Biofuels: Good or Bad?

[Kyt]

What do people think about biofuels? Personally I believe they are a disaster waiting to happen and that main advocates of its use are the enviromentalists but governments like the US who are trying to break their dependance on oil.

One of the first people to critise the push towards biofuels was Castro who predicted that it would cause world poverty and major food shortages as farmers found growing these crops more lucrative than food stuffs. Now Oxfam (indirectly) have come to the same conclusions. It seems that governments haven't learnt that farmers will grow what earns them more money rather than what is actually required - the growing of opium in Afghanistan being a classic example.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Biofuel use 'increasing poverty'

[Kitty]

Let's see:

EU directive states 10% of all crops in britain must be biofuels. So biofuels are grown, leading to such a drop in food crops that wheat is now around about £200 a tonne. Hence up goes the price of bread, flour, animal feeds so meat prices are rocketing.... but EU directive won't let them stop growing. Am seeing fields going under the plough this year that haven't been arable farmed since before i was born.
Also leads to a major rise in world prices for food crops, meaning that the poorest can't afford food.

Also an ecological disaster area as these crops are of now ecological use at all in this country, leading to drops in insects, birds and mammals.

And biofuels, whilst viable for a handful of vehicles/energy usages, so lets say less than 5% will be able to use what is produce. The remainder of the vehicles/energy produces must use alternatives. So in the meantime we have starvation and ecological disasters.

Yep, great idea are biofuels.

[Antipodean Andy]

Exactly what Kitty said. An absolute total waste of time but it seems too many are blind to the disadvantages.

When I see small wind turbines and greater use of solar panels on residential housing as standard, I'll know someone has finally got serious.

[Kitty]

the current style of wind turbines where it is th huge sails with a gear system behind are running at about 20% efficiency = totally useless. A man over here has created a new smaller turbine that's about 90% efficient with a longer lifespan and cheaper to produce. he can't get backing.

[Antipodean Andy]

There's also small turbines that look like a DNA matrix - vertical. Dutch-designed I think. Because of their vertical orientation, they don't need to weathercock but can be moved by updraughts as well as normal winds etc. Ideal for placing on skyscrapers in a CBD area where the winds are all over the place.

Haven't we talked about this before? :-)

[Kitty]

I admit I am suffering deja vu

[sniper]

May as well add my Two pennies worth on this subject as i used to make it, and probably the best bio diesil in the country as well. Goverment says water content should be no more than 500 parts per million, i got it down to 62 parts per million. I made all my bio diesil from used cooking oil which has no other use except for going into landfill. The water we used for washing it was used in a solution with an organic aphid killer and the glycerole was used to make soap, shaving foam and could of been used also to make dynamite.
The trouble is that there is not enough goverment help for these bio fuels companies. The farmers also are not allowed by European legislation to grow on all their ground and they get paid by the European Goverment not to farm a certain amount of their land every year, this is called 'Set Aside'. However the farmers are allowed to grow crops such as Rape Seed. Most of the British Crop actually goes to Austria which is crushed and used to make Bio Fuels. The solid part is given back to the farmers as cattle feed. There is a bio fuel plant in France which will use the useless parts of slaughtered animals and turn it into bio fuel. Tesco's have booked every minute of every day in the U/K's largest Rape Seed Crusher in Elesmere Port and have their own bio fuel plant at Immingham, Humberside. I believe that they are using it solely at the moment for their own vehicles. All Diesil vehicles can use the alternative bio fuel, the reason why some vehicle companies say no is because they are tied in to the big oil companies. If they said that it would be fine to use it they would not get cheap oil based products from companies such as Shell and Texeco.
Bio Fuels will be the future like it or not.

Sniper

[Ferhilt]

What I want to know is where have all the 100+ mpg cars gone? As soon as they get reported they dissappear. I think the earliest I have heard of a 100+ mpg vehicle was back in the 70s and they pop up every so often but are quickly and mysteriously gone.

IMO its a big coverup. Big oil companies probably hold all these designs in sealed vaults after buying out or blackmailing the designers.

100 MPG Car

[Ferhilt]

I like the idea of water cars too...

Water Powered Car

[Kitty]

problem is sniper, which do we grow? Bio fuel or food? We don;t have the land for both