[Peakoil] Biofuels False Promise

[W & C Steensby]

"Biofuels False Promise: Breakthroughs May be Tougher Than Previously Thought"

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Biofuels/Biofuels-False-Promise-Breakthroughs-May-be-Tougher-Than-Previously-Thought.html

Mainly Dave Cohen's commentary on an article in the August 2011 Scientific American. A snippet:

"About 40% of America's corn crop went towards ethanol production last year, which signals the end of this boondoggle. Arable land of course should be used to grow food, not fuel. Beillo quotes J. Craig Venter, who calculates that replacing all of our transportation fuel with corn ethanol would require a farm three times the size of the continental U.S. Ethanol from cellulosic feedstocks is just a flat out failure. You can do it, but the process is slow, expensive and thus will never scale unless some miraculous breakthrough is made."

Of course, one should never rule out the likelihood of a breakthrough, miraculous or secular, but we still have to consider the race between the depletion of physical resources and the depletion of financial resources. It matters not how large our physical reserves are; if we don't have the financial resources to make use of the physical, then we're no further ahead.

Another snippet:

"It is anathema to politicians to promote policies which require any kind of behavioral change on the part of the American public."

I am prepared to consider that in Australia the carbon tax is in fact asking the public to change their behaviour. Petrol isn't taxed yet, but its turn may come. Unless Abbott trashes the whole thing.

Regards,
Walter Steensby