Environmental issues can become very complex and intertwined! A very topical example of this is that of biofuels. There is a growing demand for alternative motor fuels produced from renewable and sustainable sources with reduced carbon emissions. Biofuels would seem to fit this demand admirably. Bioethanol can be used as a partial substitute for petrol and biodiesel can correspondingly partially replace diesel. However, as in many instances all is not 'black and white'.

Anyone listening to the news over the past month or two and reading the quality press, will have become aware of a growing controversy… Namely, is there sufficient agricultural land to meet our food needs as well as providing biofuels? The short answer to this question is that with current technology there really isn't enough land to meet our food needs and to produce a total replacement by biofuels for our current motor fuel usage. A recent review in the scientific literature concluded that biodiesel produced from microalgae was the likely way forward until a hydrogen economy could be developed.

Earlier in May, WWF, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the RSPB ran an advertizement entitled 'Tell the Government to choose the right biofuel or the Orang-Utan gets it'. This advertisement highlights the plights of tropical rainforests that are being destroyed to make way for biofuel crops…. and although the advert didn't specifically specify it, the crop that threatens the Orang-Utan is oil-palm. Other tropical rainforests are threatened by demands for growing soy and sugar cane for biofuels.

Already in Mexico there have been protests about the rising price of corn tortillas because USA corn is being redirected to bioethanol production and the local price of corn is escalating. So what is the answer to this? Predominantly we need to manage and plan agricultural land use and not leave it to the free market. Certainly, we need to protect sensitive environments such as the tropical rainforests. Destroying them causes far more carbon dioxide release than the resulting biofuel crops grown in lieu save. Current land use strategies will readily permit a 5% substitution of current motor fuels with biofuels and possibly up to 10% substitution. Beyond that we need new technologies. Second generation biofuels produced from whole plant biomass will be more efficient in terms of land use but probably we will have to look elsewhere such as using microalgae.

One immediate answer is to use motor vehicles less and to develop more fuel efficient vehicles! Certainly, a world without Orang-Utans will be a much poorer place.

Stuart

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