From Nick Marshall
Your contributor states: “Biofuels like soya oil…are ‘carbon neutral’ because the carbon they release came from the atmosphere only recently.”
This is incorrect. Carbon-neutral fuels are those in which the CO2 “embodied” in their production is equivalent to that given out when they burn. Soya oil requires 3 to 4 times as much energy to produce as is contained in the usable fuel product. That energy comes from fossil fuels powering tractors, producing agrochemicals, transporting and processing the oil, and so on. So it is definitely not carbon neutral, it is heavily carbon emitting.
Edinburgh, UK
