03 Apr 07
Biofuel is a contentious issue right now, mostly because some farmers in developing countries are selling their crops for fuel rather than locally needed food. There's also evidence that key wildlife habitats such as the Amazon rainforest are being destroyed to clear space to grow fuel crops, often endangering the species that live within them and expelling indigenous tribes from their homelands. And if trees are being burnt to clear the land to grow the fuels, the net carbon dioxide output isn't actually being reduced.
The process of refining the fuel is energy-intensive: there are claims that in the US converting maize into biothanol uses nearly as much energy as you get from it. However, on the cottage-industry level at which bioethanol is currently supplied in the UK it can be a less guilt-laden business. There are pilot schemes producing bioethanol around the country, such as the Wessex Grain trial in Somerset, though even the most ardent supporters of biofuels now seem to accept that local projects like this can never meet more than a small percentage of total fuel demands.
Even if every acre of land in Europe currently unfarmed and in receipt of EU set-aside subsidy money were to be requisitioned to grow crops for biodiesel or bioethanol it would still not be enough. Hence the multinational firms moving into developing nations, where land is cheap and there are large profits to be made. This need not be unethical - the Eden Project points out that in Brazil, sugar cane production for ethanol provides one million jobs, and has saved 600 milion tonnes of CO2 and around $100 billion in oil imports.
Expecting large-scale availability of biofuels which have been locally produced from locally grown crops is like expecting your 99p burger to be made from a hand-reared cow which led a happy life roaming lush organic pastures before it met a peaceful, painless end. However, just as you can make a small difference to the meat market by buying free-range and organic, it's possible to make a small difference by running a car on locally sourced E85, if you can find it. In the absence of any other viable alternative-fuel choices - at least until electric cars with a decent range and fuel cell vehicles go on sale - it's as good as we'll get.
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