Is it the thought that counts?

Oct 08, 2008 10:39

Norway is a country with very little agricultural land: over 50% of the country is above the tree line! There is probably less land in Norway for growing crops than in Luxembourg ( Read more... )

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wellinghall October 8 2008, 09:54:28 UTC
This isn't really a comment on your post, but what the heck -

It struck me that on Svalbard, with effectively infinite quantities of coal, all oil having to be imported, and all land journeys of short distance, they could do worse than use electric cars and snow scooters up there.

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adaese October 8 2008, 09:56:46 UTC
The biodiesel could conceivably be made from waste cooking oil, which has been imported anyway - in which case they're just using up waste that would otherwise have had to be disposed of. But if it is direct from agricultural land that sounds like an excellent example of tick-the-boxes, hey we're Green!

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tigerfort October 8 2008, 14:04:03 UTC
If the biodiesel is made from plants grown specially for the purpose, petroleum-based fertilisers were almost certainly used - so the oil was exported, turned into fertiliser, converted by the plants into a different type of oil, and then shipped home again. I suspect this process uses more energy-content in oil than it produces in biodiesel....

OTOH, biodiesel can be made from organic waste (cooking oil particularly, as adaese observes), in which case it isn't a problem.

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wellinghall October 8 2008, 14:07:23 UTC
And it stops the waste cooking oil going into holes in the ground / into the sea, neither of which is a particularly good home for waste cooking oil.

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findabair October 8 2008, 19:16:16 UTC
Huh - interesting question. I don't really know the first thing about bioethanol, but I would have thought an important reason for using it would be to reduce air pollution specifically in the city of Oslo?

Out of curiosity, I looked it up at Ruter's homepage, and it says that the bioethanol used is produced in Norway (Østfold) from wood from Norway or the Nordic countries. So I guess that's something?

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