Just an article

[wellgull]

...about biofuels, and how they suck.

LinkyGenerally it's what you'd expect: there is no such thing as free energy, and leveraging plant photosynthesis is a great idea that probably still won't be feasible. He doesn't get into it, but I suspect the problem is the underlying energy economy -- all those cars are consuming more energy than hits our

Comments

[xannoside]

Makes sense.

My question is, could you make viable biofuels from waste oils? For example, the millions of tonnes of waste oil used and discarded everyday by the fast-food industry.

[wellgull]

See, now *this* is the only part of the biofuels thing that really has legs.

The problem is that waste = useful energy in the wrong place. We need to use that useful but unused energy, not try to shunt energy that's currently *being* used for things like food.

[kokoinai]

My major complaint with biofuels (corn, particularly) is that they drive the price up. Yes, that's right, getting our fuel from ourselves instead of the Middle East will cause basic staples to be even more unaffordable for the poor. Sounds like a great trade-off to me.

[wellgull]

Well, if we could somehow figure out how to make cars run on high fructose corn syrup, we'd be golden, since it's something that absolutely no one actually needs :) But yeah, the economics of "biofuels" as they're currently proposed don't make sense, whether it's the energy economy or the monetary one.

[trinityvixen]

There's also the fact that the plans in place, like to put ethanol in cars, are so completely wrong for our lazy-ass system of car ownership that it would definitely do more harm than good even if it sucked in greenhouse gases and emitted fresh air with a pine scent (thank you, robot X1!). Ethanol-petrol mixtures require special engines to run cleanly without destroying your car. We live in a country where people have cars that are twenty-thirty years old, and older. You really think they'll all dump them for the new ones (which are thrice as expensive) for this fuel?

I swear, this was the same complaint against it in Australia FOUR YEARS AGO when I was there and they were trying out this ethanol-petrol mix. Sheesh. Biofuels my ass.

[wellgull]

The outdated-car issue is actually a significant one; if everybody had new cars we'd already emit less of the greenhouse gases, since new cars tend to get better gas mileage (those mammoth land yachts excepted). If people were going to buy new cars for petrol reasons, they might as well just buy hybrids...

As for the rest, well, we're at least four years behind the rest of the world. But old, dumb ideas can be maintained indefinitely if they've got the life support of some massively rich person's potential profit.