Bio-Fuels Are Bogus

via Sean at Cosmic Variance:

People seem to be gradually catching on to the fact that biofuels are an especially wasteful and dirty energy storage system. Paul Krugman devoted a column the other day to how ethanol is a boon to Archer Daniels Midland, but terrible for the world’s fuel supply. (We told you the Farm Bill was a travesty.) And Time has published a cover story on the “Clean-Energy Scam.”

Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol–ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter–in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade…

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

I've been noticing the ugly side of bio-fuels lately as well. Just check the prices on grain for all your food products. Also, try buying food for your family that doesn't use some form of grain product. I really think that bio-fuels is not the direction we need to go. I've been thinking, lately, that solar power is really the only clean, effective and independent energy source. When I say independent, I mean that it doesn't rob Peter to pay Paul like bio-fuels. Setting up a solar panel isn't hurting/draining anything else. At any rate, Sean has come to the same conclusion. If you read the rest of his post, you can see where he envisions the energy industry in the future.

What's your solution for the "energy crisis?"