Last night I had that chance to attend an event called Nightmare Bio-fuels? As you have probably heard, people talk about bio-fuel or bio-energy as a green alternative to fossil fuel. Bio-fuel is said to: “reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce fossil fuel use, increase national energy security, increase rural development and a sustainable fuel supply for the future.”
There are many problems though. The first, and probably the most importation, is that food like corn and soy is being diverted away from people's tables and being put into gas tanks. Bio-fuel has caused the prices of certain crops to go up. This is being directly link to world-wide food storage. I heard that some 35% of all the corn grown in Canada would be used for bio-fuel is we wanted to have all gas in Canada contain only 10% ethanol (which is derived from corn.) This is something that the government is currently proposing. If we want to grown more crops for fuel, it will take a lot more land and of course that would have a negative effect on biodiversity, lead to more destruction of forest, and force third-world farmer to grow fuel not food.
The second importation problem is that the bio-fuel we’ve talked about so far is not carbon-neutral. Bio-fuel can be worse than conventional fossil fuel when you factor in the petrochemicals needs for growing and processing, plus transportation of the crops.
Third, these bio-fuels all come from genetically modified and/or engineered corn, soy, and even trees! You can check out the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network to read up on that, but I remember a story on CBC’s The Fifth Estate about how farmers in Canada were having a host of issues with GM/GE product. Google “roundup ready lawsuit” and put the coffee on.
Finally while moving from fossil fuel to bio-fuel MAY help secure our energy future, it seems like it would have absolutely zero benefit to the environment and might even be worse for it.
It’s not all bad though. There are certain bio-diesel fuels that are made from waste oil (IE: from restaurants) that are truly carbon-neutral. Instead of having it rot away, releasing CO2 or Methane, we can put it to good use. At the moment though, this doesn’t seem to be where things are headed on a global scale. I would also have questions if the world supply of waste could keep up with the world demand for energy.
I believe that we are going to have to reduce the amount of energy we are currently using and use a variety of different energy sources to secure our energy future. Right now about 30% of our energy is used in transportation and another 40% is used in our builds. One of the biggest challenges facing North Americans will be to reduce these numbers. Getting people out of their cars in mass and into quality transit is a major part of that puzzle. Looking at creative ways to save energy in our home with the use of solar and geothermal is another piece.
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