Bio Fuels are all over the news these days. Farmers are falling over each other to plant corn for ethanol plants, the Federal government is investing in the industry as part of its environmental strategy, institutions from public transit to delivery companies are looking at biodesiel conversion, and the auto industry is pinning its hopes on the promise of biofuels. While there are some positive short-term benefits of biofuels, notable reducing our consumption of petroleum, the current hype is an environmentally conscious smoke screen which blocks us from seeing the real problem: there is no sustainable solution to our car and gas transportation culture.

(www.energyfarms.net)(www.energyfarms.net)A recent study by the Parliamentary Information and Research Service said that as an energy policy, biofuels are "disappointing" due to the sheer volume of biofuel necessary to reduce our use of fossil fuels. Environmentally, we would need to replace 10 percent of all fossil fuels used with biofuels to obtain a meager one percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The study also observes that the impact on our agricultural system would be acute. Industrial agriculture would see a small increase in the price of corn and canola (the two most widely used ingredients or "feedstock" for ethanol production), but the pressures of increasing yields and putting more marginal lands into production will limit the benefits to farmers, and stress already delicate farmlands. Once you factor in the energy (mostly fossil fuels) needed to fertilize, plant, grow, harvest, process, and transport the feedstock and refined fuel, the "savings" in GHG emissions over the same quantity of traditional fuels varies from 60-80 percent. To say that encouraging ethanol production is a progressive step toward taking care of the environment is disappointing, to say the least.

But before we stockpile food and build the underground bunker in the backyard, all the news is not bleak. Some biofuels are better than others, particularly biodiesel and cellulose-based ethanol. In the case of biodiesel, environmental and energy benefits come in two forms, lower feedstock and production costs, and the reuse of used food oils and other old "waste" oils" doubles the efficiency of the production of biodiesel. For cellulose-based ethanol, the feedstock is made up of agricultural residues, straw and wood chips. In fact, Ottawa-based Iogen, has built a trial plant to convert this biomass into cellulose-based ethanol for several years. Unfortunately, the Conservative-minority government's biofuel "strategy" is to encourage the expansion of industrial corn production and ethanol processing in (of all places) oil-rich Alberta. At least they have a strategy for fuels, because they don't have one for transportation. It is up to us to pressure our local and federal officials to decentralize and deindustrialize the production of biofuels to spread the economic and environmental benefits of alternative energy. In the meantime, we can build our own transportation strategy from below: walk, bike, or use public transportation.