Filling the Gas Tank with Plants

Every week I get an email from E magazine. Sometimes these folks cry hysterically, such as when they claimed that every baby in the world is born polluted on the inside. But often they have good news about alternative ways to do things. Roddy Scheer reports today:

"Biofuels" such as ethanol and biodiesel account for only about three percent of all transportation fuel sold in the U.S., but they are coming on strong, with domestic consumption doubling just since 2001. With a little extra help from Congress in the form of strong biofuel incentives in the new omnibus energy bill, ethanol and biodiesel could eventually emerge as key players in the high-stakes fuel wars.

Biodiesel and ethanol are manufactured from ultimately renewable agricultural crops like sugar cane, soybean and rapeseed. Furthermore, since the fuels start their lifecycles as growing plants that absorb carbon dioxide, burning them up in automobiles does not contribute significantly to global warming. Biodiesel can run in standard diesel automobile engines.

So what's the problem, then? "For either the United States or Europe to replace just 10 percent of transport fuel using today's crops and technology would require around 40 percent of cropland," writes Newsweek. So, like many of the other promising alternatives to petroleum, biofuels are likely to serve as one of many choices to bridge the gap until a new energy economy becomes a reality."