What problems are created by biofuels?

Answer 1

• Less energy output by volume compared to petroleum, currently inefficient production means high ratio of energy put into producing biofuel versus energy yielded from fuel itself.
• Ethanol from corn is a huge scam subsidized by the US government supported by congressmen from corn producing states.
• Ethanol in current internal combustion engines lowers mileage (notice drop in mpg during winter? Higher ethanol content with winter formulation of gasoline)
• Ethanol can damage parts of the fuel system when you get up to higher percentages than what is currently added to gas.
• Besides, converting a food crop/ farm land to fuel when millions are going hungry is downright immoral.

Answer 2

A problem with bio fuel is that agricultural production (grain) can be diverted into the production of fuel and away from food production. This may seem attractive to farmers who feel it would be a consistent source of sales for their production, but it has several associated problems:

• crops for bio fuels return less energy for transportation than the energy input for their production once fertilizer, fermentation and distillation is accounted for
• there is a growing world food shortage which would be made worse by diverting grain to fuel
• there is not enough arable land to produce sufficient bio fuel to meet current fuel demands.

Alternate bio fuels using recovered cellulose from plant waste (stalks, waste leaves and crops) does not make as much money as direct to fuel sales of crops, but resolves many of the problems

Answer 3

Since ethanol has chiefly been made from corn, this will remove corn from sale from other uses, and could drive up prices. Corn requires land to grow which might be used for other crops, and generally requires fertilizers because it can deplete the soil of nutrients.

Other biofuels such as peanut oil are less depleting to the soil, but can be much more expensive to produce, and again remove land from use for food crops.

Creation of fuels by fermentation involves distillation. This is complex and requires heat, which is not always from renewable resources.