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by _ph_ 2608 days ago
Fuel produced from anything farmed might be carbon neutral, but the process of farming itself has a huge impact on the environment. Also, we just have by far not enough farmland to come even close in supplying the traffic sector with fuels - while in many regions there still is a shortage of food. So with the exception of processing waste from food production, it is environmental-negative to use grown fuels. Solar cells are more than 10x more efficient per area used and can be mounted on top of roofs etc.
2 comments

We have seen this exact scenario in the US with corn-based ethanol for vehicle fuel.
Farmed fuel is probably sensible for aircraft. I'd say that was its longer term niche.
That is a very good point. We have quite a few applications, where we will need fuel for quite some time to come, let us reserve all the "reneweable" fuels for those applications. Electric cars are a thing, electric airplanes are unfortunately only at their very beginning.