Biofuel Use 'increasing Poverty'

[Guest]

The replacement of traditional fuels with biofuels has dragged more than 30 million people worldwide into poverty, an aid agency report says.

Biofuel Use 'increasing Poverty' : Read more

 

[blackwidow_rsa]

Goverments should stop subsidizing(sp) biofuels and use/donate that money on research for developing hydrogen fuel cells and more effecient engine designs

 

[velocityg4]

I always figured this would be one of the results. The crop prices are hitting us too. If you wanted to go all bio and replace all fossil fuels then that means leveling forests and using up most fresh water resources and would basically be a far worse environmental catastrophe then removing all smog restrictions on cars.

Hydrogen fuel cells would be nice but it requires a lot of electricity to separate Hydrogen from water. I could not even imagine the amount necessary for handling all US vehicles. Our current infrastructure could not handle it. You could build many fossil fuel plants which defeats the purpose. Solar, Wind and Hydroelectric plants would tear up the landscape to handle the capacity. Basically most wild habitat would be destroyed to make room for all the needed Solar, Wind and Hydro generators.

I can only see one solution feasible with current technology to replace most fossil fuels. Hydrogen separated from water and power from many new Nuclear plants. Fuel cells are not truly necessary as internal combustion can also work fine off of Hydrogen. I think Hydrogen is more powerful than Gas thus higher MPG and a fuel tank you hope never explodes .

 

[gm0n3y]

@velocityg4

You do realize that Uranium is a finite fuel source (like oil). I think that solar arrays and wind turbines are a terrific solution for certain areas. Think of places like Arizona that get a lot of sun and have lots of open empty space. And with technological innovation, solar arrays are gaining efficiency all the time. There is nothing wrong with supplementing power needs with nuclear sources, but depending on them for the majority of our power is the same short sightedness that brought on the current energy crisis.

 

[ADM-86]

People should know more about biofuels.... you can make biodiesel from jartropha (wiki for it and u will find out).... i am not saying that Hydrogen isn't the future ... but for now the best solution are biofuels... until all the infrastructure of fuel is change

 

[BeAuMaN]

I work in the biofuel industry myself, so naturally I'm going to be promoting biofuels. It isn't all biofuels that are bad, but it has to do with inneficient crops and inneficient technologies. Ethanol isn't really that great of a tech, and the only reason it works in Brazil is that they have a Dam supplying all the power for the ethanol processing plants.

There's new processes on the horizon, as we're trying to get our processes allowed for road-use by California, but naturally it takes forever to get anything done in Cali. We've been looking at plants like Jatropha for a while, however we're likely going to go with a different plant that's similar but puts out around 4x the gallonage of it. The best part of all is that these crops can be used on land that wouldn't normally be used for food crops, as it requires little water and is naturally pest resistant.

With more efficient technologies and better crops, Biofuels will be the solution, as it won't require everyone to buy new cars to run them, nor would you have to replace the whole fueling infrastructure of the USA. It -will- be the great transitional fuel to lead us into the next fuel generation.