Electric vs Gas
xkcd.com

Alt text:

An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

  • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 months ago

    Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO2 when burned, but it doesn’t matter because that same CO2 had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.

    • spujb@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      8·
      6 months ago

      In theory true. In reality not true.

      While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study

      Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that’s left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.