The Cost and Benefits of Biofuel for Society

There are mainly three advantages once the city implements the biofuel as one of the energy sources. Firstly, the implementation of biofuels can help the public to fight against the ever rising oil prices and reduce the dependency on petrol. As the conventional energy sources such as fossil fuels, coal and natural gas will be used up in the near future, the prices of gasoline keep rising for the recent years such that it has become an extra burden for the public to stand for such high oil prices. With the introduction of biofuel in Hong Kong, the public can choose biofuels as alternatives to petrol and diesel with lower prices. Since biofuels can be produced from agricultural wastes, food wastes, and dried manure which are cheap and readily supplied, as a result, the prices of biofuels become more competitive to petrol and, with more choices, the public can reduce their reliance on petrol and diesel.

Secondly, biofuels are more environmentally friendly energy sources when compared to conventional energy sources. As biomass-based energy sources are potentially carbon dioxide neutral and recycle the same carbon atoms in the environment (Demirbas, 2008). That is, the carbon content of the biomass comes from the living organisms, once the carbon content is released into the atmosphere, it will be re-absorbed back by living organism through photosynthesis and hence it forms a carbon cycle with no net release of carbon content to the atmosphere. Moreover, biofuels contain much lower sulphur content than that of petrol and diesel such that the use of biofuel neither leads to air pollution nor global warming.

Thirdly, as a renewable energy, biofuels provide high sustainable energy resources to the society. Since the availability of biomass resources is widely spread, for example, biomass resources can be obtained from food, plant matters, agricultural wastes and living organisms, while these resources are also renewable resources whose rate of production is faster than the rate of consumption, so that the supply of energy is sustained and secured.

However, with promises of the biofuels, there are perils related to the use of biofuels. Since the production of biofuels derived from the biomass resources such as crops and agricultural products which can be the food resources for the public, some argued that with the shortage supply of food in the third world countries, there is no point to burn the food which can be used to relieve the difficult situations faced by the third world. While some may argue the effectiveness of energy consumption by biofuels is low when compared to petrol and diesel.
These arguments are true. However, the advantages of the use of biofuels still overweigh that of the disadvantages as the conventional energy resources will be used up finally, while biofuels are sustainable. To relieve the food shortage issues, more researches have been done to produce biomass from non-food resources such as wood, wastes and dried manure.