BioFuels are getting a lot of attention these days. What's the story? One of the first was ethanol, made from corn, as a substitute for petroleum fuels. But before much of a dent was made in the fuel market, the diversion of corn from the food supply drove up the price of corn and soy foods That dimmed the future for foods as fuel.
The next step was to consider agricultural wastes, such as cornstalks, switchgrass, and even chicken manure. The idea was, that these materials were going to decay, and create the same amount of carbon dioxide as if they'd been burned. Therefore, burning them in a furnace to mske electricity would not add to the earth's carbon total.
A basic question about biofuels is: what harm is done, if these materials are burned, and not returned to the earth? Little information is available on this question, and it must be explored.
Non-edible crops like switchgrass must be grown on soil too poor for food crops. Trucks will have to be driven to this land, and the sparse crop harvested and loaded into trucks. This low-energy crop will have to be driven to a processing plant, and from there to the user site. The economics of this operation will be diffcult to justify, in dollars or in carbon balance.
Even if this can be done, we must ask: Wouldn't it be easier and less uncertain to just build another nuclear power plant?
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