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Bioethanol. Forget the biological. A bit more agro!
It takes 40 kg of wheat to do 100 km in a car.
Willy Gehriger, who's head of FENACO, part of the multimillion BISON agricultural corporation, has stated that if people continue planting cereals to produce ethanol, there won't be enough land left to grow other vital plants such as colza and soya.
I take this type of comment as a warning in light of international efforts such as those announced yesterday by ISO with their "ambitious action plan to enhance ISO’s contribution to energy efficiency and renewable energy source", particularly concentrating on "Liquid and solid biofuels, biomass and biogas, and their sustainable production".
In essence, that appears good, but international organizations who are following fashion in an effort to obtain public sympathy by doing the 'right' thing, need to realize that they can sometimes be faced with adverse effects.
What is erroneously termed "bio" here (as opposed to "agro") could turn out to be black rather than green!
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6 Comments
Hi! I live in Argentina and I am very worried because every day a very big portion of native bush is deforested to plant soy. I think that bioethanol might be safer than ordinary fuel, but if the earth is being devastated day after day and all the grains are going to be transformed in fuel, there will be the day when people will have nothing to eat! It would be much better if instead of using more cars, people could re-organize their time tables and travel two or more in one car, or improving public transport.
Maria, I think you've put your finger on the problem.
It's great to think we can solve all our problems with new technology. We can't! The crux of the matter is in changing peoples' habits. If we can't act differently, there's no way anyone can keep up with demand and one day there won't be anything left to eat, just as you say.
I'm interested, what happens to the soy that's being planted in Argentina? Does it get eaten or is it also being planted to be used for agro-fuels?
Do you have any form of shared car service where you don't need to have your own car but can use a pooled one when you need to? We have a scheme called Mobility where you can use public transport and then pick up a vehicle from the train station when you arrive http://www.mobility.ch/pages/index.cfm?dom=6.
How popular are electric cars in Argentina? Is there any development on solar powered cars?
Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City have developed a method to convert corncob waste into a carbon "sponge" with nanoscale pores. The new material can store large quantities of natural gas and can be formed into a variety of shapes, ideal characteristics for next-generation gas storage tanks on methane-powered automobiles.
Could this be used in the next version of the hybrid car?
In Italy there are plenty of researches developing new chemical/phisical processes to produce agro-fuel (let's try to change our way of using words, as Pippa Rojo suggests) and also new carbon nano-tubes to store gas fuels. The results of the efforts are quite positive from scientific point of view, but I totally agree with you about the worry for the future.
Perhaps chosen strategy to shift energy consumption from oil to crops, is not the right one.
A quite complex problem it remains to be solved: to have a suitable (cheap, renewable, plentiful ecc.) source of energy for our future needs, thal will rise 50% in the the next 20 year!
Unfortunatly, I don't think changing peoples' habits, will be an achievable target in this little time. We (mankind I mean) need some other else if we want to maintain the wealth reached.
#5 by Nyangi Chacha on January 30, 2008 at 9:06 a.m.
Thank you for providing a chance to give my comment.To use food sources to produce bioethanol ethically is not good, but i encourage the producer instead of using food crops to produce bioethanol may make use of lignocellulosic biomass material or agricultural waste such as sisal waste, molasses, sawdut, straw of sorghum, millet and rice. Make use of these material as bioethanol feedstock may reduce the problem of land cleaning and scarcity of food.
Studies are now underlining the precipitous moves certain organizations and governments have made and criticizing them for adopting biofuels without studying the complete picture of cost, both in terms of energy to produce the alternative source and the overall cost to the environment that is due to the greenhouse gases emitted in the creation process. They are being urged to reconsider their position.
An article in Wired Science under the heading "Studies says biofuels worse than gasoline," points out how, in the rush to find a replacement for fossil fuels, man has overlooked a) the end result of clearing away vegetation which at present helps absorb greenhouse gas, b) the amount of energy that it would take to actually produce the fuel.
In support of what Nyangi Chacha is saying here, a study published by Nature Conservancy on "Land clearing and biofuel carbon debt" concludes that there is no carbon saving in converting rainforests, savannas and so on. To the contrary, the process creates a carbon debt by releasing far more CO2 than the fossil fuels themselves. The only benefit occurs when biofuels are made from agricultural waste that is grown on land unable to support food crops.