I am not discrediting biofuels in general. I was just pointing out that calling biofuels ‘much cleaner and greener than fossil fuels’ is a generalization which shouldn’t be made in a ‘green’ blog – and I was substantiating this view with a study, which, as you admit, is accurate. I know there is a lot of exciting research going on in this area, and I am open to be educated on new technologies and their impact on the environment.

That being said, I am still convinced that you would need vast amounts of land to match our ever-growing hunger for energy. Where should this land come from? Usually, what happens is that after some pilot tests back home, developing countries get bribed into sacrificing their natural resources – both by US and EU companies. History shows us that there is no such thing as a successful strictly local program. If it’s successful in economical terms, it will spill over to other countries, and the corporation that makes money with it will look for ‘cheaper’ production alternatives, which usually involves developing countries.

Thinking only in national terms doesn’t help tackle ecological problems. Climate change doesn’t stop at political borders. If a technology is successful in the western world, it will most certainly be adapted by the BRIICS next (which, as I am sure you are aware of, account for half of the world population, two-digit economic growth rates, and also two digit growth rates in energy consumption), and later also by countries which are currently regarded as the third world.

I salute that you are working on new energy technologies. I will salute you even more if you ditch your nationalism and keep in mind that we need global solutions.

The fact that you took a single report, and cast it over an entire field of research and industry, is incredibly misguided. I am not attempting to discredit some of the reports put forward in the flyers, as they are accurate, but I do have an issue with people making it sound as if this is the only form of bio-fuel production currently in use. A simple google search can easily point to tons of research that is looking at moving away from food based sources of ethanol specifically because it has a very low energy yield and takes food off the market.

So please, before you go attempting to discredit an entire are of study, do some research first.

By burning agro fuels more greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere than by burning the same amount of fossile fuels: A more intense agriculture produces additional CO2 emissions because it destroys rain forests, moors and meadows. The demand for fuels in the developed world will lever out climate protection efforts in developing countries by using a simple trick: Oil palms for the bio fuels will be raised on former soy plantations, and for new soy plantations more rain forest will be cleared.

Biofuel shouldn’t be presented as environmentally friendly on a blog that wants to ‘save the world’, much less with a sentence like ‘Biofuels are much cleaner and greener than fossil fuels, and they help to reduce our carbon footprint and mitigate global warming.’ This is just wrong.