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Biofuels Notes

There is interest in using ethanol as an automobile fuel due to the rising demand for renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels. While biofuels have the potential to positively impact energy security and reduce fossil fuel usage, they also have significant challenges related to global food security. Skeptics point to issues like land use changes redirecting crops from food to fuel, increases in global food prices, and the negative effects of land acquisitions as demonstrating that biofuels must still overcome substantial hurdles to deliver net benefits. The development of next-generation biofuel technologies may help address some of these challenges.

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Ximena Valenzuela
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68 views2 pages

Biofuels Notes

There is interest in using ethanol as an automobile fuel due to the rising demand for renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels. While biofuels have the potential to positively impact energy security and reduce fossil fuel usage, they also have significant challenges related to global food security. Skeptics point to issues like land use changes redirecting crops from food to fuel, increases in global food prices, and the negative effects of land acquisitions as demonstrating that biofuels must still overcome substantial hurdles to deliver net benefits. The development of next-generation biofuel technologies may help address some of these challenges.

Uploaded by

Ximena Valenzuela
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The threat of global warming has spurred a great deal of interest in nding new sources of energy that do not

add to

the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Among other things, this has meant a search for alternatives to fossil fuels,

which modern civilization uses to generate electricity, heat homes, and power transportation. Finding alternatives for
electricity generation (which relies much more on coal than on oil or natural gas) or home heating (which relies more on

oil and natural gas) is easier than nding alternatives for transportation (which relies on oil, re ned into gasoline and

diesel oil). In addition, the transportation infrastructure, consisting of re neries, pipelines, tank trucks, gas stations,
and an immense number of cars and trucks that will be on the road for many years, is well designed for handling liquid

fuels. It is not surprising that industry and government would like to nd nonfossil liquid fuels for cars and trucks (as

well as ships and airplanes). In the YES selection, Keith Kline et al. argue that the impact of biofuels production on
food prices is much less than alarmists claim. If biofuels development focused on converting bio wastes and fast-

growing trees and grasses (into fuels, the overall impact would be even better, with a host of bene ts in reduced fossil

fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, increased employment, enhanced wildlife habitat, improved soil and water
quality, and more stable land use. In the NO selection, Madison Ellas argues that although biofuels may indeed

contribute to the need for renewable energy, their bene ts fail to exceed the costs they impose on food security and

the global poor.

The next generation of biofuels technology may be more bene cial.

Looking at the bene ts of biofuel production as it relates to food security and energy demands,
it is clear that, there is potential for biofuel production to positively a ect food security. The

bene ts of fossil fuel depletion, the rise in the need for renewable energy, and the continual

development of improved biofuels all point to this potential. In contrast, the challenges that

biofuels cause for global food security have been analyzed in depth and demonstrate that a

signi cant amount of reinvention is necessary for biofuel production to be truly bene cial.

Skeptics draw on land redistribution, crop redirection, resource reallocation, food price
increases, impacts of policies, and the ill e ects of land grabbing to demonstrate how far

biofuels have to go

Why is there so much interest in using ethanol as a portion of automobile fuel?

Murphy and Wise explain that, with an increasing demand for corn to be used in biofuels,

corn that would otherwise be destined for the dinner table is being repurposed as fuel. This

redirection of a consumable good is causing decreases in the food supply and, because of

record low food reserves, prices have risen dramatically on a global scale. This rise in global

food prices results in food insecurity because it forces poor households, which already

spend up to 80 percent of income on food, to either increase food spending or decrease

food consumption, which can result in malnutrition or death. This e ectively generates an

inability for many households to access food because fragile household incomes cannot

keep up with price increases.

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