• Question: what are biofuels??

    Asked by freddo to Aislinn, Fiona, Nathan, Padraic, Sinead on 30 Jan 2015.
    • Photo: Sinead Quirke

      Sinead Quirke answered on 30 Jan 2015:

      Fuels made from plants or animals.

    • Photo: Nathan Quinlan

      Nathan Quinlan answered on 1 Feb 2015:

      Wood is a biofuel when you burn it. You can make chemicals like ethanol from vegetables and use it like petrol, or use vegetable oil as diesel fuel.

    • Photo: Aislinn Coghlan

      Aislinn Coghlan answered on 2 Feb 2015:

      Like Sinead said, biofuels are any fuel made from plants or animals. If you think about Biology, it is the study of living things. Biofuels are fuels from living things.

      Most fuels we use are fossil fuels. This means they take thousands of years to form and if we use too much of them, they will run out. In contrast, we can grow biofuels and therefore they are seen as less harmful to the planet.

      As most biofuels are derived from things we can eat, there are problems with the production of biofuels taking away from our food supply. This happened in America, all the farmers were making more money off making fuel so there was no grain left for food!

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