biofuels

caff

are they a bit of a joke?

I have being watching developments in them for a while and the more I see the more they seem to be just used as greenwash for companies and governments. Politicians just spouting 'green' sounding rethoric and claiming that they can meet their carbon targets by switching to biofuels.. yet with the increasing prices of grains worldwide as a result of ethonal production, food riots as a result and destruction of forests and peatland to produce them.. do they do more harm than good?

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/

IrelandOffline

Yes , The EU and the UKs responce to global warming , You thought they were doing nothing is the ITER project but were not supposed to talk about that (The green party dosnt like Neuclear Power)

I dont know why our enginners and the ESB are being censored by the media but its pathetic .

probe

caff wrote:

are they a bit of a joke?

Wood chip and similar when burned efficiently is a viable bio fuel for heating in Ireland, where trees grow rapidly. It doesn't consume large quantities of energy intensive fertilizer, and is on the doorstep. (Unlike the palm oil imported from Indonesia to run electric power stations in the Netherlands).

The future of car, bus, rail and tram transportation is with electric power produced by green energy. The energy and labour used in growing crops, fertilizer used, transportation and processing costs etc make biofuels of marginal benefit at best in Ireland. Brazil may be different with a jungle climate and low labour costs and lots of cheap land.

.probe

probe

IrelandOffline wrote:

Yes , The EU and the UKs responce to global warming , You thought they were doing nothing is the ITER project but were not supposed to talk about that (The green party dosnt like Neuclear Power)

I have never heard the green party express concerns about nuclear FUSION (ie ITER). Fusion is completely different to fission in terms of risks, waste storage, raw material availability etc.

I dont know why our enginners and the ESB are being censored by the media but its pathetic .

What has the ESB got to do with biofuels? What elements of the media are censoring which specific issues please?

.probe

IrelandOffline

probe wrote:

I have never heard the green party express concerns about nuclear FUSION (ie ITER). Fusion is completely different to fission in terms of risks, waste storage, raw material availability etc.


What has the ESB got to do with biofuels? What elements of the media are censoring which specific issues please?

.probe

Yeah like the green party are going to endorse fusion the mere fact that the US is involved is enough to put them agenst it, they’re children who know nothing about science and engineering.

The ESB have already suggested a nuclear venture on RTE and elsewhere. The greens take up valuable time which could be used to discuss our energy strategy with our engineers, they are mealy in this to promote their anti-globalisation agenda and fusion will enable a new age of unhindered globalisation.

To date we’ve had about 4 or 5 sentences on the news that including the ITER segment on scope next week.

SeanW

No, biofuels are not a joke!

There is latent agricultural capacity in the First World and this has lead to godawful and destructive imperialist policies by our governments to support domestic farmers and agri-businesses.

The worst of these are market intervention schemes such as CAP, which basically sealed off the domestic market from imports and buys excess produce to keep domestic prices for produce high. The commissioning government has no use for these intervention purchases and then dumps them on 3rd world markets at rock-bottom prices making local produce in target markets uncompetitive against the subidised imports.

There is a similar story in the US WRT protection of various types of agriculture and agri-business there.

So anything that soaks up this excess and turns 1st world farmers from welfare dependent imperialists to independent energy farming businessmen, can only be a good thing for all the peoples of the world, and the environment. Biofuels are a win-win solution for just about everyone in this context.

Thats why I very strongly believe there should be strong support for biofuels domestically, and in particular that Ireland's government should abolish all taxes and excise duties on sugarbeet ethanol and rapeseed oils and biodiesel. A mandate to mix petrol and diesel with 5-10% Irish grown bio-replacements should also be considered.

The fundamental problem with biofuels though is that (without using Genetic Modification to increase oil yeilds, at least) there is a limit to what they can achieve (for example, there isn't enough arable land on Earth to make loads of biofuel for everyone).

I have read on these forums about the Netherlands using Malaysian palm oil in power plants, I cannot support that for 2 reasons:
1: I have and continue to be, very clear on how I think we should generate electricty - Nuclear Fission, to as high a degree as is realistically possible. Anything else is either environmentally destructive, wasteful, unreliable, or unsustainable, and usually a combination thereof. I cannot advocate wasting biofuels on electricity when that fuel could be better used for transport and we have Uranium to make electricity with.
2: As for the Malaysian palm, it's important to keep it in context. The forest burning going on now - while extensive and environmentally destructive - is a once off cost. So while the clearing may cost X million tons of CO2 emissions, each crop of palm oil will replace a certain level of petroleum diesel, so eventually the operations effect will be carbon-negative, i.e. after a certain number of crop yeilds have been sold.

However there is also the issue of wildlife habitat destruction and that's what puts me against Malaysian palm. However I fear it may be too late.