Sun, 23:00, 30 Sept 2007

"Biofuel harms the environment even worse then petrol", - some scientists claim.  But this is to be said only about few cultures, excluding wood. Is biofuel going to be fought since now or is it just another clamor?

Joint command of British, German and American scientists under во главе professor Paul Crutzen made a conclusion that producing and usage of biofuel leads to output of even bigger amount of greenhouse gazes then burning oil gaze or coil.  

The “New Region” corresponds that the researches insist that the panacea, as the biofuel was thought to be about 20 years ago, may turn out to be even more harmful than the disease so they urge to abandon usage of alternative fuel.  

Nobel laureate of  1995 in chemistry Paul Crutzen  is considered to be the most respectful expert in greenhouse effect questions.  (he got the price for his researches about the ways  such gazes effect on the Earth climate).

He is the leader of the researchers group in Edinburgh university that made the conclusions covered in such serious issues as  Times, Spiegel, etc.

The scientists found out that as a result of growing up some plants used for biofuel production (for example rape or corn) the output of N2O that gets into the atmosphere is 50-70% higher than in process of burning petrol, equivalent to biofuel (made of those cultures) in its quality. 

This nullifies all the profits of the fuel made of plant raw material as N2O is not only one of the basic gazes which cause greenhouse effect but also one of those which make the ozone layer of the Earth destroy.

At that the level of output of carbon oxides that form during burning of any organic material – basic greenhouse gazes that are considered to provoke the global warming effect, biofuel provides 7-10% less than traditional fuel.

Presently the research is being prepared for publication in the “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” magazine and before it is published Crutzen  refuses to give any comments. Although his colleagues turned out to be more communicative.  

“By our work we out tell that large scale production of the raw materials for biofuel doesn’t have any perspectives  and may only redouble problems with the climate on Earth”, – said Kit Smith, the co-author from Edinburgh university in his interview for “Chemistry World”.

The scientists’ conclusions may cause a huge international scandal. The developed countries of the West accepted rather ambitious programs of interchange of oil and natural gas for alternative fuel, biofuel in first rate.

80 % of biofuel in EU is made of rape, the production became a profitable business. At the same time the harmful effect from emission of greenhouse  gases  when burning rape in comparison with usual fuel will correlate as 1,7 to 1.

For grain alcohol used in the USA this correlation will be 1,5 to 0,9. The acceptable 0,9 to 0,5 correlation was observed only for alcohol made of sugar cane.

Messages about the ineffectiveness of industrial  usage of  biofuel were made by different scientists before but the last work mentioned in this material is probably the most complete research of the problem for today.

It is noteworthy that this technology was criticized this month by the UN World   Food organization. The WFO experts declined that growth of farmlands used for growing up the technical cultures leads to food crop decrease – which worsens the world food problem.

Perhaps the consequences made by the scientists encourage the governors and commercial organizations to search for new renewable energy sources – is said in the “Vzglyad” newspaper.

New Region, Vsevolod Yaguginskiy.