Map of the World's Biofuel Potential

A new analysis has estimated the potential for producing biofuels, and ranked 226 nations according to the potential to produce large volumes of the alternative, plant-based fuels. The study was conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The report was published in Environmental Science and Technology.

Developed nations such as the United States, Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands are among the nations with big potential. But developing nations, like Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Uruguay and Ghana all have potential -- which is significant especially for those nations that don't have significant petroleum reserves, the researchers said.

Biofuels are no panacea. Recent investments in ethanol, for instance, have fueled a boom in corn planting that inflated food prices and contributed record levels of pollution to the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico, as fertilizer ran off farm fields. Poor Mexicans were strapped for food as the price of corn escalated, and food took a bigger bite out of all American's budgets. Demand for palm oil is fueling deforestation in Southeast Asia, as another example.

Of all the vegetable oils and animal fats examined in the study, soybean and palm oil were by far the most common. In fact, the world's top five soybean and palm oil producers - Malaysia, Indonesia, Argentina, the United States and Brazil - accounted for 80 percent of the potential global biodiesel production, the researchers found.

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