Biofuels not such a great idea after all
Posted by: delusional in Automotive, Cars, Economy, News, PoliticsThe UK government seems to have decided that an expansion of use of biofuels for road transport is possibly not the best idea ever.
In a sudden outbreak of common sense, they have acknowledged that diverting crops from food production to biofuel production may in fact drive up the price of food. They are debate whether to abandon the EUs target of 10% biofuel usage by 2020, a target which I believe the EU government themselves are thinking of scrapping.
Ruth Kelly for the government made some points about rainforest deforestation and suggested a softly-softy approach
“To tackle climate change we will need to develop new, cleaner fuels - but that doesn’t mean pushing forward indiscriminately on biofuels that may do more harm than good.”
Which was rather contrary to previous policy which seemed to be pushing biofuels as a general panacea and solution to the fuel crisis.
The reality is that as such epic quantities of land have to be diverted to biofuel production to have any meaningful effect, the price of food is inevitably driven up making poor people poorer (or just plain starving them).
My personal view toward a solution is to change the energy storage medium for all short-range vehicles to battery-electric combined with a clear nuclear-power generation strategy. Then the inevitably higher-priced hydrocarbon fuels can be dedicated to longer-range transportion where the energy density afforded will still be neccesary. This could perhaps include high-capacity PHEVs.
Unfortunately, vehicle manufacturers are still faffing about with hydrogen fuel cell designs for which there is no present-day infrastructure and arguably require far more energy in their operation cycle than battery electric systems anyway.
Tags: battery electric, biofuel, crops, eu, government, hfc, hydrogen, targets, uk
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