Super Eco

Biofuel is any fuel made of recently-dead plant or animal matter, as opposed to the long-dead plant and animal sources of petroleum. The most widely-known biofuels are vegetable oil and biodiesel (a specific type of biofuel made from any plant or animal fat that has gone through a transesterification process). Biofuels can be used to power vehicles and cooking stoves, or to heat homes.

Biofuel is considered to be superior to petroleum-based fuels as it is renewable; more corn, hemp, soy or cattle can be grown and harvested in a short period of time; and also because it is carbon-neutral. However, recent analysis has demonstrated the carbon neutrality to be purely theoretical, and called into question the net use of petroleum to produce these "renewable" resources.

A wide variety of plants and animals are used for biofuels. Corn, sugar cane, sugar beets and sorghum are made into ethanol through a fermentation process; vegetable oil is extracted from soybeans, oil palm, algae or jatropha and then heated to burn in converted diesel engines. Woodgas, methanol, ethanol and cellulosic ethanol can be made from wood and its biproducts. Finally, animal products, including fat (tallow, lard, fish oil, even whale fat), animal waste, human waste, and even the offgases of waste in landfills to make methane to be burned directly or to produce electricity.

Food or fuel?

Central to the debate on biofuels is the question of whether utilizing farmland to produce crops (corn, soy, sugar cane) for fuel is wong-headed and will ultimately hasten global warming, as well as requiring even more barrels of petroleum-based fossil fuels to grow and manufacture into biofuels than the barrels produced; in other words, a net negative production of energy. In addition, growing biofuel crops is most often done in a manner that is destructive to the soil and greatly reduces biodiversity; in the worst case scenarios, rainforests are cut down to grow corn for ethanol, an enormously destructive cycle.