News: Biofuel Not The Answer For The Aviation Sector

Flight Global had written an interesting article about BioFuel and why it is not the answer to our aviation energy problems.

The first reason is that there's a finite amount of arable land on the planet. We need this land to grow food for the six billion people on the earth. If the land is used to grow crops for fuel it will set up a competition for food between cars and people. The Worldwatch Institute has estimated that the amount of grain needed to make enough biofuel to generate one tank of fuel is the same as that needed to feed a person for a entire year.

The second reason for questioning the value of BioFuel is that in order to replace aviation fuel (kerosene based) the crops will need to produce vegetable oil, such as palm oil. Since there is a growing demand for these crops and fuel there will more of a reason to open up non-existing farm land by using virgin forest and cutting down trees to grow these new crops.

And finally, recent research illustrates that the process of extracting ethanol from corn will actually double greenhouse gas emissions compared to the "calculated" saving of 20% when not looking at these knock-on effects.

Source Non-Mobile: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/...

Tags: Airplanes, Green, Products
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