Bio-Fuels:Man Vs Machine

The Hindu newspaper recently published an article about the dangers of using biofuels instead of the petrol and diesel. The article concludes that there are more harms than benefits of using the bio-fuels.Ethanol is extracted from plants which is then used as a bio fuel.

Plants through a chemical process involving chlorophyll convert the energy of sunlight to produce food. This process involves the conversion of carbon dioxide into food. These plants are then used to produce ethanol .When ethanol is used as fuel the carbon dioxide goes back to the atmosphere. The proponents of bio fuel argue that they help in maintaining the balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as they do not add any extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere , thus helping in fighting the global warming.

The script seems to be perfect till now. But the devil lies in the details.The plants which are used to make the bio-fuels include maize and wheet. Now these are consumed by humans too. Last year the global price of wheat were at a 10 year high and the price of maize doubled due the demand generated by the bio-fuel industry.So when millons all over the world are starving ,is it fair to use them as a fuel for the cars. Rich people can afford bio fuel even if the prices of the raw materials are high. So this is one competition where machine(read cars) seem to be winning. There already have been riots over food in Mexico.

The western countries have already given a big push to the use of bio fuel as motor fuel.President Bush has signed an agreement with the President of Brazil for providing bio fuel and UK has made it compulsory that by next year at least 2.5% of the fuel produced by oil companies should be bio fuel.

So one way to deal to deal with the problem is to increase the production of plants used as bio fuels. That means area under bio -fuel producing plant cultivation has to be increased .This is already being done . To produce palm oil (which is also used as bio fuel) the rain forests of Indonesia are being cleared by burning them. This is leading to emission of large quantites of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A report estimates that these rain forests would be destroyed by 2022 .The report by same organisation had predicted the year to be 2032 five years ago.This massive deforestation is damaging the habitat of many animals on the planet earth.
Interestingly use of palm oil as bio fuel produces 1000 times more carbon emissions than the same amount of petroleum products.

So bio fuels are causing more harm to our ecology and human race than they are benefitting us.
There is an urgent need to control the carbon emissions as the global warming has already started to show its effects in increasing temperatures and changing climatic conditions.But certainly bio-fuel is not the answer.
It is estimated that China will soon overtake US to become the leader in carbon emissions.
The administration of Sydney has decided to switch off the lights for few hours at night of Sydney harbour including Sydney Opera house to save energy.As production of energy(whether it is by power plants or vehicular combustion engines) is the main culprit in the carbon emissions ,they hope though a meagre step ,it will help in attracting the attention of the world towards this issue.
The full text of the article that was mentioned in the beginning can be read here