The Low Down On Green Living
May 11th, 2008
How Green Are Biofuels? A Comparison
Stumble it!
Written by Clayton B. Cornell, courtesy of gas2.0
Biofuels are increasingly lumped into a single category of environmentally apocalyptic dead-end solutions. As the food vs. fuel debate rages on, it’s no wonder that the general public believes this.
But not all biofuels are created equal, as the chart below illustrates (click the image to see full size). It’s one of the best depictions I’ve seen of how each biofuel feedstock has completely different impacts on overall greenhouse gas emissions, water and pesticide use, and the energy required to produce the fuel.
The chart was created jointly by faculty members from University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy and published in the Seattle P-I (see the article Bio-debatable: Food vs. fuel).
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Comments
Adrian
May 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Hey! Thanks for all the great info on biofuels. I never knew corn had such a high use of resources during harvesting. Maybe its not such a good idea for us to pursue corn bio fuel! I was browsing through a bunch of green websites and blogs and I came across yours and found it very interesting. There are a bunch of others I like too, like the daily green, ecorazzi and earthlab.com. I especially like EarthLab.com’s carbon calculator (http://www.earthlab.com/signupprofile/). I find it really easy to use (it doesn’t make me feel guilty after I take it). Are there any others you would recommend? Can you drop me a link to your favorites (let me know if they are the same as mine).
Kat
May 13th, 2008 at 9:30 am
What about veggie oil? I know technically it is illegal but there are a lot of people out there who have converted their diesel engines to run off of veggie oil. Also how long can you go before you have to fill up again with each? That should be a consideration, right?
Jessica Jensen
May 13th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hi Adrian–
Thanks for your post. Yes, I do know of a great calculator– ours! The Low Impact Living Household Impact Calculator is much more than a carbon calculator– it covers your households carbon emissions, energy use, water use, trash production and much more. Please give it a spin and let us know what you think! Here’s the link:
http://www.lowimpactliving.com/scores
Cheers,
Jessica Jensen, Low Impact Living
Ken Smith
May 14th, 2008 at 7:17 am
I use ethanol in my vehicle when possible (only 1 station in Los Angeles area) The problem is 2 fold, the price has gone up a minimum of 50 cents per gallon since the beginning of the year and I get 3 miles per gallon less in mileage. It actually ends up costing me slightly more per fill-up. You try to be eco-friendly and they still get ya. All we can do is keep trying.
The Green Room
May 14th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
I’m glad more people are putting out the stats on biofuels. I recently posted a short video regarding a biofuel using POND SCUM. I’m not sure how developed the idea is to date, but judging by the video’s description, the production would be relatively simple and cheap to manufacture. The question is are manufacturing engineers getting ready for this?
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