Biofuels: opportunities and risks concerning their application
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Abstract
Liquid biofuels for transports has been a widely debated topic as regards its contribution to energy security and to mitigating climate change, and simultaneously promoting the development of rural areas. However, there are also a series of questions about the economic, environmental and social repercussions that its production will have on a larger scale. From an environmental and social point of view, biofuels present opportunities and risks. The development of a sustainable product, from an environmental and social perspective, that is capable of exploiting opportunities while controlling and minimizing risks, basically will depend on the policies to be implemented in this sector in the future. Those applications in course until now have neither permitted energy security nor helped to significantly mitigate the problem of climatic change. On the other hand, some negative effects are perceivable in markets of agricultural raw materials, especially cereals and oils, on the costs of livestock production, on worldwide food security and concerning environmental impacts.
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