'Growing fuel' would be lucrative for farmers

By Eddie Cunningham
Independent, ie.-- Dublin
Tuesday February 19 2008

THE drive to 'grow our own fuel' -- with new and potentially lucrative spin-offs for farmers -- is accelerating. A claim by a leading expert recently, that we'd need to grow 70,000 hectares of certain plants here to meet targets set for 2015, has prompted one car maker to carry out trials on fuel from 'sub-standard' wheat.

It is estimated that 20pc of Europe's energy could be produced by renewable fuels such as crops. Professor Jens Bo Nielsen of the Aalborg University in Denmark told the recent National Bioenergy conference in Tullamore, Co Offaly, that the amount of fuel derived from crops could be massively increased -- without competing with food and animal feed production.

It is the competition between table and fuel tank that is bedevilling much of the effort to get away from our reliance on fossil fuels.

But bioenergy is now seen as providing the best opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and secure energy supply.

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