Biofuels

what are biofuels

Any fuel taken from living or recently living organisms

where do biofuels usually come from

plants or algae, because they can photosynthesise, so they can lock up the sun's energy and be released later when we burn them for fuel ( can also used animal waste but it's used on a smaller scale)

why do we think of biofuels as being carbon neutral

because even though when we burn biofuels they release CO2, we normally think of them as being carbon neutral because they took up that CO2 while they were growing so there's no overall release of CO2

What are the pros of biofuels?

- They are supposedly carbon neutral

- Bio-fuels are fairly relatively short time to grow and different crops can be grown all year round

- cheap to make

- we can mix them with other fossil fuels such as petrol so we can benefit from biofuels without having to get new cars( like we would with solar or wind)

cons of biofuels

- reduce biodiversity and destroy natural habitats as we'd need somewhere to grow all the plants so we'd have to convert natural land like cutting down forests

- harvesting, processing and transporting plants requires energy releasing more CO2

- degrade soil

- raise food prices