Hurdles to Using Biofuels: Biomass Energy: Eco20/20

Hurdles to Using Biofuels

Biofuels are the promising new alternatives to the fossil fuel dependency that is currently in place. There are several setbacks, however, to using biofuels at this stage of development. These are technological, social, economic and environmental. Over time, however, many of the obstacles can be overcome.

Technology still has not found a way to mass produce biofuels at the same high quality as fossil fuels. There is little revenue generated from biofuels at this point due to the low quality that is currently available. Part of the problem of technology is the economical situation, not only nationally in the United States, but globally as well. At this time, there is not enough promise of a return on investment to risk the vast capital that would be required to jump start the industry and research required to do so. Also, the economical concerns of supply and demand of crop harvests used to produce biofuels as well as shrinking crop sizes are factors to be weighed heavily upon.

A large environmental concern of biofuels is the fact that there are few crops that can actually be turned into biofuels. This is a large concern because each type of crop takes different nutrients out of the soil, and unless crop rotation is implemented, the soil will quickly be depleted of these nutrients until the crop harvests are no longer suitable for consumption, either as food or fuel.

Another environmental concern is water supply. Already many states within the U.S. experience droughts yearly, a large percentage of which often enforce a watering ban for the length of the summer. For crop harvests, this may be a major setback, as water is one of the most important factors in a healthy harvest.

The largest environmental concern, however, is also a technological one. There is a vast lack of research into the effects of biofuels. These research areas include the process of evolution of biofuels, meaning that no one has predicted how the industry would grow and change over time. Another research material that has not been studied is exactly the study of emissions from burning biofuel as a transportation method: how clean, safe and nontoxic these biofuel emissions are is at the core of the call for more research.

An economic concern about biofuels is that the large amount of crops needed in order to mass produce biofuels may take land away from harvest farms, cattle farms and other forms of land use that are essential to the global community in forms of food, textiles, manufacturing and other industries. If these lands are depleted, the costs of these goods will rise as supply decreases and demand either stays static or increases. This will affect the global economy, pushing many third world countries even lower into poverty.

Another economic concern is the fact that until there is a true demand for biofuel, it may not be economically advisable to produce. This means that until there is a large enough fleet of vehicles that run on biofuel, there will not be a large enough demand for it, and the investment may in the end fall through.