Spot on Goeff and Bazz.

Bio fuels would require enormous infrastructure, equally enormous amounts of corn, wheat, whatever and massive amounts of money. All this so we can indulge in a happy motoring?

We would be better to build mass transit systems and reduce our reliance on i.c engines or start building really efficient i.c engines (and less V8's / S.U.V) -- although as the cost of oil increases then this may happen.

Bio fuels may play a part in maintaining a transport system but there is no way they can replace oil.

A simpler solution may be to change the way we live while we still have the luxury to do so and well before peak oil forces us to do so.

Spot on Yabby.

People do not starve because there is a global shortage of food. They starve because they're short of cash. Crops fail at a time and place. People with savings, or with non-agricultural income, do not die from crop failure.

The principle that cash crops (coffee, chocolate, tea, biofuels) feed people better than food crops is the result of a distorted but very real market, not something that biofuels really change.

Agricultural subsidies are an iniquitous addiction. They have nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with balance of payments: the EU and the USA wish to remain wealthy indefinitely and not bleed money to low-wage agricultural economies. Financial services income is honey, but it's fickle.

Q&A: Ethanol from US Midwestern corn is a taxpayer-funded pork-barrel boondoggle generating near-zero benefit in either energy or emissions. It does keep more people in work, though, than paying farmers to grow nothing. It also doesn't scare the oil barons. Quietly, perspicacious oil barons themselves are investing in biofuels. Probably not in America.

High prices for corn thrill corn farmers. The people protesting them are landless and without reliable income. High food prices improve the general economy of any agricultural country, landowners and workers alike.

Market distortions, political upheavals and disease have resulted in severe and prolonged underinvestment in agriculture across Africa and elsewhere. Secure prices, sound infrastructure and recovering labour forces could bring an enormous renaissance, without resulting in large-scale ecological destruction.

In the most optimistic scenario (barring agricultural collapse due to climate change, and supposing secure and reliable investment in agricultural infrastructure), Africa and Latin America alone could produce more energy from biofuels by 2050 than we currently use from *all* fossil fuels, whilst feeding themselves and without clearing any forests or damaging other ecologically sensitive areas. Biofuel-related ecological devastation is purely optional :-)

http://www.bioenergytrade.org/downloads/smeetsglobalquickscan2050.pdf

That scenario is very optimistic and likely won't be realised in our lifetime. But it's a real potential and shouldn't be sneezed at. Far from leading to a humanitarian disaster, biofuels are more likely to improve food security and sustainability worldwide.

Article on Life After The Oil Crash:

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/HeinbergEat.html

Covering food and Bio Fuels if anyone is interested.

Rojo, with canola it really depends how you can use the residues after
crushing. Not so long ago canola was 400$ and at that sort of level,
the economics actually start to make sense. A friend of mine crushes
his own and powers his farm vehicles. Residues are fed to the livestock.

Its as much for peace of mind as anything. Lets face it, they must
be laughing all the way to the bank in the ME. The West is hooked
on their oil, its an unstable place and if the Straits of Hormuz
was blocked or some bombs went off in the Saudi oil pipeline
network, oil could easily go to 150$. At 10 million barrels a day
for SA, that would earn them an extra 500 million$ a day!

Some of the stage 2 biolfuels are looking at gaining energy from
biomass and that would change the equation of agriculture completely.
I think some serious volumes of energy could be produced.

Whole new species could be used, perinnials instead of annuals, etc.
Large amounts of carbon would be locked up in soils, by this process,
which would be an extra benefit. You are starting to talk 20-25
t/ha of biomass, compared to say 2 tonnes of grain.

Australia is already subsidising the oil industry in a huge way,
by sending troops to the Middle East. To deny that oil has anything
to do with this, is foolhardy.

To shoot down the biofuels industry before its even got off the
ground and options are explored, is rather foolhardy too, IMHO.

Unless of course, all these people are happy to be under the
Arab thumb and happy to keep sending them ever more money.
Its kind of ironic. So called "civilised" countries like Australia
and America are running up ever larger current account deficits
due in part to oil, whilst those so called "primitive" Arabs, as
some refer to them, are making a trillion.

Possibly with the new GM Cannola greater crop yields will improve the viability of biofuels.

Likewise, a more appropriate crop could be developed.

Yabby, I agree on the residue values importance, and I estimated that if sold as feed it would cover the haulage/processing and storage of bio-diesel.
Originally was doing my sums on cottonseed oil a few years ago, but a jump from $120/tonne to 350$/tonne made the decision easy. Cotton seed has 20-25% oil. Made normal diesel much cheaper in the short term, but at least we know we can be self sufficient fuel-wise in the future. We felt the residue would be best used as a fertiliser, since we have no livestock.

Bio-diesel has a much better energy return on energy invested, about 3:1 compared to ethanol from grain at 1.67:1