Biofuels

Posted Tue Feb 12, 2008 in

A recent entry on /. reports better estimates of the footprint of biofuels. It isn’t the wonderland we were promised, but should I be surprised?

When the use of biofuels was originally conceived, I wondered at the utility of that approach. It requires energy to make plants, harvest them, process them, and deliver the results. That more energy could be recovered than was expended seems in violation of fundamental thermodynamic principles, a long way of saying there ain’t no such thing as perpetual motion.

Perpetual motion doesn’t work. Neither can you get something for nothing… which many people have trouble believing.