planet and what we use for fuel takes away from what we have to grow food to eat.  While algae might be worth looking into, I see some scalability problems with that.  But some of the technologies I have been either looking at or toying with are:

Solar power
Wind power
Electric conversion of vehicle
harvesting methane from farm silos and manure pits for fuel
hydrogen fuel for vehicle

[Fender]

The October 2007 issue of National Geographic highlighted this very issue, and it offers a good discussion of some of the same issues addressed in the the more recently published Science findings about the "true" costs of biofuel development.  National G did this great analysis of different fuel alternatives and the "energy balance" between the fossil-fuel energy required to make the fuel (input) compared with the energy in the fuel (output). This takes into account fuel for growing and harvesting the fuel as well as the fossil fuel needed to process and refine the biofuel alternative. 

Check out some of the energy balance figures (staring p. 44 of the October 2007 issue). All figures are based on a ratio of fossil-fuel input 1.0 : x, so you can simply subtract 1 from the figure to get the net gain in output (input : output). So, for example, for every 1 unit of fossil fuel used, you'll get 1.3 units of corn ethanol.

Corn ethanol: 1.3 (net gain of 0.3)
Cane ethanol (sugar cane): 8.0 (gain of 7.0)
Biodiesel (from canola or soybeans): 2.5 (gain of 1.5)
Cellulosic ethanol: 2.0 to 36.0 (net gains of 1.0 to 35.0, depends on the production method)

Cellulosic ethanol seems to hold the most promise, but as Panoze points out they are still trying to develop large-scale methods for turning cellulosic plant matter into ethanol.

If you have access to it (check your local library!) the October 2007 issue is a good read.

[Bunyip]

Wonder what fuel Hogs use...

[MrMxyzptlk]

Wonder what fuel Hogs use...

Um, . . . "slop¹(11)?"