Thank you for your responses to the last newsletter.  The letter to Patrick Conlon was well received. The same cannot be said for the biofuels article. 

However, the response to both articles highlights the value of the network. Our aim is to distribute articles and ideas that contribute to our understanding.  When we report or distribute information that is either incorrect or misleading then an active membership will very quickly ensure that the balance is redressed.

The biofuel debate will remain contentious.  It will be contentiuous because there will be those such as President Bush who will want to claim that it is possible to fuel our economy using bio fuels.  At the other end there will be those who will want to claim that we should not even go there.  In an ideal world bio fuels, properly managed, will form part of the mix.

The rebuttal from Mike Jureidini is published below.

Have a good week,
John

Rebuttal

Pimentel's lifecycle greenhouse gas claims for biofuels (particularly ethanol) conflict the majority of independent and peer reviewed studies on this topic, and unfortunately he's taken seriously by the doomsayers.  With regard to his ethanol lifecycle study, he uses very old data from distilleries that used high energy methods to remove water from ethanol (as opposed to the modern zeolite dehydration methods), and his studies have not been peer supported. I can only point to the much more thorough work done by the CSIRO for the Australian Greenhouse Office www.greenhouse.gov.au/transport/comparison/index.html , and many other lifecycle documents out there.  Biofuels are, of course, only as sustainable as the feedstocks used to produce them and the onus is on the biofuels industry (and its customers!) to minimise the environmental footprints of these products. 

Mike Jureidini
Biofuels Scientist
Australian Farmers Fuel Pty Ltd (SAFF)
http://www.farmersfuel.com.au/

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