The story on ethanol just keeps getting getting worse. Some recent calculations show that ethanol yields one unit of energy for every six units used to make it. This is far worse than previous studies have shown, studies which also found ethanol production to be a net energy loser. Beware of biofuels! They look green, but they come out the other end with a lot of oil and natural gas added indirectly.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the thought-provoking essays. While I wouldn't begin to suggest that biofuels could save our bacon with respect to the likely economic consequences of any peak in oil "production" (extraction), one could perhaps make the argument that some limited production of biofuels without the use of petroleum might be worthwhile if they allowed for very targeted use of the existing petroleum powered infrastructure. I won't speculate about what those targeted uses might be (since I'm far too ignorant to do so effectively), but I can imagine they may exist. This doesn't allow for ultimate replacement of those tools, but it could ease the transition. Then again, at 6 to 1, you'd have to be really desperate for that oil-powered tool.
Biofuels are bad because they are going to cause a price war between the poor people who just want to eat and the rich people who want to use the produce to fuel their cars.
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