Bio Fuel Energy

During the last 5 years the price of oil has shoot up due to the increase of hunger of the world to the
energy (OPEC 2008). China and India has the large rate of growing economy of the world, which
consumes a large energy. This consumption of fossil fuel has increased the emission of air pollution
and cause many environmental problems such as climate change, acid rain, and global warming
(Tiwari, 2005:10-12). Environmental Protection Agencies have a claim these issues to protect the
environment though the reduction of air pollution emissions under the Kyoto Protocol (Stevens,
2004:107). However, further study or action has begun to improve or to replace fossil fuel to more
environmentally friendly alternatives (Tiwari, 2005:13). Bio fuel emerges in the last decade to reduce
the emission of carbon dioxide in transportation fuel. Consequently, bio fuel is emerging as a popular
step towards a more sustainable transportation energy sector (OECD, 2004:25). In recent years, the
EU and other countries have increasingly advanced policies to support their development and
strongly encourage dramatic increases in the production and use of bio fuel to provide up to 20% of
transport fuel by the year 2020 (OECD, 2004:150).

Bio fuel can be in two forms; liquid such as bio ethanol and oils (bio diesel); gaseous form such as
methane (biogas) (OECD, 2004:26). Bio ethanol is pure ethyl alcohol produced from fermenting
and distilling various crops such as corn, sugar cane, sugar beets and wheat, whereas, bio diesel is
produced from food oil such as rapeseed, soy, sunflower, and palm oil (OECD, 2004:27 and Tiwari,
2005:178-181). Bio fuel has advantage of being renewable energy as changing the solar energy to
chemical energy by absorbing the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; provide a highly potential
energy used in transport and electricity generation; encourages the practice of integrated
agricultural; effective utilization of byproducts, wastes and residues (Tiwari, 2005:183).
Although growing crops for bio fuel reduces the emission of carbon dioxide, it increases the emission
of nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide, and organic emissions. It does not absorb the fossil fuel emissions in
agriculture and fertilization, and processing, harvesting, transport and processing of these crops
before they turn into fuel (Tiwari, 2005:521 and Quirin, 2004:27). Most the problems of bio fuel
emission associate when converted to energy are not less than oil (Tiwari, 2005:521).
Unfortunately, using agricultural bio fuel require huge amounts of water resources and further land
use and consumption of agricultural inputs with various adverse effects of the environment (In Brazil,
they produce ethanol from sugar cane by cutting down the rain forests which lead to environmental
destruction) (Tiwari, 2005:520-521 and OECD, 2008:27, 126). Converting to use bio fuel on a huge
range requires considerable use of the agricultural area, which would consume almost all cropland
all over the world (OECD, 2008:126). Following this process on global food supplies could be a
major source of concern, and that can happen to most land in the world and thus transformed from
food production for people to cars (Tiwari, 2005:520 and Quirin, 2004:33). Corn prices has rise
dramatically in the last two years because of global demand for livestock feed, sweeteners and
ethanol (OECD, 2004:70 and USDA, 2008:2). These encourage the farmers in the USA to plant
corn, along with weather problems has squeezed wheat supplies, pushing the price of grains up
more than 60 percent (USDA, 2008:2). Further more, using bio fuel to operate the vehicle maintains
direct competition between feeding people and cars. In contrast, 0.5 hectare need to feed one
person from cropland, whereas, 4.2 hectare need to fuel one car. Therefore, the land used to fuel a
car is more than eight portion of individual need for feed (Tiwari, 2005:520).
There are several impacts of bio fuel on the environment, such as on soils and habitats from growing
bio energy crops, on removing crop and forest residues and using these to produce bio fuel, on
water quality from bio energy crop production and bio fuel use, and on disposing of various solid
wastes (Tiwari, 2005:520). However, production of bio fuel and using them in vehicles from growing
bio energy crops and waste products (i.e. crop residues, whey, tallow, cooking oils and municipal
wastes (methane)), provide environmental benefits (OECD, 2008:118). Municipal waste can use for
heat, electricity production, and natural gas vehicles or converted to liquid fuels (OECD, 2008:119).
Therefore, bio fuel production from wastes can reduce environmental and health impacts to more
efficient and less harmful purposes. New route can be followed to more healthy forests by kindly
removal of plantation and rehabilitation of forest residues without disturbing the forest ecosystem
(OECD, 2008:119).
Finally, it is noted that there was a rush of the world to bio fuel and we need to be very cautious. It is
very frightening that there are advocates for the transformation to use bio fuel without thinking about
the harmful consequent. This means that the production of bio fuel from agricultural land is going to
create more emissions of greenhouse gases rather than reduce it, we need to improve our livelihood
and food supply more than bio fuel