Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
That's really the problem right there. With this whole 'bio-fuel' thing going on we've started the snowball rolling downhill. It is completely irresponsible to plant fuel instead of food. Our food prices are only now significantly starting to increase as a result of this joke. Bio-fuel's pollute just as much as oil and are also extremely more inefficient in terms of energy output.
They are popular because of this romantic environmental notion of getting transportation fuels from plants. They make for good billboards and advertising and give people the perception that they are clean and efficient when the opposite is the case. Farmers love it because artificial support for bio-fuels incerase the prices of their products and farmland. Politicians love it because they can brand it as an innovative solution to environmental problems and enjoy support from farmers who benefit and the ignorant who buy into the propaganda. Oil and Gas companies love it because they can cheaply buy and build a Bio-fuel plant and brand themselves as 'green' while not changing a thing about their staple operations. It's hypocracy at it's worst.
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This mindset is what makes me shake my head. You can do both from one single crop. You can grow food AND produce fuel. The food stuffs come from the fruit of the plant, and the fuel comes from the stalks and waste portion of the plant. The vast majority of the energy of a plant is in those stalks, but it is easier to get at the fuel through the fruit. With the developments in microbiology and genetic engineering of bacteria that produce the ethanol, the ability to produce higher returns from the stocks is now possible. Now its a matter of changing a farming practice and collect the watse materials and not just the fruit of the plant. One that takes place, we can do both, but it takes a change in business practices.
BTW... the problem is not that we are producing bio-fuels, the problem is that we are using them in systems that are extremely inefficient at using them. The fuel produced is burned in a system that only using ~6% of the energy released to move the vehicle in question. Therein lies the problem. Develop a more efficient machine and you save energy. Conversely, you also burn less fuel and you lessen the requirement on the fuel source itself. Alternatively, you could burn the fuel in a more efficient system, recovering the waste products and using them to produce more fuels, and you dramatically decrease the demand on fuels.