Biofuels

Biofuels have the possibility to produce energy while decreasing overall CO2 emissions. In this paper, I will examine the basics of biofuels, their potential benefits, their history and recent developments, and the scientific, and ethical considerations that arise when talking about their use.

Biofuels are “any type of liquid or gaseous fuel that can be produced from biomass substrates and that can be used as a (partial) substitute for fossil fuels” (Giampietro, Ulgiati, & Pimentel, 1997). Examples include ethanol, methanol, and biodiesel (Giampietro, 1997). There are many methods to extract biofuels from biomass. Ethanol is extracted from the yeast- or bacteria- fermentation of sugar crops (Giampietro et al.E, 1997). Methanol is extracted from the gasification of wood (Giampietro, 1997). Biodiesel is made by extracting oil from oil crops, i.e. soybean, sunflowers (Giampietro et al., 1997). There are two types of biofuels, primary and secondary. Primary biofuels are those used in their unmodified form, i.e. fuelwood, chips and pellets (Nigam & Singh, 2011). Secondary biofuels are processed biomass (modified primary fuels) like ethanol and charcoal. These can be used in cars and industrial environments (Nigam & Singh, 2011).

The U.S. government is active in the push for increased biofuel production. The U.S. government has before, and continues to subsidise ethanol in an attempt to increase its adoption. The Energy Policy Act of 1978 set a subsidy of 10.6 cents per liter of fuel blended with ethanol (Tyner, 2008). The federal subsidy today is 13.5 cents per liter (Tyner, 2008). However, this does not include state, and other subsidies, which bump the total subsidy to between 27.8 and 36.5 cents per liter of ethanol, or 37.6 and ...

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...e to fire and decomposition, reversing the carbon sequestering that naturally takes place (Searchinger et al., 2008). Also, if biofuels are adopted, crop prices would rise, increasing the incentive for farmers to repurpose more land (Searchinger et al., 2008). A vicious cycle. To create greenhouse benefits, the carbon uptake credit must exceed the carbon storage/sequestration given up by changing land uses (Searchinger et al., 2008). If you do the calculations, adoption of corn-based ethanol would be a net negative for greenhouse emission benefits for a while. Greenhouse emissions from the use of corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and overall increases greenhouse emissions for 167 years, when at that point the carbon will have been offset and equalized by the reduction of emissions from the use of biofuels (Searchinger et al., 2008).