Biofuel

Biodiesel industries in Germany is reported to be collapsing. I personally don't think that this so called environmental friendly fuel will take off. Consider this, basically the biofuel are more or less also uses the same engine as the normal fuel (i.e. gasoline and diesel). The keyword bio merely refers to the fact that the fuel is produced from something biological as in plants. Therefore, it is argued that the plants has helped to absorb carbondioxide and the absorption will offset the carbondioxide produced by burning the fuels produced by the plants.

The hidden challenge of biofuel is to find plants that do not take as much land plots to grow AND plants that do not originate from foodstocks. So far, ethanol is used as a mixture with the fuel. However, ethanol is made of sugarcane, corns, and some other foodstocks. Therefore, its production compete with the provision of the foodstocks. Why are we using foodstocks to produce oil while many people in the world are still starving? It's beyond my understanding.

Some scientists then discovered that certain non food stock plants (I forget the name) can be used to produced biodiesel. One thing that was forgotten is that those plants need land to grow. There is of course then a huge risk that forest is cleared to supply the industry with the raw material. Well.... forest cleared = less tree to recycle the carbondioxide. So, where's the environmental friendly portion? It's as if earth is still abundant with forests and lands are cheap. People seem to drive like a racing horse with blinder. The ensuing side issues are often forgotten.

Unless a viable raw materials that does not infringe direct human needs (foods, lands) are found, biodiesel investment will implode upon itself soon. It's not sustainable at this moment. It's a mere hype. My opinion is such.