Biofuels Get New Lease Of Life

Thursday, 26. August 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

Just as all our attention is being given to the new electric car initiative, now backed by the Coalition Government it seems that biofuels may be back on the agenda. For those that are unsure biofuels are a mixture of petrol and sustainable ethanol. The standard was known as E85 which means the mixture is 85% ethanol and 15% petrol. When it was being introduced it was at a time when we had massive grain mountains throughout Europe and it made sense to use this over supply to fuel cars in place of petrol or diesel. Unfortunately we then hit a world food shortage and food prices increased by 40% which resulted in many reports being written condemning the growing of plants for fuel rather than food. Whilst Saab Ford and Volvo had vehicles that were able to run on E85 bio-fuel they have since been withdrawn. Having said that, almost 1.5 billion litres of bio-fuel is used each year in the UK, 3.3% of all road transport fuel. Unknown to many is the fact that all petrol and diesel contains up to 7% bio-fuel. The bio-fuel is blended before it reaches the pumps. According to Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) this has cut carbon output by 51% or the equivalent to taking 500,000 vehicles off the road. The reason why bio-fuels has raised its head again is that third and fourth generation bio-fuels uses bi products of current land crops rather than the land crops themselves denying us of food. Products such as wheat straw, residues from sugar beet processing and all off cuts from the wood industry are now being used. Its no longer a case of food or fuel but food and fuel. However, there are no plans to re-introduce bio-fuel cars until it is available widely and the Government gets behind it. Having said that, current cars can be modified at minimal cost to run on bio-fuels so this may be the short term way forward. In Europe we are now falling well behind other parts of the world. In Brazil there has been consistent state support over three decades. It is now argued that Brazil now has the greenest transport system in the world. The US is getting behind bio-fuels so shouldn’t we be doing the same? Do you use bio-fuel? What problems have you had to deal with? By Graham Hill