The professor raises some legitimate concerns. If not done properly, massive biofuel production can harm the environment. Part of our program of research is to try to anticipate as many of the potentially unintended consequences of bio fuel production.
To name a few:
1) Fresh water supplies will be one of the primary limitations to bio fuel production. That is why the development of better plants such as hardy grasses that require far less water than corn or sugar cane is essential. Almost everybody agrees that corn is not the right crop. It uses too much land, water and fertilizer. In a test plot of land outside of the University of Illinois, a wild grass--miscanthus--was grown on unirrigated and unfertilized land; it yielded enough cellulose to give 10 times the amount of ethanol as corn.
2) Biodiversity is also important, and much easier to achieve for energy plants than for food plants. Ideally, we would like to plant a mixture of grasses.
3) We have to be mindful of the competition between food crops and energy crops.
4) Habitat destruction is of concern. One hopes to put range land and scrub land to better use, and not cut down tropical forests. In the U.S., we took 75 million acres out of production since 1982. About 32 million acres was in Conservation Reserve Program land, but that still leaves 42 million acres that can be use to grow energy. Also, we can shift range land into energy crop land, since much range land is not suitable for food production. 50 million acres can potentially replace one-half of US gasoline needs.
Forum Introduction
