Article on hemp biofuel by Giolio Sica in The Guardian

Years ago I did an article with The Guardian, but somehow I missed this very telling piece by Guilio Sica, which detailed how the UK government ignored hemp as a biofuel and even downplayed biofuels - which is ridiculous, as biofuels can be sourced from existing farm waste; wheat straw etc. can be turned into alcohol at very low cost and in the process generate local employment. Too many politicians are on the take and it can be said are committing treason by working against national interests.

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Guardian, 28 January 2008

The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.
What struck me as astonishing about these reports is that they all managed to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol and biodiesel, is environmentally friendlier to produce than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the crops mentioned in the report and can grow in practically any temperate to hot climate leaving the ground in better condition than when it was planted.
That plant is hemp.
Last year, the Conservative MP David Maclean tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been made about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England. Pearson responded:

Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production.

So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing.

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The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it, grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels currently being so roundly criticised by the various official research bodies.
The influential Biodiesel magazine reported last year on the cultivation of hemp as a biofuel and it too could only point to its lack of economic competitiveness (due to its minimal production) as a reason for not seeing it as a viable biofuel. But surely if it was mass-produced, this one drawback could be overcome and its many benefits as an efficient biofuel could be harnessed.
As far as research and implementation of hemp for biofuel, the US is way ahead of Europe and there are a range of websites dedicated to the use of hemp as a fuel for cars.
In the UK, companies such as Hemp Global Solutions have been set up very much with climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions in mind, but there is little, if any, research in this country that has looked into the viability of the hemp plant as a fuel for cars.
So why was there not a single mention of this miracle crop, that, in addition to being able to be used as fuel, can also be used as paper, cloth, converted into plastic and is a rich food source containing high levels of protein?

HEMP OFF THE MENU

A really good article in the Guardian on hemp was just brought to my attention by Sagar Shah. How I missed this for 4 months I do not know, may have something to do with the fact I do not buy that paper every day, too many trees chopped down by the newspaper industry to support it all the time. This one however was worth a few trees, though of course, we hope that in the future they will print on hemp, but that's another story.

The piece is by Guilio Sica, and is titled "Why is Hemp off the biofuel menu?" He starts off by noting that a number of agencies have all attacked the biofuels agency, citing their opinion that biofuel crops would cause more harm than good. In some cases, this is true, especially when talking about the poisonous jatropha, which Bill Clinton and lots of leftie do-gooder know nothings backed to the hilt recently. Sica notes that the reports all manage to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol, in more environmentally friendly than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the other crops mentioned by the agencies. Of course, he is talking about hemp.

Also talking about hemp was Tory MP David Maclean who tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been madd about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England, to which the secretary responded: "Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production."

Sica continues: "So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing. Click here to see the entire piece.

5 out of 5 comments were in support of hemp, but I doubt the honourable secretary took the time to read it. The way they shuffle the cabinet, he is probably long gone. This government has done little to produce alternatives to petrol, and as petrol has gone from $30 a barrel to $132, the people are going to suffer greatly. Any alternative, even a non-profit alternative, would help to keep the price of the barrel down, the less bidders, the less the hammer price.

And of course, as a recent Defra report noted, hemp is ideal for the UK, so it would provide jobs for people here. But that may not be their interest at all, after we have seen how richly foreign companies rewarded Blair & Co., we wonder who they are serving.