Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mindmetoo]

If all our gas needs were met by growing corn and sugarcane and processing it into fuel and we no longer used any oil, what would be the effect on greenhouse gasses? We would be planting a lot more to meet the fuel demands and the plants would certainly capture a lot of CO2.

So would we have 1) less greenhouse gasses 2) break even 3) more but not as much as just oil?

I would think less as not all the carbon captured and then used to create the growing plant would be processed into ethanol. Burning the ethanol, of course, puts back carbon previously captured from the air.

[Canadian Club]

Is this on a global scale? I'm not sure if there is that much arable land... and on such an enormous scale, would the machinery used for production also run on biofuels? What about transport trucks and military vehicles for that matter?

I think that phasing in ethanol and biodiesel are good ideas. Saskatchewan gasoline contians ethanol, and they're currently working to increase the % of ethanol in the gas. There haven't been any huge problems there, and I'm suprised that other provinces haven't followed suit.

I'm sure that someone has tried to calculate the net carbon emissions of a non-gasoline fuel supply vs. our currnt one. But where?

[Hollywoodaction]

[Rteacher]

Part of a possible solution would be to convert the eating habits of current meat eaters to become vegetarian so that so much arable land wouldn't be utilized for growing feed for beef cattle - and there would be less demand to breed so many methane gas-farting cows ...

[laogaiguk]

[krats1976]

Point of clarification:

At this point, biofuels are being designed to use the non-edible parts of plants--like corn stalks & whatever you call what's left over after getting the sugar out of sugar cane (sorry, no idea what that's called)--stuff that's currently being tilled under after the food is harvested.

So, we wouldn't be planting corn & sugar cane just to make fuel.

Now, whether we'd have enough of that material if we started using bio-fuels on a large scale or not, I don't know.

[Rteacher]

Cow dung can also be used as biofuel:

Biogas from cow dung in Sri Lanka

...On-farm biogas plants collect cow dung from adapted cattle sheds, mix it with water and channel it into fermentation pits. The resulting gas is fed directly to the farmer�s household to provide energy for cooking, laundry and lighting.

Over 60 new schemes have resulted, meeting 75 per cent of household cooking needs. Incomes have risen as women and girls are freed from up to two and a half hours a day of domestic labour, using the time instead for new income generation.

The biogas plants also produce organic waste which is dried and used as fertiliser. Both fertiliser and fuel wood are increasingly expensive in the country and biogas has a potentially important future. It may also be used to manage organic waste in urban settings.

I don't know if that would lessen air pollution, though...