Monday, January 14, 2008

Unintended Consequences of Mandating Biofuels

And yet… America rushes down this road with great abandon.

Europe’s environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe’s road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said it would be better to miss the target than achieve it by harming the poor or damaging the environment.

(3) Comments
Posted by Owen at 0800 hrs
Foreign Affairs + Politics + Politics - General + Technology

  1. Congress rushes down this road because of big agribusiness interests. They are planning on mandating not only ethanol, but specifically ethanol made from corn, even though switchgrass ethanol has a much higher energy yield.

    Regardless, mandating what the next alternative energy source will be is foolish. Politicians aren’t scientists or engineers, nor are they prophets, they don’t know what will serve us best for energy moving forward. Instead of mandating that corn ethanol is the next big energy alternative (possibly one of the worst choices) they should be creating an atmosphere that promotes/insures competition between various alternative energy sources and let the best one win out.

    Posted by Matt on January 14, 2008 at 1137 hrs


  2. Politicians also are not the average family, and don’t see the effects of the corn demand on our grocery bills.  angry

    They should look into other sources such as switchgrass, which is more plentiful and must less costly to produce.

    Posted by hsgbdmama on January 14, 2008 at 1743 hrs


  3. According to this article Switchgrass can produce 21 times as much energy as corn.

    However, politicians should not look into any sources, they should just make a friendly environment for all alternative energy sources to compete on their merits and let the best sources (or combination of sources) win.

    Makes more sense than choosing a winner when the race has barely begun.

    Posted by Matt on January 15, 2008 at 0926 hrs


Commenting is not available in this channel entry.