There is a lot of press coverage about Biofuel in Germany at the moment because the German government has decreed the introduction of E10 Super Petrol, petrol that contains up to 10% of "Bio-Ethanol". Diesel already contains up to 7% of Bio-Diesel, again as the legislative powers in Germany require. So you would expect the press to comment on the somewhat problematic strategy to fuel your 4 litre engines with "Biofuel" while there are still Millions of people dying of starvation, with the most basic food prices steadily increasing, right? Well, a few journalists are actually picking up on this aspect - the majority of newspapers though are reporting about the danger of the high percentage of Ethanol in the fuel causing damage to those beautiful high-powered engines and the additional expenditure that drivers have to endure since they rather buy the normal fossile fuel based petrol.
The BBC reported in 2008 already that fresh water is going to become scarce at some poitn in an article about salt water based agriculture; estimates on current water consumption to produce one litre of biofuel range between 750 litres and 14,000 litres (future technolgies promise much better ratios, but this is based on current production from sugar cane, rape and soya seeds, etc.); food prizes keep rising, and particular for maize it's been established by various sources that costs have increased at least partly due to the increase in biofuel production from maize; although engines have become more fuel efficient over the last twenty years, these efficiencies have been pretty much balanced off by people driving bigger cars with bigger engines (couldn't find the data for Europe but this chart is probably rather representative - you do actually have to wonder whether the trend for Europe would look worse, albeit perhaps on an overall lower level, since the recent popularity of SUVs). And yet German politicians insist on increasing the share of biofuel, supposedly to "save the planet". Any laws to help increasing actual fuel efficiency (e.g. by providing much stronger incentives to drive fuel efficient cars)? No. Any real intent to introduce a nationwide speed limit on the German Autobahn? God no, this is the land of Porsche, Audi, BMW and Mercedes!!
In light of the recent events in Fukushima, Japan, the German public have sent a signal to the government through regional elections that they want to get out of Nuclear Power. Mind you, these are the same people that elected that same government only a couple of years before, knowing that they were most likely going to extend the lifetime of nuclear power plants in Germany. You also have to wonder whether these people had already tried to influence the nuclear agenda by buying electrical power produced solely from renewable resources (no, NOT biofuel, this would be sun, wind or water) - given the spread between 24% of people voting "Green" and only 6.6% of people actually buying "green" electricity in the state of Baden-Württemberg, this seems to be another area where people are not really putting their money where their mouth is. So it looks that unless some catastrophic event is somehow going to turn people against biofuel (and I don't mean the possibilty that their car engine may not perform as well, which many people actually do seem to rate as a catastrophic event) this complete nonsense will probably continue, with the German government proudly reporting on it's success to increase the share of biofuels.
It should be noted that Germany is following an EU directive in this matter which requires a 10% share of biofuel by the year 2020.
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