Car manufacturers have used biofuels as an excuse for permission to keep making inefficient cars,

Road-builders have used biofuels to get more permission to build more roads

NOW the Aviation Industry is using biofuels as an excuse for airport expansion and to keep on flying.

 

Liquid biofuels made from plants are not green.  Over their lifetime the emissions their carbon emissions are many times greater than those of fossil fuels.  That’s right.  Biofuels are worse for the environment than petrol, diesel, coal or jet fuel. 

For general info on biofuel click here  For some stats on carbon emissions of biofuels versus fossil fuels click here

 

Agrofuels are Industrial Scale Biofuels. 

They cause:

• Up to 75% of rising food prices worldwide
• Climate Change and Rainforest Destruction
• Land displacement and human rights abuses

 

Coconut Oil

Last year,  Virgin     did a test flight using coconut oil.  A Boeing 747 flew from Heathrow to Amsterdam.  Just  5% of the total fuel used was biofuel, but this required 150,000 coconuts.  A trip from London to New York would eat up 45 million coconut fruits. Figures taken from Red Pepper Article.  Click here to read it.

Does that sound sustainable to you?

 

Algae

On 7^th Jan 09 Continental Airlines did a test flight with a plane running off biofuels made from Algae.  Most research into algae involves genetically engineering new species using synthetic biology.  Who knows what could happen if they escaped from the laboratory or the engineering plant? 

 

The Carbon Trust which is investing £10-16 millions  in research & development for algae based biofuels believes they could be commercially viable as an alternative to road and jet fuel by 2020. For more info from the Carbon Trust website click here and here

For an article on Saphire Technology, who are developing Algae in the USA, click here (the last few paragraphs on second page are particularly revealing re.  scale of the technology and the fact that it could take many years to develop, and the huge corporations on board).  

We could reach the point of no return for runaway climate change by 2016.  Algae won’t help stop this is it’s not viable before 2020.  Continental Airline’s test flight was just PR. 

Jatropha

Over the Christmas Break Air New Zealand, Boeing, Rolls Royce and UOP conducted a test flight where one engine on a Boeing 747-400 ran on a 50:50 blend of Jatropha and Jet Fuel.

Jatropha is being heralded as an ethical biofuel because it is a non food crop and so won’t displace food production. It can be grown on marginal lands such as semi arid and desert land, and so needn’t displace food production.

The truth is that jatropha is not a food crop because it is poisonous.  While jatropha could be grown on poor soils, it produced better quality fuels when grown on crop land.  It does displace food production, and it degrades and poisons the soil so it’s harder to revert to growing food on it later.  In any case, marginal lands are a myth.  70% of land in Africa is common land, free for all to use, and especially used by women and the landless poor.  These lands are used for grazing animals, collecting herbs and firewood and for growing food crops.  Millions are dependent on marginal lands for their livelihoods.  As usual, it’s the world’s poorest people, paying the highest price for biofuels.

To download an 8 page report entitled Agrofuels and the Myth of the Marginal Lands  go to http://www.econexus.info/

For an article summarising a report on  India which plans to  cultivate 11 million hactares of Jatropha click here