“Biofuels: saviours of the planet or a green con?
“The question comes into sharper focus as BP, Du Pont and the ABF subsidiary British Sugar announce a £200m bioethanol plant.
“The investment, in which BP and British Sugar would each hold 45 per cent with DuPont owning the remaining 10 per cent, will be built on BP’s chemicals site in Hull. Due in 2009, it will produce some 420 million litres of bioethanol a year (derived from wheat): about a third of the UK’s demand. Although minuscule (less than 1 per cent of sales), that demand will be stimulated by the Government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which means that, by 2010, 5 per cent of fuel sold on forecourts should be biofuels. (Ministers expect this will save 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of taking 1 million cars off the road.)
“In the future a more car friendly fuel, biobutanol, could be produced.
“The European Union too wants to see more biofuels: 10 per cent of the total by 2020. The White House aims to double the use of biofuels by 2012, with substantial subsidies. Countries such as Thailand, China, Malawi and Colombia are mandating the use of biofuels. According to the United Nations, global production of biofuels has doubled in five years and will “likely double again” by 2011.
“So, given the high price of oil and such encouragements, the outlook for biofuels ought to be bright. Indeed, the principle behind biofuels is attractive. Fossil fuels are unsustainable and produce greenhouse gases and foster climate change. Crops, or “feedstock” for biofuel plants are sustainable and, arguably, close to carbon neutral, because the carbon dioxide emitted when biofuels are burnt is absorbed by the crops being grown to replace them.”
We badly need government funding in to so called second generation biofuels made from things like straw and a harvesting system to enable us to have both food and biofuel from the same crop. Does anyone disagree?
