Twenty-First Century Snake Oil: Why the United States Should Reject Biofuels as Part of a Rational National Security Energy Strategy (pdf)

Current military and national energy policy and strategy need to be informed by a better understanding of the physical limitations and negative consequences of large-scale biofuels cultivation and consumption that are only now starting to receive due attention. This paper presents a physical evaluation of key characteristics of liquid transportation fuels and highlights the deficiencies that preclude biomass from becoming a primary energy source and biofuels from replacing petroleum as a national-scale transportation fuel. These factors include petroleum-dependence, energy return on investment (EROI), energy density, power density, water footprint, food competition, environmental damage, land confiscation, and lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper argues that biofuels do more to harm the causes of national and global security than to help them.

It’s an 86 page report, so grab a coffee.
h/t Ron

600.000 German Households can no longer afford to pay their energy bills;

…one first has to find out the real costs incurred by the German citizens by looking at the payments to owners of “renewable” energy generation as stipulated in the German EEG law. This law intends to promote “renewables” by guaranteeing the operators fixed electricity prices over a 20-year period. For the consumer, these gross totals are much more meaningful than the seemingly “small” premiums per kWh that he finds on his electricity bill. The trick here is that what he sees on the bill is only a minor portion of the real story. The total cost is ultimately passed on to him not only by his direct energy consumption, but also over his entire other costs of living. Set aside export goods, all electricity costs charged to industry, commerce, trade and the public sector will, by way of higher prices, charges and taxes, end up draining the wallet of the average tax payer.