Bio-Fuels - The New Snake-oil?

If we didnt have the climate change, we wouldnt have a blogosphere. Like the Iraq/Afghan/US v Al Queda(sp) war it had been the issue that is fuelling the blogosphere. Without it, our blogosphere would be basically about 20-something women writing about their sexual adventures and sexually frustrated losers reading them (either calling them sluts or wanking off to them...excuse my language..)..

Anyway, speaking of fuel, bio-fuels have to be one of the biggest magic bullets touted about to kill the demons of climate change and peak-oil, however, there is some skepticism about their viability, and fair enough too, I suppose. I point thee to todays NZ Herald's editorial, which makes a few fair points.

To be honest, while I agree with bio-fuels in principle, I doubt that they would completely replace petrol in terms of the fuel of choice. I mean, I would like to think that the energy costs needed to extract enough biofuel to, say power the average family car for a year. More than petrol I imagine. A lot more, in terms of sowing crops, harvesting and processing them. I doubt you would run a modern industrialised economy on biofuels.

I think the best place for biofuels would be in niche, special purpose areas, such as powering buses, taxis, some trucks, and perhaps our trains....perhaps power stations could also be possible? as mentioned in the editorial.

Can you imagine a bus fleet powered by bio diesiel?? I can. I think that we should start looking to achive that goal. The government (as un-PC as it may sound) should even start up a new Crown Research Insitutue, call it the Sustainable Fuels Institute or something , and charge it with bio-fuel reserach, developing a method to have all our buses and trains running on biofuels by 2020 and subsidise bus operators to switch their fleets over. I think that is a good target for sustainabilty, and our buses spew more crap into the air than most cars...

It sounds good to me I guess.....but will everyone else think so?