Complex costs and benefits: The benefits of using ethanol produced from corn in the U.S. are much less than those achieved by using ethanol produced from molasses in Australia.
Credit: iStockphoto
A few years ago, biofuels were the flavour of the month because their use promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions along with other benefits. Since then, however, some of the public enthusiasm for biofuels has ebbed and many biofuel producers are now struggling.
Internationally, questions have been raised on how the use of crops for biofuels could impact on food prices and also the sustainability of biofuel crop production where it involves land clearing.
In Australia, a less heated debate has focussed on still quite thorny questions such as what reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and other air-borne pollutants are actually achieved by using biofuels, and how much energy is contained in the biofuels relative to the amount required to produce them.
Lack of clarity or even confusion over the benefits of using biofuels has led to doubts regarding the level of funding support the biofuel industry should be receiving.
Biofuel confusion
There are a number of reasons for this confusion. First, the benefits of biofuels, notably the potential to reduce greenhouse gases, differ from one biofuel to another and from one feedstock to another for the same biofuel.
For example, the benefits of using ethanol produced from corn in the U.S. are much less than those achieved by using ethanol produced from molasses in Australia.
Secondly, the benefits of biofuels are often not calculated on a full life cycle basis. Thirdly, in computing the energy balance of a biofuel, which is the ratio of energy contained in the biofuel to the energy that goes into making it, we need to be aware that we are not comparing apples with oranges.
And finally, where a policy is being driven not by just one single issue, but by a number of issues, care needs to be taken in dismissing a policy without considering the full suite of objectives that lie behind the policy.
Wheat versus molasses
It takes more energy to produce a litre of ethanol than it does to produce a litre of petrol. However, ethanol produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions per litre when used to displace petrol. Overall, there is a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when calculated on a full life cycle basis, with the reduction depending on how the ethanol is produced.
If it is produced from the fermentation of wheat, replacing 10% of petrol with ethanol, a blend known as E10, then the result is a marginal reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per kilometre travelled.
But if it is produced from molasses, and heat and electricity for the process are produced from burning bagasse, the reduction is over 4%.
Replacing 5% diesel with biodiesel, a blend known as B5, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 4% per kilometre if the biodiesel is produced from waste cooking oils, but only by 1.5% if made from tallow or canola. These are not large numbers, but we are talking about blends. If higher blends were used, the benefits would increase proportionally.
We already have a viable biofuel
You know what it is, Hemp.
You can get much more fuel, about 3 times as much if I remember correctly, from Hemp then you can from corn, plus you can grow it 4 times a year and a recent NSW grower made a crop that grows in 7 weeks. There are zero greenhouse gas emissions and it improves soil in the area it is grown.
It's terrible that this hasn't been explored yet.
Every time I see an article on bio fuel I'm waiting and waiting for this to pop up somewhere but it never does. Are people still stuck in the reefer madness days or what?
Biofools
Biofuel is a "best option" only if you take oil, coal, and nat gas out of the equation. Which, of course, our brain dead, morally bankrupt, corruption we call Congress and Presidency have artificially done. The rest is pure invention used as justification for government money and political power.
Well...
Yes biofuels are our best bet, but while all of us are spending our money on trying to get the right things to make a compatible car, we're stuck still having to waste our money on gas, money we don't have. Even if we do somehow (and I'm very confident we will) make a car that's compatible with corn and other cooking related items it will most likely be in a form we can not make at home. Which is what every one thinks it'll be like. We'll still have to pump it at stations and pay for it, even tho it will be MUCH better for the Earth, I don't think it'll be as good as every one thinks it will be. Not that I don't want the Earth to be healthy, but I think we should try to invest our money a little wiser.