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The Biofuels debate

Find another planet and plant it with soybeans

Elliot Wilson

Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

Elliot Wilson says there isn’t enough arable land in the world to make plant-based fuels a viable alternative to oil

‘Biofuels?’ Ricardo Leiman gives an imperious snort, his eyebrows wobbling. ‘Biofuels?’ he repeats in an offended tone, as if asked to perform a lewd act. ‘There’s about 20 million tonnes of processed edible oil on the planet right now — not enough to fulfil 5 per cent of Europe’s energy needs, let alone any of the huge demand in the US, China, India or anywhere else.’

If Leiman doesn’t believe that biofuels are a viable solution to our energy needs, one wonders why anybody does. As chief operating officer of Noble Group, a Hong Kong-listed trading giant that crushes and refines close to 2.5 million tonnes of soybean and vegetable oil each year — much of it destined to fuel hybrid cars and buses — Leiman has much to gain from the budding industry. Noble posted revenues of £5 billion in the first half of 2007, up 60 per cent on 2006.

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David Hutton-Squire

October 10th, 2007 11:01pm

In the middle of his article, Mr. Wilson writes: "A single ton of refined palm oil generates 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times more than petroleum." I should like to know how he arrives at this statement. The chemistry tells us that combining one ton of the carbon in the oil (atomic weight 14) with oxygen (atomic weight 16) would create 3.28 tons of CO2, assuming complete combustion and ignoring production costs, which might be rounded to 3.3 tons. Is this a journalistic slip of a decimal point? A pity that he has used the 33 tons figure to make a strong point against the use of a biofuel oil in comparison with fossil oil. I note that nearly identical articles by Mr. Wilson have appeared in other publications with the same error, so this does not look like a Spectator sub-editing problem. (Pity so few subs study chemistry!) There are plenty of other arguments in the palm oil / CO2 debate which show it is not a satisfactory option. for example see the Guardian report at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/Story/0,,2049671,00.html Or just Google: palm oil CO2.

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