I doubt biofuels could ever contribute more than a few percent of the needs of current volumes of air traffic. Suppose a flight from Melbourne to Sydney requires x hectares of oilseeds as a source of fuel. Then add another x hectares for the return flight. We'll need 3x hectares for a flight from Melbourne to Perth. That's just for one day's fuel needs but the crops take a whole year to grow and harvest. Then jet fuel has to compete with physically similar farm diesel to meet its own output requirement. Before long all the spare arable land will be taken up growing biofuel and food prices will escalate. Forget the crops and adjust the settings on the refinery to make less diesel and more jet fuel.

As crude oil depletes I think the increased cost of flying will kill demand. Whether that justifies the capital cost of high speed rail is unclear. People may travel less, take longer trips or use video conferencing instead of business travel. We could make enough jet fuel from coal but carbon taxes will make that hellishly expensive. The aviation industry must shrink.

I'm confused.

On one side there are the strident folk who tell me that the world is rapidly running out of food, and we shall all starve unless we stop having children. (I did get that right, didn't I?)

And on the other we have these other folk who think it is a really neat idea to use arable land to make air travel cheaper.

Is it just me, or is there not some serious disconnect here?

Pericles, it is probably just you :)

Fact is, we have starving children now, yet we use land to grow
biofuels. Its a big hit in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

Human self interest will prevail. Or will you cancel that next
holiday trip and send the money to feed another couple of starving
babies? Its a valid question.

I really can't imagine why anyone would want to use a heap of diesel fuel to grow a crop of oil seed. Then use a heap of electricity, probably generated by coal, to produce a "bio fuel" that can supply less energy per liter than it cost to produce that liter.

If ever there was a process that proved that greenie stuff is actually a form of madness, this must be it. God help us, at least until the crash. After that we had better start helping ourselves again.

There are three pretty obvious questions not answered in this article:

1. What is the land area required to grow the projected volumes of biofuels?

2. What is the Energy Return on Investment for creating biofuels from Camelina? That is when all of the additional energy inputs are considered, do we actually see a net gain in energy?

3. What impact do changes in fossil fuel prices have on the price of the largely fossil fuel derived biofuels?

This is really just a PR article.

Aviation fuels need not take up any arable land.
The simpson desert would grow an enormous amount of blue-green alge all year round.
Think beyond the usual,farming practices and it may just make $ & cents.
Even if bio fuel cost more than the present cost of oil, it would be better to have a stable price.

I don't think anyone has thought to put the process into context of
the likely fuel regime that will be in place.

Rationing of petrol and diesel will be in effect.
The thought of algae or bio fuel being processed into aviation fuel,
while everyone is getting by on 20 litres a month if they have some
priority, is politically impossible.

Aviation will be finished, except perhaps for defence and such services
as air ambulance.
I have recently learnt that Australia imports 80% of its petrol.
The other 20% is refined from local oil.
Our total oil production is less than 50% of our use.
Do you really think we could allow any sort of fuel to be used for aviation ?

New oil fields have been found that will make the mid east look like a puddle. Siberia is the next gigantic oil field.
Oil or not it should not stop the search for alternate fuels. It,s a matter of clean fuel.

a597; you are in dreamland.
The year that most oil was found was, wait for it, 1964 !
Every year since except one, less oil has been found than the year before.
We now use about five times more oil each year than we find.

The last year when we produced more oil than was found was, wait, 1983 !
Just think about those figures.
Then come back and tell us there is plenty yet to be found.

Bazz don't fool your self, there is plenty of oil & gas available for a very long time, then the production of liquid fuel from coal is economically viable at todays oil prices. Supply is not a problem in any living life time.

a597 fuel from algae is probably the first alternative renewable fuel source that will become viable.

The dream of producing it in our arid centre is attractive, but for a water supply. We could not afford to drain the artesian basin for this use, that water is too valuable.

Somewhere closer to the ocean is probably a better bet for this. That is unless it would be viable to fill lake Eyre with a channel from the bight. Perhaps that's viable, & I'm just too small a thinker.

This is why we are getting a carbon tax to make these ideas come forward. Bazz somehow sees the bad side of things. Oil men plan forward 40 years at a time, even they will say they have no idea what happens after 40 years because no decision has been made. Oil in Siberia is for real.Bazz. How much oil does America take from the mid; east. About zilch. So much for the war. It is about time negative thinkers came on board and started putting some ideas together.

Yes, there is a lot of oil in various places.
There is also a lot of gas.
However it is not as simple as just it is there.

The old ERoEI (energy returned on energy invested) sticks its oar into
the problem. Every since 1889 the eroei has been falling.
It started out at 100:1 for oil and is now down to artound 10:1 and
still falling. Much further, say to 3;1, and the wells will be capped.

Gas is in a somewhat better position but the ereoi for gas is not all
that brilliant and unfortunately it depletes very rapidly.
Gas wells have a much shorter lifetime than oil wells.

However gas will keep us going somewhat longer and hopefully the
politicians will wake up sometime soon.

A silly little calculation.

Total commercial hours flown in Australia in 2009 was very, very roughly 2 million.
http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/26/Files/General%20Aviation%20Activity%202009.pdf

For the sake of this exercise I will assume they are all 767's, averaging 500 km's per hour, which means 1 billion kilometres are travelled. (To put this into perspective, some of them were balloons, and some were 747's. Did I mention this was going to be rough?)

It takes 1 acre to produce 328 gallons of ethanol. Say that translates to producing 300,000 litres of aviation fuel per square kilometre.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/question707.htm

767's use 15 tons of fuel for 1800 nautical miles. Fuel has a density of 0.8 Kg / litre, so for our purposes that equates to 0.2 km / litre. (What a coincidence. If it is carrying 100 people that puts it in the same km/litre/person ballpark as a single passenger car.)
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/114922-767-300-fuel-consumption-t-o-dist.html

So it will require 1,000,000,000 / 0.2 / 300,000 which is roughly 16,000 square kilometres to produce that fuel.

For the sake of comparison, we have roughly 4,000 square kilometres of sugar cane planted now.

Rstuart, interesting calculation. I had seen something similar previously.
It appears that the aviation industry has now switched their interest
to algae. Not sure why but it might be because it can be made in a
chemical style plant and will not be seasonal. It could also because
there are not the same temperature problems.

However, while millions are thinking of putting their cars up on blocks
they would not be too happy watching the businessmen flying overhead.
It might just not be politically possible.
The big hope of course is natural gas but the capital expenditure may
well beyond the capability of the economy. The cost of fitting every
service station with NG pumps and need to supply them with fuel
either by tanker or pipeline is enormous.
These are the sort of things that the governments should have been
organising but they have left it too late.