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Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
Can vacant farmland sustainably fulfill the world’s biofuels needs? Researchers investigate pathways by which biofuels could provide a third of the world's green energy needs January 29, 2021 Spread across the planet are millions of hectares of abandoned cropland, lying fallow and unused. But if we used this empty land to grow biofuel crops, we could meet a significant share of our green energy needs going into the future—while simultaneously limiting the land-guzzling impacts of biofuels that give them a bad name. That’s the neat solution offered by a team of researchers, whose recent ...
“We can grow perennial grasses in areas that until recently were used for growing food but that are no longer used for that purpose,” explains Jan Sandstad Næss, a PhD candidate at the Industrial Ecology Programme at NTNU. These areas are usually still potentially cultivable and have the advantage that they are already connected to farms, which means that the infrastructure is in place and they are close to markets. Until now, no one has calculated the extent of areas available for this type of grass cultivation. Næss and his colleagues Professor Francesco Cherubini and researcher Otáv...
Can we use abandoned crop fields to produce more biofuel? 11 Researchers have identified a vast area of land perfect for biofuel cultivation which may help resolve ethical debates over biofuel vs. food production. Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to a research group from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in a study published in Nature Sustainability. Researchers consider increased use of biofuels to be an important part of the solution...
Read Time: Growing perennial grasses on abandoned cropland has the potential to counteract some of the negative impacts of climate change by switching to more biofuels, according to an NTNU research group. Researchers consider increased use of biofuels to be an important part of the solution to achieve reduced CO2 emissions. But the production of plants for biofuels can have some unfortunate trade-offs. Now, researchers at NTNU have come up with a scenario that would put less pressure on food production and plant and animal life. âWe can grow perennial grasses in areas that until recen...