"Competing with food crops" is a curious notion. When did we run out of space for food crops? Not on this planet.
Corn grown in Iowa could feed 2 United States. So we make all sorts of other things out of it, or the govt pays folks (me for instance) to NOT grow corn and keep the price up.
At this point in history, with our current distribution system, biofuels can make money. In the future they will become more efficient, perhaps orders of magnitude more in ways we haven't thought of yet (oil-drop lenses on the leaves; kelp that fills its pods directly with waxy carbohydrate films; seeds that can be eaten OR converted to fuel etc).
The dumb thing would be to stop innovating now, because of FUD about imaginary issues.
It competes with food crops for fertile land. That means: it pushes food production to places with worse water, farther from consumption centers, increasing waste and costs related to transport.
Maybe in the US the situation is not clear because you have vast plains so it doesn't matter if you cover the entire surface with corn, but here in Brazil, my state vanished with an entire forest just for sugar cane and soy crops. Google "Atlantic Forest".
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"Competing with food crops" is a curious notion. When did we run out of space for food crops? Not on this planet.
Corn grown in Iowa could feed 2 United States. So we make all sorts of other things out of it, or the govt pays folks (me for instance) to NOT grow corn and keep the price up.
At this point in history, with our current distribution system, biofuels can make money. In the future they will become more efficient, perhaps orders of magnitude more in ways we haven't thought of yet (oil-drop lenses on the leaves; kelp that fills its pods directly with waxy carbohydrate films; seeds that can be eaten OR converted to fuel etc).
The dumb thing would be to stop innovating now, because of FUD about imaginary issues.
It competes with food crops for fertile land. That means: it pushes food production to places with worse water, farther from consumption centers, increasing waste and costs related to transport.
Maybe in the US the situation is not clear because you have vast plains so it doesn't matter if you cover the entire surface with corn, but here in Brazil, my state vanished with an entire forest just for sugar cane and soy crops. Google "Atlantic Forest".