Here’s an interesting and still-pertinent article which destroys the “biofuels” mythology:
July 2, 2008
Ending Our Oil Addiction: Reality Check
Raymond Kraft
[Excerpt]
The solution Democrats and Environmentalists propose for rising fuel prices is, as we all know, “biofuels,” “sustainable fuels,” the Holy Grail of the Greens. Yesterday, I heard Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, once more call for “ending our oil addiction.” But if we look a little closer, it soon becomes apparent that the Democrats and Greens cannot possibly have worked out the logistics of ending ouroil addiction, which are mind-boggling indeed. Unless they have, of course, and are desperately clinging to a total denial of reality, just as middle America clings to its guns and God.
To preface, most of the raw data about biofuels that I use to make the calculations below comes from the article, “Green Dreams: Making Fuel From Crops Could Be Good For The Planet - After A Breakthrough Or Two,” in National Geographic, October 2007. I am making the assumption that the data in National Geographic is reasonably accurate, for National Geographic has a good reputation to maintain.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.506,css.print/pub_detail.asp
We can end our “oil addiction”. Turn to Natural Gas as a primary fuel for transportation purposes and power generation (for peak demand periods), nuclear energy for baseline power production, at such level that the power plants are running at flat-out full capacity 24/7/365, and the unsubsidized production of liquid fuel from coal using the well-known Fischer-Tropf process (used by the Germans in WW 2 and the South Africans while they were under embargo in the 1980’s).