Discussion on:

Will the real biofuel Lindbergh please stand up?

40% of the US corn crop went in to ethanol in 2010 while corn prices doubled.

Globally food prices have gone up more than 70% since bio-fuel mandates were put in place in many countries. The UN points the finger for higher food prices directly at bio-fuel programs.

Why in the world would we want to use more bio-fuel?

Are you trying to starve the world to drastically reduce global population as many fringe elements here want to do?

The World Bank released a report stating that the rise in fossil fuel prices is the largest factor in higher food costs.

Clearly, if more people want to buy soybean oil for whatever use, the price goes up, then people will raise supply to meet the demand. Since it takes land to grow the crops, that will have an effect on land use. If a farmer decides to cut down a forest to grow more crops for biofuels, that would be directly land use change. If farmers in Brazil cut down rain forest to grow more soybean to sell for animal feed because more people are eating meat because their income has gone up due to their region's booming biofuel business, that would be indirect land use change (ILUC). That being said, if a new oil field is discovered, wealth in the region goes, up, causing the same cycle.

Because this is such a complex topic, there is no obvious path. There is nothing clearly "stupid" or "idiotic" or even "common sense". It takes serious scientists working with government and industry to chart a path.

With half a million acres out of production this year due to river flooding in the US, the prices this year will only increase.

That is on top of the nearly 1 million acres of lost production since 2007. We have gone from just over 93 million acres of corn planted in 2007 to around 91 million this year.

The percentage of the US corn crop going to ethanol is expected to exceed 50% in 2011. It was around 3% in 2006. Most of that was waste corn that would have been disposed of as unfit for normal uses.

Of course the fuel they're using in these jets has nothing to do with ethanol. It is derived from oil seed crops of some sort. Jet fuel is akin to kerosene or diesel, not gasoline.

So they will drive the prices up on soybeans and other crops like it. Then the food for fuel blight will expand and drive up the prices of more food items.

Where is the sense in that?

"Oh, the clear winner in this weekend???s leapfrog across the Atlantic? It???s Honeywell UOP. Both flights will use its Green Jet Fuel, based on camelina, an inedible plant."

It is also a food stock for chickens and cattle. It has been growing in use by those industries as the cost of corn has gone up. It is also valued as feed because it tends to raise the level of Omega 3 oils in the meats produced.

So again we have bio-fuel competing with food production.

You should also know that Congressional reps from Montana are behind the push for Camelina being used in both the food and bio-fuel industries to make it a cash crop for the state.

PS. When can I collect on lunch?

My only caveat about whose first might be that Honeywell is running only one of its engines on biofuel.

They did that during testing but maybe they're confident enough now to run both.

The Germans used bio-fuels in WW II. It is a last resort fuel source for many reasons.

Of course, before the advent of fossil fuel use it was pretty much all biofuel, But I was under the impression that more than biofuel WW II Germany was mostly using coal as the basis for alternative fuels. I could be wrong.

Coal gas was a large contributor to their war effort. The problem with coal gas, as pointed out in another blog on here about the US military keeping it as an option, it is very polluting.

The Germans did not care about the environment, but the stuff was brutal on engines.

They did a lot of work late in the war on biofuels to mix with the coal gas to reduce the carbon fouling of the engines. By that point they had lost the fertile fields of southern France and the effort was pointless.

Just because something is possible does not make it desirable or advisable.

I once heard that they are using land for growing cotton, instead of using that land to grow food!

To make it worse, I heard that a farm in Iowa was turned into a subdivision!

So to be clear - ALL land must be used for food production. Any "plants" grown must be eaten and not turned into textiles or other goods. And all plants that can't be eaten directly must be fed to animals, so we can then eat them.

Where are the protests against cotton, high fructose corn syrup, and sugar?

Sorry folks, it's not as simple as it seems. You're not going to learn enough to make an educated decision from sound bites, short articles, and mainstream media. You need to seek out documentaries, websites, and environmental non-profit opinions.

"Corn" used for high fructose corn syrup is not food. Sugar is not food. F'ing coffee is not food. But that doesn't mean all those things don't have a place in our world.

There is no right or wrong policy - it's a very difficult and complex topic, and we must strive to find a balance between displacing petrochemicals with something else. If done carefully, biofuels can be a part of the mix. The key is to develop internationally recognized standards for sustainability, continue to refine them, and slowly phase out the obvious offenders (palm from recently deforested Amazon, etc.).