41 comments on A Life Cycle Assessment of Energy Products: Environmental Impact Assessment of Biofuels
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Good remarks Jack, I share your opinions (electricity, Brasil-EtOH, USA-EtOH) as one of the authors of the study. Biofuels may be ok under very specific conditions, but for the future we have to look at alternatives with much higher efficiencies (yes, sunlight-to-electricity!). Biofuels produced out of organic wastes look very promising, but produced out of food it's not only problematic from an ethical point of view.
Thank you. I do think we are on the same page. I tend to agree that there are disturbing potential ethical issues related to competition between fuel and food. However, it is not as clear cut as some make it out to be.
One could make an argument that the poor benefit more from fuel than from sugar, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, etc. So, we would have to infer that there could be ethical issues involved in using so much land for these products. Likewise there is so much waste in processed foods and meat consumption.
Why do some people consider diverting sugar to ethanol as evil, when diverting corn to livestock feed is just fine?