BIODIESEL: The Burning Question

摘要

If you're thinking that a brave new world of agriculturally derived, clean-burning biodiesel fuel is going to wean us off petroleum, you'd better think again. Not even the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) thinks that. In the near future, NBB believes (based on Department of Energy estimates) that biodiesel could at best supply 10 percent of America's fuel needs. It will complement, not replace, fossil fuels. The problem is that devoting huge tracts of farmland to soy or canola crops for biodiesel production is neither economically feasible nor physically possible, given their low per-acre yields. "At this point there aren't any plans to grow crops for biodiesel," says NBB spokesperson Jenna Higgins. "We don't theorize on how much land it would take because it isn't very realistic."