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The New York Timesreports on a new study from a prominent environmental think tank that concludes that turning plant matter into liquid fuel or electricity is so inefficient that the approach is unlikely ever to supply a substantial fraction of global energy demand and that continuing to pursue this strategy is likely to use up vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world’s growing population. “I would say that many of the claims for biofuels have been dramatically exaggerated,” says Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, a global research organization based in Washington that is publishing the report. “There are other, more effective routes to get to a low-carbon world.” The report follows several years of rising concern among scientists about biofuel policies in the United States and Europe, and is the strongest call yet by the World Resources Institute, known for nonpartisan analysis of environmental issues, to urge governments to reconsider those policies.
Timothy D. Searchinger says that recent science has challenged some of the assumptions underpinning many of the pro-biofuel policies that have often failed to consider the opportunity cost of using land to produce plants for biofuel. According to Searchinger if forests or grasses were grown instead of biofuels, that would pull carbon dioxide out of the air, storing it in tree trunks and soils and offsetting emissions more effectively than biofuels would do. What is more, as costs for wind and solar power have plummeted over the past decade, and the new report points out that for a given amount of land, solar panels are at least 50 times more efficient than biofuels at capturing the energy of sunlight in a useful form. “It’s true that our first-generation biofuels have not lived up to their promise,” Jason Hill said. “We’ve found they do not offer the environmental benefits they were purported to have, and they have a substantial negative impact on the food system.”
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 30 2015, @06:48PM
Wait, crude is at 1? How do you figure? 1 is basically break-even (i.e. pointless), while oil is *massively* energy-positive on human timescales. Just pump it out of the ground and you get practically free energy sequestered millions of years ago.
I certainly won't argue about corn though - from what I've heard you're actually doing good to hit break-even, but it's also one of the worst crops to brew "normal" ethanol from - not enough sugar to be worth the effort. Sugar-cane and other high-sugar crops are a much better option, but they don't grow well in the US.
Cellulosic ethanol certainly has far more potential, especially since it could be made from agricultural waste, but how would that cater specifically to the powerful corn-subsidy lobby? From what I've read there's also the issue that, while cellulosic ethanol may be more energy efficient, it's considerably more expensive to produce. And so long as we live in a capitalistic economy, money is God.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Friday January 30 2015, @07:05PM
Energy ratios are defined with respect to the fossil fuel equivalent. So gasoline is 1 by definition. If a biofuels produces more energy than is put into producing it (in gasoline equivalents) then it has an energy ratio greater than 1. If not, it's less than 1.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 30 2015, @07:37PM
Ah. That's a *very* different definition than you gave in the comment above
>how much do you get out compared to what you put in.
That's the definition I've always heard, and by that definition, from what I've heard, corn-starch ethanol is only roughly break-even - i.e. it makes a great battery, but it's unlikely to ever be a decent energy *source*.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 30 2015, @07:41PM
To clarify:
Assume you use one gallon of gas to generate one "gasoline gallon equivalent" of Ethanol: Energy in ~= energy out, so the efficiency ratio ~=1.
For gasoline on the other hand you need consume only a tiny fraction of a gallon of gas to pump and refine a gallon of gas, so the efficiency ratio is much greater than one.