Biofuels - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 193

conservation policy would extend beyond vehicles to virtually all manufactured prod-
ucts—especially products used widely and that consume significant energy. Another
possibility would be for the federal government to end all subsidies offered to the fossil
fuel sector of the economy and give these subsidies to companies and universities to
support research and development of alternative energy technologies (other than biofu-
els), such as wind power, solar thermal, solar voltaic, hydroelectric, infrastructure tech-
nologies necessary for integrating alternative electricity generation into the national
power grid, and energy storage technologies.
In the case of the United States, such policies have been discussed under broad initia-
tives to build a national electric high-speed railway transport system for both goods and
passengers, as well as local commuter transport powered by electricity. The focus on
biofuels reflects the almost total dependence of the world transport system on liquid
fuels, but chemical researchers are discovering different catalysts that would synthesize
methanol and possibly allow the synthesis of other chemicals and fuels from water and
carbon dioxide (Barton et al. 2008; Riduan et al. 2009; Huang et al. 2010; Wesselbaum
et al. 2012). Production of methanol and other chemicals from a catalyst-mediated reac-
tion between carbon dioxide and water, powered by electricity from either the sun or
wind, can recycle carbon dioxide from major emission sources back into fuel and other
chemicals, and no fossil energy would be needed ( Zandonella 2012). These avenues of
research suggest that there is nothing inevitable about the displacement of agricultural
cropland currently used for food production, or about the energy extensive and ecologi-
cally disruptive effects of a global push for biofuels.
acknowledgement
This research was supported in part by the Podell Emeriti Award at Cornell University.
Note
1. Dr. David Pimentel was at a meeting in Washington, D.C., with Perlack after the publica-
tion of his report (Perlack et al. 2005) and told him that his 1.3 billion tons of biomass to be
collected was much too high; Perlack did not agree.
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