biofuels

Indonesian deforestation with fires in the distance, photo by Billy via flickr

Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, and Brazil , one of the most successful places where ethanol has been produced from sugarcane, have agreed to cooperate on sharing biofuel production knowledge.

Quoted at ENN, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono indicated that Indonesia could learn from the research and dev...

photo by Erin Collins

Plans by the Kenyan government to approve expansion of sugarcane cultivation in the Tana River Delta by Mumias, the nation's largest sugar cane producer, have been dealt a blow by the courts.

As reported by Reuters, the Malindi High Court ruled last Friday that environmentalists and representatives of local livestock groups could apply for judicial review of the project. Until this judicial review is completed...

Photo of land cleared for cattle in the Amazon by Leonardo F. Freitas

A new report from the Rights and Resources Initiative starkly quantifies the amount of additional land which will have to be put under cultivation to satisfy the demands of a growing world population for food and biofuels.

Land equivalent to 12 Germanys will have to go under the plow
Unless agricultural productivity of land rise sharply—the exact opposite of trends since the Green Revolution and the subsequent introduction of GM crops—an additional 515 million hecta...

The status of the claimed-to-be secret World Bank report which asserts that 75% of the recent rise in food prices can be linked to biofuels may have to be revised, based on statements from the World Bank.

Only a Working Paper
The Wall Street Journal has quoted Donald Mitchell, author of the report, as saying that the paper was a working paper only and not the official position of the World Bank. Any changes made to the document were done for the...

Robert "Chip" Beam built his own wood-powered pickup truck. The wood-burning, or rather wood-gas burning truck is now a sort of mascot for Beaver Energy, the Williamsport, Pennsylvania based startup company Beam and partners Larry Shilling and Aron Lantz have formed.

If he did it, you could too. Read on for tips and links to learn how to make your own Wood-powered Pickup Truck, with videos of the wood-powered pickup truck in action and a video guide to building your own wood-gas generator....

photo by Wiliam Rowlands

It’s sure not to be the final world in the whole food versus biofuel debate, but the recent secret World Bank report which finds that biofuels are responsible for 75% of the recent rise in global food prices certainly frames the debate in a stark new light.

So does a recent report on the environmental and social impact of biofuels by Professor Ed Gallagher, which recommends slowing the introduction of biofuels because current production targets will result in a rise in greenhouse gas emissions and an ...

Image from petrr

Given all the recent backlash, it seemed inevitable that the EU would be forced to revise its misguided biofuel targets. The final push may very well have been provided by a World Bank report concluding that biofuels may have caused global food prices to rise by up to 75 percent.

Four percent from renewable sources by 2015
In light of this, Claude Turme...

The Bush administration says it ain't so, blaming high food prices on higher demand from India and China. Brazil's Lula blames record oil prices and rich countries' farm subsidies. John Laumer blames genetically modified crops, among other things. Now a leaked report from the World Bank claims that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%. The Guardian writes: "Senior development sources" say the report was spiked to avoid embarrassing President Bush. "It would put the World Bank in a political...

photo by Ben Garland

Here’s something that, unless you are intimately familiar with how sugarcane is processed, you may not be aware of: The most efficient Brazilian sugarcane mills consume about 1,800 liters of water per tonne of cane processed. Considering that by most assessments water is going to be an increasingly important and scarce commodity, the development of a system for processing sugarcane which not only uses no additional water, but actually produces water as a byproduct, is certainly an interesting development.
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Image Credit: Steve Pope/European Pressphoto Agency

Hurricane Katrina highlighted the extent to which oil supplies are subject to disruptions from the weather, and we've long known that a terrorist attack or a decision by OPEC can affect oil supplies and prices. Supporters of biofuels often point to these facts as reasons for increasing our production of corn-based ethanol and other biofuels. After all, we can grow corn right here in the U.S., supporting American farmers and freeing ourselves from the grip of OPEC and petro-dictators such as Hugo Chave...

How not to do it: Oil palm plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Achmad Rabin Taim.

Can anyone think of the exact moment when the biofuel backlash first reached its tipping point? In any case, it seems like, finally, people are realizing that liquid biofuels aren’t quite the green panacea they were once made out to be. Not to demonize them, it’s just that (like most things) there are plusses and minuses to each feedstock and production method and these need to be carefully considered when formulating policy. It seems like the incoming EU president, France, has gotten the message.

If there's one thing we've learned over the last few weeks, it's that burning large quantities of staple foods to produce a relatively small amount of fuel is a thoroughly misguided practice -- with grave implications for the world's most vulnerable populations. And though the barbs directed at biofuels from all sides have been merited, we must not forget one of the other main culprits in this global food crisis: bioplastics. ...