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Bad News for Ethanol

Michael O’Hare wrote:

“There is now more than good reason to expect that no biofuel from seeds, possibly none (even cellulosic) grown on land that could grow food, will reduce global warming if substituted for petroleum products.

…The first piece of the puzzle is the recognition that if a piece of forest is cut down, or natural grassland plowed up, to grow biofuel, decay and/or burning of what was there before releases an enormous puff of carbon into the atmosphere that needs to be counted along with the carbon releases of the biofuel crop….The second piece is the recognition that it doesn’t matter where the biofuel is actually grown.

…The bottom line…is that using crops for biofuels anywhere induces land use changes somewhere, and while the effect isn’t a simple acre-for-acre replacement,…betting now is that it is most unlikely to be small enough to view crop-based biofuels as green substitutes for petroleum.”

~ Matt