Reply #22: Several problems with that... [View All]

[TreasonousBastard]

First, it takes 7.7 gallons of corn oil to make a gallon of biodiesel, so if corn oil is selling at around 20 cents a pound (wholesale), that's $1.54 a gallon before processing and retailing it. OK, that sounds cheap, but it's ONLY if you can get the oil for that price and control costs to the pump. And, half a buck or so of the price of fuel at the pump is taxes, so if they tax biodiesel...

Free oil from the local fry pots is great, as long as it lasts.

I have seen estimates that worldwide annual petroleum use is the the equivalent of 400 years of plant growth. Remember that whatever coal or oil is in the ground is the result of millions of years of animals and plants dying and being converted to black stuff. If we are using it at 400 times the rate at which it was created, it's fairly obvious we can't replace it by growing stuff. Even if that number is way off, it still gives pause to the idea that we can "grow renewable fuel" with any great success.

Already, Borneo is seeing huge tracts of forests cleared for palm oil production. More biofuels simply means the reduction of the total wordlwide biomass, with very bad results. If anyone thought the Amazon was being ruined for food production, wait till they get the idea of planting palm trees, soybeans, or oil grasses.

Burning biofuels merely replaces some inefficient gasoline engines with slightly less inefficient diesels. It might even replace some more efficient fuel uses if the price drops enough at some point. At any rate, it's still burning stuff, and does little or nothing to reduce excessive CO2 production. CO2 production that will be more of a problem with fewer forests around as a carbon sink.

So, the answer is that biofuels are a small part of the solution, but we still have to reduce our energy consumption drastically.