Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Biofuel benefits questioned




A British scientist is questioning the greenhouse-gas benefits of biofuels production.

Dr. Keith Smith, from the University of Edinburgh, says it’s misleading to simply say a corn crop captures a certain amount of carbon dioxide.

It’s the difference between what corn captures and what another crop that would be planted on that field would capture, he says.

And corn requires a lot of nitrogen and some of that escapes into the atmosphere as a potent greenhouse gas. That, too, has not been included in the calculations made by the supporters of ethanol as a “green energy”.

His observations are unlikely to make much difference now that ethanol plants are up and running in the United States and Canada.