Comment on Algae Rock!

• DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I think there are definitely some specific cases where it makes sense. For example garbage dumps (and compost facilities as well, I think) produce tons of methane and other unpleasant flammable gases which often get flared off, it seems only reasonable that if you’re gonna be burning the gas anyway that you might as well use that heat to spin a turbine instead of just fuelling a uselessly burning flame on a pole.

  In theory biofuel is perfectly carbon-neutral if you’re growing all the input biomass yourself, since all the carbon released when the fuel is burned is carbon which was captured during the growth stage. But in practice it’s not ideal:

  • There’s still plenty of potential sources of emissions, like harvesting and transporting the biomass will likely be burning fossil fuels and also tires and stuff
  • Growing biomass is slow, so from what I understand a lot of it ends up coming from newly cut trees and stuff because it’s cheaper than buying tons of land, planting stuff and then waiting years for stuff to grow
  • IMO the main problem: there are other more useful things we could be doing with that land, if you can grow crops for biofuel production you could also just grow food there and put some wind turbines or solar panels or something on one of the many places on earth not suitable for agriculture to provide the energy

  If the biofuel is being produced from like agricultural byproducts (e.g. the stalks of harvested crops) I don’t think there’s really a problem, but AFAIK most of that stuff gets used for compost or gets left on fields to put nutrients back in the soil (and because it’s cheaper and easier to leave it than having to collect it again).

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• pipes@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  You’re not wrong at all, the worst part is even the “cleanest” of fuels will need to be refined, trasported (burning more fuel and rubber). If one were to live in the middle of nowhere without electricity or sun or wind or geothermal etc…then it starts making sense. So almost never

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