Originally Posted by
Beer Baron
Really?!? You can’t figure it out?
Grow a crop that absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and it reduces atmospheric CO2. Burn it in a jet engine and you release the carbon but you then absorb it again by growing more of the crop. In theory a perfect system would be net zero.
Otherwise you release carbon from a source (oil) that absorbed carbon 10 million years ago. So you are only adding CO2 to the atmosphere today.
A lot more to it than that mate
Producing and suppling fertilizer has a large carbon footprint
So to does all the farm equipment
Road transport to a refinery
The carbon absorbing land they had to clear to grow the crop wipes out a lot of the carbon absorbing bonus
Then you have very thirsty crops such as sugar cane and corn
So bio fuel isn't a silver bullet, far from it...