alt.energy.renewable

On Sep 23, 4:16 pm, ...@ wrote:
> Royal Society of Engineers:
> "Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than
> lower greenhouse gas emissions,
> a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown.
> The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned
> nations not
> to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food
> shortages and damage biodiversity."
>
> Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most
> commonly used biofuel
> crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas
> nitrous oxide (N2O) than
> previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil
> fuels and, worse, probably
> contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric
> Chemistry and Physics and
> is currently subject to open review."
>
> Full: /chemistryworld/News/2007/September/

If you read the whole article, the modelling is disputed. Moreover,
the modelling is based on rapeseed rather than waste biomass sources
which are a better path.

There are also a good many ways of fixing nitrogen with C4 pathway
crops that are also capable of being used as biofuel crops. Then there
are also crops like jatropha that grow in soils that require limited
fertiliser.

Really the header for the article should have been "rapeseed biodiesel
crops may not be as advantageous under some planting regimes as
others".

Fran