I am hearing good things about switchgrass which is a fast growing weed.
The only down fall to this plant is that it may deplete the soils nutrients over time. But all plants will do that. Switch grass can be harvested more than one time per year so it's a fast growing plant. It will then require some fertilizers to replenish the soils it grows on. That will increase the amount of energy needed to grow this stuff for biofuel feed stock.
I think that we are making a big mistake by growing corn to use to fuel or vehicles. This takes food away from people and increases the price of a lot of food. Many products are made from corn. Corn syrup is used in a lot of our food products.
Instead of letting our vehicles eat or food I would much rather see the USA spend a lot more money on helping the fuel cell products get going in this country. I see that as an almost endless energy source.
We need to learn how nature captures the sunlight to manipulate carbon like the green plants have been doing for millions of years now.
We can use coal or nuclear in an emergency but I would not want to depend on nuclear energy if we can produce energy in other ways.
Fuel cells using hydrogen and the suns energy would be the ideal.
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Originally Posted by Mikhayl
The flaws of the "first generation" biofuels is well known, actually there's no need for any maths since there are already facts : in Brasil for example the use of crops for fuel had the effect to raise the price of 1st need agricultural products, so much that many "poor" guys working in these farms couldn't afford anymore what they were working to produce.
The "new" biofuels should use only non-edible products from various sources, like some "fast growing" trees that have no other use, also some algae and other vegetal sources.
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