Biofuel madness

There's a lot of talk about biofuels at the moment (see my previous note on the Broons). It seems to be an idea whose time has come, or at least its time to be talked about has come. What almost none of the pieces in the press mention is how much space it takes to grow sufficient feedstocks. Basically, growing your fuel is very inefficient, regardless of how you do it. It's even less efficient than renewables like wind power, and that's saying something. A recent EU estimate stated that 17% of the EU's agricultural area would be needed to support a 5.75% uptake of biofuels by 2010. That's an awful lot of land for a small overall change in our fuel use. You have to wonder if we haven't better things to do with land, like growing food on it.

But what about Brazil -- that beacon of eco-fuel use? Well, they have an awful lot of land and a lot of heat and sunshine, so the conversion of sunlight into fuel, via some biochemical pathways is about as efficient as it presently can be. This is often forgotten when optimistic comparisons are made. Other factors have been important too. The programme was originally partly motivated by a desire to reduce their dependence on oil imports, though they have a little oil of their own now. It does rather worry me that those who form our policy have not been very well briefed on this.
I predict a backlash to the current biofuel hype in maybe 6-12 months, with claims that we've been "misled" about them.