UK Minister Attacks 'Bourgeois' Biofuel Stance

The only form of energy REALLY efficient is conservation- so all be sure to drive only a very small car, live in a small house, don't fly in a jet since it's so inefficient, etc.

Not only are we reverting to the pre-industrial practice of burning wood for low-EROI energy, but we are shipping it across the ocean before burning it. Are there any more ways to make this less efficient and more dependent upon fossil fuel energy inputs? Yes! Let's convert it into liquid fuel and reap a huge negative energy balance as cellulosic ethanol. Brilliant!

Harvesting wood for a biomass facility doesn't have to mean clearcutting or displacing agriculture. Here in New England, forests are often thinned lightly for timber and pulp and firewood and chips for biomass. See http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/?id=107694529310729 for images of nicely done forestry contributing wood to a biomass facility. Of course not much wood is going to be produced in Gt. Britain for any purposes, so they'll have to import much of it. The US Southeast is gearing up to make such exporting very efficient with new ports and huge ships.

Well, if over a century of rampant coal and petro burning obviously affects the development of the reasoning mind, will a reasoning mind, overcome by self generated fears, be willing to make wise decisions about how to correct the mistakes it has made? If an "educated" mind is taught that only excess is a worthy career goal, can it reason that it was perhaps fundamentally wrong? Tune in later to learn the outcome. .....OR tune in now to make a better one!

To an experienced observer, it is easy to identify who is losing an argument--it's the one who resorts to name-calling and personal attacks. England has already used up its forests once in its history--for shipbuilding. One of the American colonies' major exports 250 years ago was timber for ship masts and hulls because domestic supplies had been exhausted. A pesky fact is that the power density of tree farming is lower than corn ethanol. Replacing a single large coal plant or single nuclear reactor with a 1 GW tree-burning power plant would require the wood from 12,500 square kilometers of coppiced willow or poplar. That's converting a square plot of land 112 km on a side from biodiverse habitat or productive farmland into an artificially fertilized and herbicided agro-industrial monoculture producing a bulk commodity whose only purpose is to be burned. England has hundreds power plants of such size. European environmentalists are finally waking up to the true costs of biofuels, as well as their often spurious claims of actually reducing greenhouse gases. This recent study by a consortium of seven European environmental groups finds that by following their current national renewable energy action plants, the 27 nations studied will emit between 81% and 167% MORE GHG than by using fossil fuels.

The Indirect Land Use Change Impact of the Use of Biofuels in the EU. London: Institute for European Environmental Policy, 2011. http://www.ieep.eu/assets/786/Analysis_of_ILUC_Based_on_the_National_Renewable_Energy_Action_Plans.pdf .


These are the facts and "practicalities" we have to deal with. Standing by for the name-calling and personal attacks from those who prefer fantasy and ideology to facts.

Both of these men are right and wrong at different points. Diverting land from food to fuel use has caused problems in the past, but it is certainly possible to use non-agricultural land to produce feedstock for biofuels. Considering the credentials of the commentators, it's worrying that neither of them knew this.