[Terrapreta] new studies on GHG footprint of biofuels darkens the picture

[Gerald Van Koeverden]

The plant that BP (British Petroleum) and Monsanto are betting on?   
Miscanthus, yielding 15 ODT/acre.   You plant it once, and then  
harvest it for 30 years.  No fertilization required...

BP has budgeted $500,000,000 through 3 institutions of higher  
learning to cover its breeding, cultivation and processing as  
cellulosic alchohol.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/07/study-miscanthu.html

Monsanto just bought into Tinplant - the world's largest collection  
of Miscanthus germplasm.

http://www.freshnews.com/news/fresh-money/article_37282.html?Biotech

If I had a pyrolysis plant, I'd be figuring out if I could handle  
Miscanthus...


Gerrit


On 7-Feb-08, at 9:06 PM, Michael Bailes wrote:

> Funny I just finished commenting on these (? or similar)articles in  
> New Scientist
> http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn13289-biofuels- 
> emissions-may-be-worse-than-petrol.html
>
> 1. usually all that is looked at for biofuel is USA  subsidised Corn
> It is not the best plant or model for biofuels
> 2.There is great capacity in places like Queensland cane farming  
> areas to expand (unsubsidised) sugar cane production without any  
> land clearing
> 3. Waste streams of many kinds can be made into biofuel.
> 4 Many crops can be grown on marginal or salt affected land for  
> biofuel.
> 5. One plant "gopher weed" literally grows oil. Some old research I  
> looked at said it becomes viable when oil is about 465 a barrel.
> 6 alage show great promise for use as abiofuel especially where  
> land is at apremium
> 7 At the moment struggling Australians' farms are being snapped up  
> at record prices by Agri-business-multi-nationals. Why do you think?
> More on plants for biofuel here
> http://forums.hypography.com/terra-preta/11716-what-plants-might- 
> grown-just-bio-6.html#post205944
>
>
> On 08/02/2008, jim mason <jimmason at whatiamupto.com> wrote:
> a nyt article just came up referencing some new studies published
> today on GHG footprint of common biofuels.
>
> the new studies apparently take more seriously and try to quantify the
> GHG effects that follow from land use changes wrought by the new
> biofuel market.  they conclude that when indirect land use changes are
> taken into account, biofuels have a worse GHG footprint than petroleum
> derived fuels.   granted, all this is working with ethanol and
> b
>
> -- 
> Michael the Archangel
>
> "You can fix all the world's problems in a garden. . . .
> Most people don't know that"
> FROM
> http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/permaculture.swf
> _______________________________________________
> Terrapreta mailing list
> Terrapreta at bioenergylists.org
> http://bioenergylists.org/mailman/listinfo/ 
> terrapreta_bioenergylists.org
> http://terrapreta.bioenergylists.org
> http://info.bioenergylists.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /attachments/20080207/1dde6620/attachment-0001.html