Interview with author of OECD's "Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease?" report
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released a report called "Biofuels: Is the cure worse than the disease?" (download the PDF thanks to GreyFlcn for the link) earlier this fall. One of the authors of the report, Ronald Steenblik (who is also the Director of Research for the Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)), was interviewed by Renewable Energy Access about the critical tone the report took towards biofuels and, IMHO, does a fine job of defending his attacks on government subsidies of biofuels and of suggesting we wait until second-generation biofuels (e.g., cellulosic ethanol) are commercially ready before investing heavily in an ethanol infrastructure.Read the whole thing.
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[Source: Renewable Energy Access]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
TX CHL Instructor 9:03PM (11/21/2007)
The need for government subsidy proves that ethanol is an uneconomic fuel. Even if it can be produced more cheaply (per BTU) than gasoline, it's still at best a mediocre fuel.
Better than hydrogen, but that's not saying much.
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Dad 1:24PM (11/22/2007)
If the engine is designed for ethanol (turbo) then it is a great fuel. We are at the beginning of the ethanol era, give it time.
Dad
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GreyFlcn 12:03AM (11/23/2007)
==If the engine is designed for ethanol (turbo) then it is a great fuel. We are at the beginning of the ethanol era, give it time.==
Yeah but if it is, then it cannot run on gasoline.
Which is a pretty dumb idea if you consider how crappy the ethanol distribution system is.
http://greyfalcon.net/e85stations.png
And that less than 1% of US ethanol in 2006 was sold at E85 or higher. (Largely because the Ethanol sellers make larger profits selling it in 6-10% blends.)
Besides which, if you are looking for a turbocharged vehicle, getting a diesel makes a hell of a lot more sense.
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Nick 4:58AM (11/23/2007)
Surely the issue with biofuels is not whether they are totally economic (ie cheaper than oil, which of course is a moving target anyway) or whether a particular engine suits them well, but what the overall environmental impact is? This is the crucial thing right now - our future in a world of crazy levels of CO2 pollution of our atmosphere. The measure should be energy return (which IMHO rules out hydrogen) and the question of whether or not the land used can be spared from food production/use as a carbon sink.
Ultimately it seems to me that we should be heading full-pelt towards electricity as a fuel without any intermediate medium such as hydrogen, so all the effort should be into more efficient ways of storing electricity and using it to drive vehicles. Anything else is just a waste of time, money and the limited amount of the atmosphere's CO2 capacity that is left to us.
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