Channel 4’s very own Green expert Steve Jones has his say on bio-ethanol and the future of fuel.
King oil is dead, long live the king! The oil era is over, bring in the
new.
It’s not over quite yet of course but oil certainly is not where the future of energy lies. According to many experts1 it’s already half gone and as global demand starts to outstrip supply - prices are rocketing, as if you hadn’t noticed What’s more, releasing billions of tonnes of fossilised carbon into the planet’s atmosphere over a few short decades turns out to have been a bad idea... an increasing body of scientific evidence2 is telling us that all that CO2 is having disastrous consequences on the planet’s climate systems – it really is time for a change and soon! Business as usual is not an option.
These facts couldn’t be more pertinent than to the transport industry which until now is almost entirely reliant on fuels derived from mineral oil and with passenger cars alone responsible for 14% of CO2 emissions in the UK each year 3, it’s an industry ripe for change. So is there an alternative? Can we still enjoy our highly mobile lifestyles without destroying our precious planet in the process? Bio-fuels can definitely make a big contribution to future energy but produced thoughtlessly they have the potential to cause many negative impacts too, comes the answer of the recent influential, government backed Gallagher4 report into bio-fuels.
Click here to view a series of 5 short films produced by The Independent on the fundamental issues concerning biofuels; from their production and compounds to the environmental and economical impact of their implementation, proposing arguments for and against their future.
Of course it’s complicated, the conditions under which bio fuels make the best contribution to reducing environmental impact depend on a variety of factors; choice of crop, type of soil, the latitude it is grown at, choice of fertilizer etc. whilst turning valuable croplands into fuel lots throws up many ethical questions in a hungry world. This is an area calling for both development and scrutiny to get it right.
There isn’t going to be one single solution to the energy issue, renewable energy comes in the form of a range of technologies, coupled with addressing underlying societal issues at source. Energy has actually been too cheap for too long, we have become wasteful and over reliant on it due to its abundance.
Developing much more efficient behaviours is also going to form a big part of the solution. Many of our technologies like our homes, transport and energy systems were born of a time when energy was plentiful and the world seemed endless in terms of its mineral abundance.
The future
now lies in learning from the brilliance and efficiency of natural
systems to model genuine sustainable technologies for our selves
and more importantly, our children.
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