biofuels

[VenalWinfrey]

Dear all

I'm reading up a bit on biofuels and trying to understand a bit more about them, and what all the furore seems to be. Am I right in thinking that they are basically fuel that is made from any former living material?

My question is really, I seem to recall hearing some politicians talking recently saying that a potential downside was that if we cultivate crops specifically to be used as biofuels, rather than food, that this will lead to further starvation/people going hungry. Am I right at all about this, or did I get the wrong end of the stick?

Thanks as usual for any help!

[jake-the-peg]

Roughly right.

I did a back of an envelope calculation a while back and it came out that to supply the UK's Diesel needs completely from biofuels you'd need to turnover more than the UK's entire arable land to it.

Something like Poland's would be about right.

If the price of fuel continues to rise farmers would find it more cost effective to grow for fuel than food - this would put up the cost of food etc. etc.