Abstract

Faced with the twin threats of peak oil and climate change, many governments have turned for an answer to the apparent panacea of biofuels. Yet, increasingly, the progressive implementation of this solution demonstrates that the promise of biofuels as a replacement to fossil fuels is in fact a mirage that, if followed, risks leaving us short of power, short of food and doing as much damage to the climate as ever -- let alone the consequent impact on biodiversity due to additional loss of habitat for agricultural production and on rural development due to the additional stress on traditional farming systems. Worse still, these risks are being ignored. In this definitive exposé, Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi present a theoretical framework and exhaustive evidence for the case against large scale biofuel production from agricultural crops. The book starts with an historic analysis of our growing dependence on fossil energy. It then goes on to present a general methodological approach which can be used to check the feasibility and desirability of alternative energy sources (not restricted to agro-biofuels). Basic concepts of energetics and bioeconomics are introduced to show that the pattern of energetic metabolism of modern society is totally incompatible with the characteristics of the production of agro-biofuels. This theoretical framework is then applied to an analysis, based on reliable data, of the two existing large scale experiments in this field: the USA and Brazil. Finally, the book moves on to discuss a possibly more worrying issue: even though, agro-biofuels are well known, in the field of energy analysis, to be a very low quality "energy source", and the doubts about the solution agro-biofuels are getting stronger in the civil society, the biofuel bandwagon rolls on relentless in Western governments. This apparent mystery can be explained by a lack of sound scientific analysis going beyond a simplistic economic reading, a (fatal) political attraction to the idea of biofuels as a 'silver bullet', and a the continuing allure of a buoyed agricultural industry. In sum, this book will be vital, sobering reading for anyone concerned with energy or agricultural policy, or bioenergy as a complex system.

ISBN

9781844076819

Editorial

Earthscan, Routledge

Publicació

2009