Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat

New York Times reported Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

This confirms what I have always thought. We should do as France and several other European countries are doing and build more nuclear power generation stations, and work toward improving hydrogen fuel cell technology, which could use the nuclear power to generate hydrogen cleanly, and until we get there we sould drill offshore and in Alaska, and pursue clean coal, liquid coal, and oil shale recovery.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy. These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

Here is more from the other side of the pond.

James Joyner blogged Not to mention the fact that we’re converting a cheap, nutritious food source into an expensive, inefficient energy source and thus raising the price of the former. Or, as a commenter at Tyler Cowen’s place notes, “causing many farmers to replace barley crops with corn which is leading to higher beer prices”

What’s particularly baffling is that the Europeans, who have been on the environmental bandwagon much longer than we have, get a substantial percentage of their energy from nuclear power whereas we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in a generation.