The biofuel debate is electrifying the UN food price crisis summit in Rome, pitting nations against each other and risking transforming bioenergy – once hailed as the ultimate green fuel – into the villain of the piece, the root cause behind global food price spikes.
Biofuel uses the energy contained in organic matter – crops like sugarcane and corn – to produce ethanol, an alternative to fossil-based fuels like petrol.
But campaigners claim the heavily subsidised biofuel industry is fundamentally immoral, diverting land which should be producing food to fill human stomachs to produce fuel for car engines.
Big debate up here on the Northern Plains… certainly, biofuels would boost the farm-based economy. In 2006, Sen. Thune (R – SD) and Sen. Obama co-sponsored the “Alternative Energy Refueling System Act.” (Lately, they are acting out election year partisanship and not agreeing on much of anything.)
Anyway, the diversion of corn from food to fuel creates an important debate, with no easy answers.
Bio-diesel is an easy answer. It’s a way to get fuel and not impact food.
Ooops – tapped out too soon. What I mean by “no easy answers” is that this is part of a larger debate about how to balance legitimate economic development needs (people without money don’t eat) and environmental needs. Do we clear rainforest for cattle ranches? Should Third World start-up industries be exempt from the burdensome costs of environmental upgrades? Should staple crops be diverted (that is, sold) for fuel rather than kept abundant (thus lowering the price) for food?
No easy answers – and there should be some humility among those of us who debate from abundantly provisioned urban and suburban enclaves.
Gee, don’t you just hate the Law of Unintended Consequences. The left has been touting biofuel as THE answer for years, now that its here…
Do you get the idea there is nothing that will make some people happy.
RSB
On the whole, biofuel that uses corn or other food grains is a wash, energy-wise — it takes a lot of fuel to grow it, transform and blend it, and then get it to market. And ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline does, so that has to be factored in as well.
There is work being done to make ethanol from sawgrass or other non-edible plants, but that is further down the road.
I forget what percentage of American corn and other grains is going into ethanol for energy usage — but it is not a small amount. I think it is crazy. Diesel, especially bio-diesel, is a better route.
That’s what you get when the government mandates, not the markets.
“Bioenergy: Fuelling the food crisis?”
Yes, and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. End ethanol subsidies.
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“The left has been touting biofuel as THE answer for years, now that its here” —RS Bunker [#4]
Not sure who counts as “The Left.” But environmentalists have become increasingly aware that, as Hakkatan [#5] points out, “biofuel that uses…food grains is a wash, energy-wise—it takes a lot of fuel to grow it, transform and blend it.”
For years now the big political constituencies for enthanol have been farmers and agribusiness.