Biofuels are not the answer
There’s an interesting comment in The Guardian, arguing that the world needs to produce more food and not waste it on biofuels.
There is an interesting bit of information in it:
The grain required to fill a [95 litre] tank with ethanol would feed one person for an entire year.
It so clearly demonstrates why biofuels aren’t the answer, as it means driving a car means many people can’t eat – it’s not as if your car could run the whole time on the left-overs from dinner.
The are a lot of environmental “solutions” which are fundamentally flawed that are being touted as the next big thing.
Like biofuels, renewable energy sources in a lot of instances are a bit of a contradiction. How long does it take a Solar Panel or a Ground Source Heat Recovery Pump to have an effective cost return through fuel efficiency against the cost outlay of the actual component? Answer – in most cases likely to be more than the actual lifespan of the Solar Panel or indeed the house that it serves!
The more I study Environmental Science the more I come to the conclusion that good basic common sense applied to the Environment will at the end of the day be the answer.
Only perhaps in the fairly distant future when energy options are more limited will biofuels, solar panels and ground source heat pumps be cost effective due the economies of scale through need.