Producing more biofuels to combat climate change will release more carbon gases over the next thirty years than fossil fuels, a new study in the academic journal "Science" reports.

Restoring and protecting forests would do far more to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere than dedicating vast tracts of land to energy crops, argue Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracklen. Science today published an article by the University of Leeds researchers, "Carbon Mitigation by Biofuels or by Saving and Restoring Forests?"

Creating ethanol from sugar beet, wheat, corn or rapeseed – favorite biofuel sources to mitigate climate change – could actually lead to the earth heating up further, the researchers warn.

"If the point of biofuels policies is to limit global warming, policy makers may be better advised in the short term to focus on increasing the efficiency of fossil fuel use, to conserve existing forests and savannahs, and to restore natural forest and grassland habitats on cropland that is not needed for food," said Righelato, a Leeds professor and trustee of the World Land Trust, a British conservation group.

The team compared the CO2 savings from biofuels with CO2 absorption from forests over a 30-year period. They found that reforestation would sequester between two and nine times as much carbon over 30 years than would be saved by burning biofuels instead of gasoline.

As part of Europe's pledge to fight climate change, the EU has pushed for a switch to green fuels. It has set a target of ensuring that biofuels make up 10 percent of vehicle fuel by 2020. But around 40 percent of Europe’s agricultural land would be needed to grow biofuel crops to meet this 10 percent fossil fuel substitution target. That demand on arable land cannot be met in Europe or in the United States, which would force these regions either to convert existing forests and grasslands into "energy crop" fields or to source from developing countries.

The researchers recommend that governments not clear forests to make way for biofuel crops. Instead they should increase efforts to conserve fossil fuels now in use, and restore forests while researching non-carbon fuels that can be developed for future use. Biomass from woody material should be transformed into fuels in the long term, buy only when done in a sustainable fashion. This sort of biomass could yield far greater amounts of biofuel than wheat, corn or even sugar beet, the researchers claim.

The researchers used a 30-year period for their study because they believe unspecified new technologies that do not emit CO2 will be available after that time. The long-term goal should be to create cars that do not require carbon-heavy fuels to run.

German Press Agency contributed to this report

So why is everyone here in the States shoving this down our throats?

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Please Click for Sarah's Wish

No kidding. If they can't even do 10% biofuel and be self sustaining, then why even go in that direction? Cut the research and funding for it all together and use that money toward something else that can be used.

E85 costs more than gasoline and gets horrible gas mileage. I wouldn't want it for my truck anyway. I'd rather see something like Hydrogen, after all it's everywhere and it's clean burning since it emits water vapor as a byproduct.

I saw an article/video where some guy found an easy way to seperate the hydrogen and the oxygen in water. He made a welding torch out of it and they were developing it for use in a car. All you do is fill up with water and go.

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Here's another perspective on Biofuel from an article in the Washington post..........

The False Hope of Biofuels

For Energy and Environmental Reasons, Ethanol Will Never Replace Gasoline


Biofuels such as ethanol made from corn, sugar cane, switchgrass and other crops are being touted as a "green" solution for a large part of America's transportation problem. Auto manufacturers, Midwest corn farmers and politicians are excited about ethanol. Initially, we, too, were excited about biofuels: no net carbon dioxide emissions, reduction of oil imports. Who wouldn't be enthusiastic?
But as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.
It's difficult to understand how advocates of biofuels can believe they are a real solution to kicking our oil addiction. Agriculture Department studies of ethanol production from corn -- the present U.S. process for ethanol fuel -- find that an acre of corn yields about 139 bushels. At an average of about 2.5 gallons per bushel, the acre then will yield about 350 gallons of ethanol. But the fuel value of ethanol is only about two-thirds that of gasoline -- 1.5 gallons of ethanol in the tank equals 1 gallon of gasoline in terms of energy output.
Moreover, it takes a lot of input energy to produce ethanol: for fertilizer, harvesting, transport, corn processing, etc. After subtracting this input, the net positive energy available is less than half of the figure cited above. Some researchers even claim that the net energy of ethanol is actually negative when all inputs are included -- it takes more energy to make ethanol than one gets out of it.
But allowing a net positive energy output of 30,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, it would still take four gallons of ethanol from corn to equal one gallon of gasoline. The United States has 73 million acres of corn cropland. At 350 gallons per acre, the entire U.S. corn crop would make 25.5 billion gallons, equivalent to about 6.3 billion gallons of gasoline. The United States consumes 170 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. Thus the entire U.S. corn crop would supply only 3.7 percent of our auto and truck transport demands. Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for corn-based ethanol production would meet about 15 percent of the demand.
It is argued that rather than using corn to make ethanol, we can use agricultural wastes. But the amounts are still a drop in the bucket. Using the crop residues (called corn stover) from corn production could provide about 10 billion gallons per year of ethanol, according to a recent study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The net energy available would be greater than with ethanol from corn -- about 60,000 Btu per gallon, equivalent to a half-gallon of gasoline. Still, all of the U.S. corn wastes would produce only the equivalent of 5 billion gallons of gasoline. Another factor to be considered: Not plowing wastes back into the land hurts soil fertility.
Similar limitations and problems apply to growing any crop for biofuels, whether switchgrass, hybrid willow, hybrid poplar or whatever. Optimistically, assuming that switchgrass or some other crop could produce 1,000 gallons of ethanol per acre, over twice as much as we can get from corn plus stover, and that its net energy was 60,000 Btu per gallon, ethanol from 300 million acres of switchgrass still could not supply our present gasoline and diesel consumption, which is projected to double by 2025. The ethanol would meet less than half of our needs by that date.
Perhaps more important: The agricultural effects of such a large-scale program would be devastating.
Recently, there has been lots of excitement and media coverage about how Brazil produces ethanol for its automobile fuel and talk that America should follow its lead. But Brazil consumes only 10 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually, compared with America's 170 billion. There are almost 4 million miles of paved roads in America -- Brazil has 60,000. And Brazil is the leading producer of sugar cane -- more than 300 million tons annually -- so it has lots of agricultural waste to make ethanol.
Finally, considering projected population growth in the United States and the world, the humanitarian policy would be to maintain cropland for growing food -- not fuel. Every day more than 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes -- one child every five seconds. The situation will only get worse. It would be morally wrong to divert cropland needed for human food supply to powering automobiles. It would also deplete soil fertility and the long-term capability to maintain food production. We would destroy the farmland that our grandchildren and their grandchildren will need to live.

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Here's another article ScienceDaily: Ethanol And Biodiesel From Crops Not Worth The Energy about biofuels that makes you take notice to the fact that when we talk about energy we also need to look at the amount of energy used to produce it not just the MPG of the finished product.....hmmmmm when you start thinking in those terms it makes you wonder how much energy it cost for those yuppie green talking Prius driving S.O.B's to have their bottled spring water? I bet it's a lot when you consider the weight of the water and the fact it's packaged in plastic. Makes you start seeing things in a different light, now I need to go get a glass of natural tap water..................in a glass.