Fuel from food? The feast is over

We have carried out an article against using food grains for biofuels. Now here is welcome news.


AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – In future years we may look back at the Great Mexican Tortilla Crisis of 2006 as the time when ethanol lost its vroom.

Right or wrong, that was when blame firmly settled on biofuels for the surge in food prices. The diversion of American corn from flour to fuel put the flat corn bread out of reach for Mexico's poorest.

Two years later, the search is on for ways to keep corn on the table rather than in the gas tank. Moving away from food crops, the biofuel of the future may come from the tall grass growing wild by the roadside, from grain stalks left behind by the harvest, and from garbage dumps and dinner table scraps.

Carlo Bakker's tiny biofuel operation, World Mobile Plants, avoids edibles. He says his mini-refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck, roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. He says he plans eventually to use organic household waste as well.

Bakker says one mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which he sells for the equivalent of US$3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.

"We don't compete with the food chain," Bakker said during a biofuels conference in Amsterdam. "We see opportunities not only to make money but to help people."

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Algae: Biofuel Of The Future?

Algae are tiny biological factories that use photosynthesis to transform carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy so efficiently that they can double their weight several times a day.

As part of the photosynthesis process algae produce oil and can generate 15 times more oil per acre than other plants used for biofuels, such as corn and switchgrass. Algae can grow in salt water, freshwater or even contaminated water, at sea or in ponds, and on land not suitable for food production.

On top of those advantages, algae — at least in theory — should grow even better when fed extra carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) and organic material like sewage. If so, algae could produce biofuel while cleaning up other problems.

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The painting is by Nancy Merkle

Kenyan courts consider terminating biofuel plans

The Kenyan courts are considering halting the first stage of a US$370 million biofuel project that aims to replace up to 20,000 hectares of coastal grassland with irrigated fields of sugarcane.

A judicial review of the project, based at the Tana River Delta on the northern Kenyan coast, was granted last month (11 July) after a campaign from environmental groups such as Nature Kenya and the East Africa Wildlife Society,and nomadic cattle-farming groups.

The project is intended to generate electricity — up to 34 megawatts a day at its peak — from sugar refining and up to 20 million litres of ethanol fuel annually from molasses.

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Dont' Use Food Grains to make Biofuels.

Thinking about green we all are supporting biofuels. But, things are not that green. Instead of using bio-wastes and Jatropha type waste land bio-seeds to make fuels, corns and wheat are routed into making fuels. It is unethical and foolish. The foodgrain prices are rising to a level that a good percent of world population are not able to buy their staple with their income level. Please desist from doing this. Please oppose this movement.

Read an article about Britain's Wheat to diesel Plant here

Indian minister attacks biofuels

While we tend to believe that bio-fules are a real substitute for petro-fules, please think twice. Precious staple of the third world is routed to make fuels.

Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram has said that it is "outrageous" that developed countries are turning food crops into bio fuels.

He said that countries like the US were doing so while the world's poor are struggling with surging food prices.

Delivering a lecture in Singapore, Mr Chidambaram said that using corn and other crops for fuel was a sign of "lopsided priorities".

He said that such an "uncaring" policy had to be strongly condemned.

The finance minister was also critical of "lax supervision", which he said had led to the US mortgage crisis and global economic uncertainty.

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Britain's first bioethanol plant, which will eventually convert 340,000 tonnes of locally grown wheat per year into 131 million litres of ethanol.

God, Read this article here