The Biofuel Argument

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/biofuel-plan-will-cause-rise-in-carbon-emissions-2129773.html

Oliver Write for the independent wrote an Article entitled Biofuel will cause a rise in carbon emissions. In this article he outlined flaws in the British governments plans to have ten percent of the united kingdoms transport fuel to be replaced by Bio Fuels. The arguments that are used to Justify this opinion include a study performed by the Institute of European Environmental Policy, other non Sited numbers. The information he speaks on mostly covers, CO2 emissions, Land use for Bio Fuel and different numbers that he feels would work better. I believe that although the information he gives does make a reasonable argument, he left many holes in which to pick the argument apart.

In Mr. Write’s article, he mentioned that plants such as Oilseed, Rape, Sugar cane and palms when used to produce Bio Fuel released in Fuel form the equivalent amount of CO2 as the plant absorbed in life. This produced what is known, as CO2 Neutrality where the amount of CO2 produced from burning is equal to that which was removed by the plant in life. What was not mentioned in the article is that since those plants were used, new plants and byproducts of plants can be used to produce BioFuel that releases less CO2 emissions. An Example of this is using the chaffs of harvested wheat that can be broken down into BioFuel. This means that these crops can be harvested for human consumption, and then the Chaffs can be turned into BioFuel. This plant prevents CO2 neutrality that the Rape plant and the Sugar cane create.

This use of Wheat also debunks 2 of the other points that Oliver Write brought up. Firstly Mr. Write was concerned that the British government would have to buy land in other countries or deforest their own land to make room for crops to produce bio Fuel with. However that is not a necessity now with the ability to use the chafes and left over parts of crops, that would normally just get disposed of, as BioFuel. Secondly the worry about having to remove agriculture for the use of BioFuel is not longer an issue because now the crops grown for consumption can be used as BioFuel making it a Viable option.

Another flaw I found in Mr. Write’s article was his focus on CO2 emissions. When looking at a burning fuel for use in transportation, CO2 is not the only gas that is produced. Other emissions such as carbon monoxide Nitrogen oxides, and small hydrocarbons need to be looked at as well when making a decision a new fuel source. The BioFuel will produce less of some of these other emissions that normal fossil fuel produces when burned.

The final flaw that I could locate in the Argument laid out in this argument comes in at the end where Mr. Write says that the target need to be reassessed however he fails to come up with a source that showed a possible target that would be preferable to reduce the effects he speaks of, nor does he even offer a suggestion himself.

One argument that I believe would have fit well into this article that was left out was the inability of may cars on the Road today are incapable of running on BioFuel. This fact alone means that if the UK wishes to meet its goal, it will have to have it’s citizens get wrok done on there cars to be adaptable with BioFuel, or they will have to put a policy in place that says all cars in sold in the UK must have the ability to run on both BioFuel and Fossil Fuel.

All in all I agree with what Mr. White had to say about BioFuel however I believe that he could have done a better job of filling in the blanks, and making his points more sound, instead of just spinning what he had so that the people that read it who were uninformed on the science and research would agree with him.

By Ian Wratschko