Bio fuels a double-edged sword
The drive for “Green Energy” in the developed world is having a
perverse
effect of encouraging deforestation. Biofuels such as
biodiesel may prove to be a useful transition technology for the move
away from fossil fuels and into the Bright Green world, but attractive
as they are, biofuels pose some sticky problems. From the orangutan
reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being
razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations
Once again environmental problems are being solved by dumping them in
developed countries. Making biofuels from plants already in demand for
food, such as soy, corn and canola/rapeseed, raises the prices of the
food versions and reduces available supplies. And increased demand for
biofuels is triggering the expansion of agricultural land, with
devastating results in some areas.The solution may be to stop
looking at new crops for biofuels, and to start looking at waste
biomass. We should be careful not to imagine that biofuels alone will
replace our use of fossil fuels. We need a much bigger change -- a
combination of high-efficiency
systems, redesigned communities, and
energy produced from clean, renewable sources. But changes of that
scale take time. Biofuels, like hybrid cars and rooftop solar panels,
are a kind of bridge technology, helping us get to where we need to go
without cutting us off from our existing systems. It's crucial that our
use of them doesn't make things worse in other ways.