Saturday, July 26, 2008

Chart of the Day

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Economic Assessment of Biofuel Support Policies (July 2008), at 8, 9:
In most countries, biofuels remain highly dependent on public support policy. This report estimates support to the US, EU and Canadian biofuel supply and use in 2006 at about USD 11 billion per year, projected to rise to USD 25 billion in the medium term (all medium-term projections in this executive summary refer to the annual average for the 2013-17 period). . .

The sometimes predicted improved economic viability of biofuel production and use associated with higher crude oil prices so far has not materialised in many countries. Most production chains for biofuels have costs per unit of fuel energy significantly above those for the fossil fuels they aim to replace. Despite the rapid and substantial increase in crude oil prices and hence in the costs for gasoline and fossil diesel, the cost disadvantage of biofuels has widened in the past two years as agricultural commodity prices soared and thereby feedstock costs increased.


source: OECD at 20
(via Planet Gore)

2 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

What? "Renewable Fuels" suck wind almost as much as "Renewable Energy" sources?

Gasp?!?!?

Really?

I never would have guessed!

Oh, wait --
Q: "Why did the dinosaurs die off?"
A: "Because the WWF had a plan underway to save them."

Hence:

Q: "Why are the lights out?"
A: "Because the Greens had a policy underway to power the world."

As I've been told P.J. O'Rourke has noted, "The Greens will do anything to save the Earth except take a science class".

/:-S

MaxedOutMama said...

It's not surprising, because
A) Biofuel production costs are highly correlated with fuel costs, and
B) It's not scalable. Works fine for small quantities, but as you suck up more arable land you get into declining, not increasing, efficiencies.

There is no idea that can fail badly enough to convince Greenwacks though. They have already abandoned empirical data with the IPCC climate catastrophe belief system, so they can certainly ignore facts such as this.