Sustainable / Ethical Biofuel

[Mr. Fox]

For some time I have been concerned about the real world implications of a switch to 'biofuels', specifically the fact that we rich westerners can better afford a litre of biofuel than a family in the area in which the feedstock is grown can afford food.

I frequently hear of the clearing of land in far flung places of it's indigeonous flora, fauna and population to make way for corporate monoculture feedstock production, so we can pat ourselves on the back for being so 'green' and providing the 'developing' world a magnificent business opportunity...

Anyway, I came across this, which I found encouraging:

PPO is the lowest impact road fuel available today it has a footprint far smaller than both conventional diesel and bio-diesel.

PPO is estimated as having an energy fotprint over 25 times smaller than its chemically procesed cousin bio-diesel and a footprint well over 50 times smaller than bio-ethanol.

http://bloomingfutures.com/

They're a workers co-op, too!

[kenneal - lagger]

PPO is, in this country, just rape seed oil. You have to fit a heater in the fuel line to warm the oil up to about 60 deg c before it goes into the injector pump. You start and close down the engine on diesel, though, because the PPO will solidify in the engine when it cools.

Its still a biofuel and will compete for food growing land. A lot of people buy Veggie oil in the shops and much of this is palm oil which is being produced on former virgin jungle in Indonesia and the Phillipines.

There is no alternative to Powering Down.

[Mr. Fox]

You start and close down the engine on diesel, though, because the PPO will solidify in the engine when it cools.

Nope - they're flogging the 'Elsbett' convertion:

With this system, there is no additional tank; all the fuel is held in the original tank of the vehicle. This solution relies on adapting the injection process to suit the injection characteristics of vegetable oil. Typically the glow-plugs, injectors, and injector mounts are modified.

With this system, you can drive entirely without diesel, except in the coldest winter months, when a certain amount of winter diesel should be added to the vegetable oil in the tank to keep it flowing freely.

(here)

What struck me was that PPO better lends itself to small, localised production. Obviously, the notion that the UK for instance could maintain anything like 'business as usual' on domestically produced bio-fuel is naively optimistic, but that doesn't mean that we should assume PPO production will have no place in fuel supply in the future, whatever that brings.

Anyway, the point we both seem to agree on (regarding Palm Oil production in Sumatra, etc) is summed up well in this document from FOE:

'Greasy Palms' (pdf).