Criticism
Biomass is composed of organic materials, therefore, large amounts of land are required to produce the fuel. Critics argue that the use of this land should be utilized for food distribution rather than crop degradation. Also, climate changes may cause a harsh season, where the material extracted will need to be swapped for food rather than energy. The assumption is that the production of biomass decreases the food supply, causing an increase in world hunger by extracting the organic materials such as corn and soybeans for fuel rather than food.
The cost of implementing a new technology such as biomass into the current infrastructure is also high. The fixed costs with the production of biomass briquettes are high due to the new undeveloped technologies that revolve around the extraction, production and storage of the biomass. Technologies regarding extraction of oil and coal have been developing for decades, becoming more efficient with each year. A new undeveloped technology regarding fuel utilization that has no infrastructure built around makes it nearly impossible to compete in the current market.
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Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.”
—Leslie Fiedler (b. 1917)
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)