On February 26th, the second of the 2008 Breakfast series hosted guest speaker Dr. Jerry Murphy of UCC,and outlined that after initial optimism; there is now an evident backlash against biofuels. Views have been expressed including:

• “more energy is used to make biofuels, than is contained in the biofuel”
• “1% of all agricultural land is required to fuel 1% of all transport fleets”
•  “biofuels have lead to large increases in the price of food.”

These and other questions were examined along with a discussion on merits or otherwise of the various biofuel types, feedstocks and systems. A proposal for use in Cork was outlined to the invited guests which included representative from Cork City Council, and local engineering, transport and businesses sectors.

 Follow the link to download Dr.Murphy's presentation

What Biofuels for Cork 2008

Dr. Jerry D Murphy is a lecturer in Transportation Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University College Cork. He is the principle investigator in Bioenergy and Biofuels in the Environmental Research Institute. Jerry is a referee on a number of peer review journals on topics concerned with bioenergy and biofuels.  He has published and presented widely in the area of biofuels and is the Ireland representative on the International Energy Agency Bioenergy Liquid Biofuels Task (IEA BioenergyTask 39).