Rule of Unintended Consequences: Biofuel
Oct 8, 2008 – The NY Times reported on a United Nations meeting taking place in Rome concerned with rising food prices around the world. Of course, it is not the only factor, but biofuel is part of the cause. Farmers are shifting to producing crops that command higher prices and these include those used in making biofuel. Increasing the problem is that a number of countries are providing incentives [> US$10 billion in 2006] for biofuels. Possibly, over time the agriculture industry will accommodate producing sufficient crops for reasonably priced food crops and biofuel crops. Finally, biofuels aren’t grown. Crops that are converted to biofuel are grown. Recently, with biofuels and other alternative energy systems, analysts are attempting to quantify the total energy cost of a process. Some analysts assert that there is large energy use and production of CO2 emissions to produce the biofuel. They claim that only production of biofuel from used cooking oil and Brazilian sugar cane are environmentally better than traditional fossil fuels. Thus, the European Union has cut it previous 10% goal of renewable biofuel by 2020 in half.
