biofuels | Common News Update

Aug. 24 (UPI) -- The promotion of biofuels as an eco-friendly replacement for traditional fossil fuels has been criticized by environmental groups. But research published Monday in the journal PNAS suggests biofuels can help mitigate climate change only as long as biofuel feedstock crops, like switchgrass, are grown on converted agricultural land. Advertisement The problem with biofuels is that their promotion by policy makers can trigger deforestation. If trees are felled to grow crops to make biofuels, the action can hinder the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions and reverse climate change. To calculate the effects of biofuels on carbon storage potential, researchers used models to simulate the movement of carbon through an ecosystem under a variety of land use scenarios. Scientists...

The UK should focus on using waste products like chip fat if it wants to double production of biofuels according a new study.The report from the says that making fuel from crops like wheat should be restricted.Incentives should be given to farmers to increase production of fuel crops like Miscanthus on marginal land. Even with electric vehicles, biofuels will still be needed for aviation and heavy goods say the authors. While the European Union has mandated that 10% of transport fuels should come from sustainable sources by 2020, these biofuels have been a slow burner in the UK. Suppliers are already blending up to 4.75% of diesel and petrol with greener fuel, but doubling this amount will take up to 10 years say the authors of this new report, that was commissioned by the government. To ...

Tag: biofuels

Biofuels could better aid climate change fight if grown on converted farmland

Waste products, not crops, key to boosting UK biofuels