Isn’t this argument wrong?
The carbon in biofuel was drawn out of the atmosphere, locked into the grain, and is then released when it’s burned. Net carbon - zero.
Petroleum carbon was removed from the atmosphere long ago, and locked up in the oil. Burning it releases that carbon, resulting in an increase in greenhouse gasses.
There are going to be ripple effects from this everywhere (hopefully the increased price of high fructose corn syrup will drive KFC back to using real honey). Seems to me the reason companies are making biofuels now, is that because now they can compete with the price of fossil fuels, so let’s not fool ourselves into thnking auto-fuel prices are going to decrease. Additionally, because of the increase in food prices, we are at a net increase to our pocketbooks. All we have gained is a renewable fuel source.
For the future, I have more hope for alternate fuels, like the hydrogen fuel cells.
Let’s clear up a few misconceptions here.
No responsible advocate of biofuels has ever suggested they would/could/should replace 100% of petroleum. Even the National Corn Growers Association (who, as you might guess, is a big ethanol supporter) has set a goal of 15 billion gallons of ethanol from 5 billion bushels of corn – by 2015. Considering the corn harvest this year is expected to be more than 13 billion bushels, the ethanol market shouldn’t suck up too much corn.
The price of a pound of beef hit more than $4.25 a pound in both 2003 (when corn prices were $2.42 per bushel) and 2005 (corn prices were $2.00 per bushel.) In fact, about 80% of the price of food has nothing to do with the price of corn, wheat or any other farm production.
And according to this article, only about 4% of the cost of corn syrup comes from the price of corn. Sorry, Yeeter.
The price of oil is over $83 dollars per barrell.
And here’s one of my favorite fun facts. There’s only one federal tax subsidy for ethanol – a 51 cent per gallon “blenders’ credit” that goes to the refineers who blend ethanol with gasoline. Who are those people? Oil companies.
You can wait for hydrogen or batteries or whatever and watch oil prices continue to rise, or you can start using what we have to try to reduce the demand. Your call.
Besides, if we’re going to grow fuel, biodiesel makes more sense–especially since there are a good many non-food crops out there that yield really high amounts of oil/acre. Link to info. I find it highly amusing that opium poppies produce 2.5 times as much oil per acre than soybeans–not to mention that poppies are hardy as hell and thrive in conditions that most plants won’t tolerate. If you can grow shitloads of poppies in Afghanistan, imagine what you could do in Nevada, California, Eastern Oregon and other states where agriculture is severely limited by lack of water. Not to mention that they look pretty, smell nice and have medicinal uses as well. I think everyone should go to the local grocery store, purchase a bunch of poppy seeds from the bulk spice section and throw them around everywhere as a first step to toppling Big Oil!
Using small, very efficient diesel engines running on biodiesel would make a bigger impact on foreign oil dependency than the mostly token ethanol fuel scenario. Bag the gas engine, it isn’t adaptable enough.