Yup. We have only to link biofuels with the water scarcity diary to begin to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. Water intensive agricultural production of liquid fuels are problematic to say the least, and then there is soil erosion, and the destruction of wild growth areas, and, and, and...
from the comments of that diary, from a reuters article:

Water scarcity around the world was increasing faster than expected, with agriculture accounting for 80 percent of global water consumption, the world authority on fresh water management told a development conference in Canberra.

Biofuels in Brazil are viable and possibly sustainable, due to lower fuel use per capita and lower population density than in the EU or US, and due also to the tropical climate. Brazil in fact does run 100% on ethanol (see the wikipedia article, it's quite fascinating).

The US will probably get on the corn ethanol boondoogle. I think the US would be able to use ethanol as a stop-gap measure to help ease the transition away from fossil fuels, but as they don't seem to want to transition away from fossil fuels, it will amount to nothing.

The "debunking" of biofuels that you refer to is afew's biofuels consultation paper. The conclusion I got from our analysis was that the EU barely has the spare agricultural capacity to run on 6% biofuels [biodiesel is hopeless except for farmers' own use, and we could run 10% ethanol fuel on the gasoline side].

I see two reasons why US might do better that the EU with biofuels: the lower population density (a factor of 3!) and the fact that the US is south of the EU (Madrid is on the same latitude as San Francisco or New York City) and so has a substantial subtropical zone (in the South East). If the US replaced its tobacco and cotton plantations with sugar crops they would do much better than Europe ever could.

If an international market for ethanol develops (and I can't see why not), the US might even be able to price Brazil out of its own ethanol production.

The EU can at best replace foreign oil dependency with foreign biofuel dependency.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman

Which is yet another disfunction of the current climate: we seem to be constantly looking for THE solution to every problem. Patchwork solutions don't seem to be acceptable - too complicated to sum up in a sound-bite I guess.

there are some interesting correlations to make with the fast-fry food culture, whence many people are fueling their old jettas and such in the states.

not having such a plethora of choices in how we can dig our graves with our teeth here in yurp, we also have less used frying oil.

will america's love affair with obesity and plastic surgery have a role to play in transport fuel policy?

is it a metaphor?

if we shifted to a grain/bean diet, would this free up land grown to fodder, shifting to oil plants?

sorry about the garbled syntax, incipient alzheimers or too much italy, jury's still out...

There are no blank spots on the map any more, anywhere on earth. You want a blank spot on the map, you gotta leave the map behind. Jon Krakauer

I actually see a great deal of promise in cane and wood biofuels , and I doubt seriously that much of this development will be occurring in the arid or semiarid western US.

We have an enormous amount of idle cropland in the US east of or just west of the Mississippi River that could be brought on line.

Also state-of-the art cane mills are highly efficient in the distilltaion process, as are wood fired electrical generation plants.

For Eurasia, the trees grown for this use in the US could be grown roughly central Finland to N. of Vladivostok, and from the Caucasus to the Pacific in the South, in areas with suffiecient rainfall to support trees.

Call me Pollyanna if you wish, but I don't think of myself as a Pollyanna type of guy. The problem is, in my opinion, manageable long term.

FWIW, I've seen a lot of mopeds and motorcycles in Viginia with gasoline at $2.50-3.00 a gallon(non-Imperial).

"When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins

http://www.doa.state.wi.us/docs_view2.asp?docid=54#search=%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.doa.state.wi.us%2Fdocs _view2.asp%3Fdocid%3D54%22

This is a description of a hybrid poplar fired poer plant in Wisconsin. The tree has similar caracteristics to the aspen, but grows faster and would be adaptable to the Eurasian zones I cited.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass/

Pretty good analysis here too. I think the process and the potentials are very interesting, but I am not an industrial engineer.


"When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins

Let's see...

Department of Energy: Petroleum Profile: Illinois (January 2006)

# Population: 12,713,634 (2004)
# Total Petroleum Consumption: 27.3 million gallons per day (2002)
# Gasoline Consumption: 14.1 million gallons per day (2002)
# Distillate Fuel Consumption: 4.6 million gallons per day (2002)
# Liquefied Petroleum Gas Consumption: 2.3 million gallons per day (2002)
# Jet Fuel Consumption: 1.6 million gallons per day (2002)

That's 5.15e9 gallons of gasoline per year. Ethanol has 2/3 the energy content (by volume) of gasoline, so that's the equivalent of 7.7e9 gallons of ethanol per year. How much ethanol can Illinois produce? Illinois would be using its corn.

Department of Agriculture: Theoretical Ethanol Yield Calculator

Theoretical Yield in gallons of ethanol per dry ton of feedstock
Corn Grain     124.4
Corn Stover     113.0

USDA-NASS: 1997 Crop Year - Based on Production

-------------------------------- State=Illinois -------------------------------

                                      Planted Harvested
                                        Acres   Acres       Yield Production
 Rank Crop                    Unit      (000)   (000)    Per Acre   (000)

   2  Corn for Grain             Bu 11,200.00 11,050.00    129.00  1,425,450
  14  Corn for Silage           Ton       .      120.00     16.50      1,980

About 90% of the planted acreage in the state of Illinois is corn. Apparently a bushel of corn at 15% moisture weighs 56lb, but the USDA ethanol yield figures are per dry ton (2000lb)... Is 56lb of a standard bushel 49lb of "dry" weight? That would mean 41 standard bushels in a "dry ton". Anyway, the 1997 production is about 34.7M dry tons of corn, which would be enough to produce 4.3e9 gallons of ethanol per year, and that would be by turning its entire corn grain production into ethanol.

Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman