everyone has already said corn and soy sucked for a fuel stock- ive actually
gotten pretty mouthy about it...
Jason
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From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 7:38 PM
Subject: [Biofuel] recent study of bio fuel energetics; abstract
> Forwarding from another list.
>
> Darryl
>
> ==
>
>>From the Cover
> BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / SOCIAL SCIENCES / ECOLOGY / SUSTAINABILITY
> SCIENCE-SS
> Environmental, economic, and energetic costs and benefits of biodiesel
> and ethanol biofuels
>
> Jason Hill* Erik Nelson, David Tilman*,, Stephen Polasky*,, and
> Douglas Tiffany
>
> Departments of *Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior and Applied
> Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108; and Department
> of Biology, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN 55057
>
>
>
> Negative environmental consequences of fossil fuels and concerns about
> petroleum supplies have spurred the search for renewable
> transportation biofuels. To be a viable alternative, a biofuel should
> provide a net energy gain, have environmental benefits, be
> economically competitive, and be producible in large quantities
> without reducing food supplies. We use these criteria to evaluate,
> through life-cycle accounting, ethanol from corn grain and biodiesel
> from soybeans. Ethanol yields 25% more energy than the energy invested
> in its production, whereas biodiesel yields 93% more. Compared with
> ethanol, biodiesel releases just 1.0%, 8.3%, and 13% of the
> agricultural nitrogen, phosphorus, and pesticide pollutants,
> respectively, per net energy gain. Relative to the fossil fuels they
> displace, greenhouse gas emissions are reduced 12% by the production
> and combustion of ethanol and 41% by biodiesel. Biodiesel also
> releases less air pollutants per net energy gain than ethanol. These
> advantages of biodiesel over ethanol come from lower agricultural
> inputs and more efficient conversion of feedstocks to fuel. Neither
> biofuel can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies.
> Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would
> meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Until recent
> increases in petroleum prices, high production costs made biofuels
> unprofitable without subsidies. Biodiesel provides sufficient
> environmental advantages to merit subsidy. Transportation biofuels
> such as synfuel hydrocarbons or cellulosic ethanol, if produced from
> low-input biomass grown on agriculturally marginal land or from waste
> biomass, could provide much greater supplies and environmental
> benefits than food-based biofuels.
>
>
> corn | soybean | life-cycle accounting | agriculture | fossil fuel
>
>
>
>
> Contributed by David Tilman, June 2, 2006
> Author contributions: J.H., D. Tilman, and S.P. designed
>
>
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