I thought I’d share a couple of altnerative fuel stories with you that caught my eye today.

Biofuels Here To Stay – EU

It looks like the EU may not be going to back down on the planned 20% biofuel target as readily as has recently been suggested, according to a new story in the news this week.

In a recent speech, EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel provided staunch support for the biofuel movement, saying that just 15% of the EU’s agricultural land would provide enough rapeseed to meet the biofuel target. Boel also noted that 58% of this rapeseed would be converted into animal feed – presumably after the oil had been extracted.

I don’t know about you, but 15% of EU agricultural land actually seems rather a lot to me – especially with staple food prices going up and no notable expansion in farming levels.

How many farmers would have to stop growing wheat and other food crops to produce this much rapeseed?

(via Fleet News)

Hydrogen Fuel – To Long In The Pipeline?

A new report called published in the USA suggests that while hydrogen’s low emission credentials may be sound, it will take far too long for the technology to mature and enter volume usage.

“The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact and Fiction in the Race To Save the Climate” suggests that mainstream hydrogen fuelled vehicles are simply too far in the future to provide the urgently-needed reduction in carbon emissions.

The report, by Joseph Romm of the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions, suggests that lower-emission petrol engines and hybrid/electric solutions provide more realistic emission-reducing prospects in the near future.

This article in Wired highlights how the current heavy investment in hydrogen needs to be mirrored by investment in electric and hybrid-based solutions if the necessary cuts in emissions – put at an 80% reduction by 2050 – are to be met.

My personal view, echoed by many of the commenters on the Wired article, is that any such change always takes longer than expected to become mainstream. The Earth will survive in the meantime, but the critical short-term issue is to find ways of reducing consumption and emissions using existing internal combustion technology. Hybrids do seem to offer one potential solution – but they are still relatively immature and quite expensive.

(via Wired)