Alien Invasion: New Report Warns Biofuel Crops Could Harm Ecosystems

[Nathanael]

In a report compiled for the Council of Europe, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) says the invasive potential of growing alien biofuel crops is an issue that needs to be addressed.

The report states mass cultivation of foreign biofuel crops poses some risks. "The characteristics of energy crop species, of their habitats, of cropping systems and of farm subsidies are a 'weedy merging combination' that could transform farmland into a source of new invasive species that may spread into vegetation remnant, ultimately harming the functionality and biodiversity within agroecosystems."

Link: http://www.energyboom.com/biofuels/alien-invasion-new-report-warns-biofuel-crops-could-harm-ecosystems

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Between that and the Genetically Modified crops, the human race will soon become the aliens it fears

[Newest Reality]

2. Up goes the fucking things up for

control and profit index.

[DCKit]

3. Doi. nt

[Fledermaus]

4. I agree we should use native plants.

A nopal biomass can obtain a high yield biogas

This stuff grows naturally in many parts of the south west. There are about 500 different types in north and south America. The native Indians used them as food. I can get domesticated ones at my local supermarket. The fruit is very sweet and taste something like water mellon.

The cultivation of nopal, a type of cactus, is one of the most important in Mexico. According to Rodrigo Morales, Chilean engineer, Wayland biomass, installed on Mexican soil, “allows you to generate inexhaustible clean energy.” Through the production of biogas, it can serve as a raw material more efficiently, by example and by comparison with jatropha.

Wayland argues Morales, head of Elqui Global Energy that “an acre of cactus produces 43 200 m3 of biogas or the equivalent in energy terms to 25,000 liters of diesel.” With the same land planted with jatropha, he says, it will produce 3,000 liters of biodiesel.

Another of the peculiarities of the nopal is biogas which is the same molecule of natural gas, but its production does not require machines or devices of high complexity. Also, unlike natural gas, contains primarily methane (75%), carbon dioxide (24%) and other minor gases (1%), “so it has advantages from the technical point of view since it has the same capacity heat but is cleaner, “he says, and as sum datum its calorific value is 7,000 kcal/m3.

As a more positive element, the Chilean engineer mentions that “the process of obtaining methane generated as organic sediment and water products, which are processed for incorporation into the soil by earthworms, which permits the treatment of organic waste.

http://gotpowered.com/2010/a-nopal-biomass-can-obtain-a-high-yield-biogas/

[Fledermaus]

5. An ocean of grass, deep enough to swallow a horse and rider, swaying and singing in the steady wind

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) believes that biofuels—made from crops of native grasses, such as fast- growing switchgrass—could reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil, curb emissions of the "greenhouse gas" carbon dioxide, and strengthen America's farm economy.

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html