The popular press has cottoned on to the biofuels story in the past couple of weeks, and suddenly what seemed to be a pretty good idea in terms of reducing dependence on oil and cutting carbon dioxide emissions is being presented as an extremely bad idea indeed. As ever, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. So-called first generation biofuels weren't ever really going to be a panacea. The carmakers have been saying for a while that the constraint on biofuel use is not their applicability to present automotive powertrains, which can often handle ethanol blends pretty well, but the scope for growing the crops when land is needed to grow food. Nor, though, is it entirely a bad idea: Brazil maintains its sugar cane-derived fuel works well in its economy.
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