Vegetable oil based fuel requires fossile fuels to produce. I've read statistics indicating that the conversion doesn't work in our favor. A greater amount of energy from fossile-fuel is required to produce a much smaller amount of energy from vegetable fuel. All the tractors, trucks, water pumping stations, etc. used by the industry that produces the Ethanol are still coming from fossile fuels. Therefore, vegetable oil fuels like the Ethanol aren't really going to solve the problem on their own. At this point, talking about cleaner burning fuels and environmentally friendly fuels is only marketing FUD, until the rest of the dependencies are satisfied with non-fossile fuel energy sources (nuclear power, etc,...)
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Here's a reference: http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug01/corn-ba sedethanol.hrs.html
Vegetable oil based fuel requires fossile fuels to produce. I've read statistics indicating that the conversion doesn't work in our favor. A greater amount of energy from fossile-fuel is required to produce a much smaller amount of energy from vegetable fuel. All the tractors, trucks, water pumping stations, etc. used by the industry that produces the Ethanol are still coming from fossile fuels. Therefore, vegetable oil fuels like the Ethanol aren't really going to solve the problem on their own. At this point, talking about cleaner burning fuels and environmentally friendly fuels is only marketing FUD, until the rest of the dependencies are satisfied with non-fossile fuel energy sources (nuclear power, etc ,...)