Awake at the Wheel

A quick link re: a subject we’ll drill down on, way down, in future posts. Chip Keen writes the DriveTime column for The Oregonian. A reader wrote presuming biodesel’s net energy negative conspiracy. Chip breaks down the factors from the “competing scientists” (Pimental and Patzak enjoy the equivalent science community peer status as climate change non believers)…

It draws this conclusion: “Biodiesel yields around 3.2 units of fuel-product energy for every unit of fossil energy consumed in the life cycle. By contrast, petroleum diesel’s life cycle yields only 0.83 units of fuel-product energy per unit of fossil energy consumed.”

In other words, petrodiesel has a negative energy balance of 17 percent, while biodiesel has a positive energy balance of 220 percent. Biodiesel crops yield more than double their fossil energy input. Petrodiesel is the fuel that takes more energy to produce than it provides in return.

See Propel’s about biodiesel page for more info.

The difference between how much energy is created when producing these top four fuel sources (longer bars are better)

Fuel	Energy IN	Energy OUT
Biodiesel (soy bean)	1.0	3.2
Ethanol	1.0	1.34
Petro-diesel	1.0	0.84
Gasoline	1.0	0.81

Joint study by U.S. Dept of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA), 1998.