Biofuels and Greenhouse Gas Emission Calculations
Biofuels may not be the silver bullet answer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Essentially, what people are recognizing is that there is a greenhouse emission cost to the production of enough green stuff to create biofuels above land - rather than procuring oil from the earth's crust.
Read this article. Particularly interesting is the following summary statements:
...if land use is taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once anticipated.
Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments should quickly turn their attention to developing biofuels that did not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products.
“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”
Labels: biofuel
