The inconvenient truth about biofuel: Why it's just greenwashing bullshit

Think biofuels are here to save the planet? Despite being touted in the media courtesy of a recent Mazda press release, here’s why so-called green fuels are nothing more than greenwashing marketing spin. The culprit behind this latest biofuel bullshit won’t surprise you…

Download the PODCAST for this report

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Mazda just got down on its knees and started singing, somewhat over enthusiastically, from Toyota's greenwashing hymn book.

But up for grabs with this announcement is the tantalizing but ultimately bullshit proposition of carbon neutral biofuel. Unfortunately though, this one doesn't even pass the most cursory of sniff tests.

This is a really easy story to cover. You'll see it popping up all over the place in the general news media and also the specialist automotive media. Anyone can do it, even the most Junior Burger of journalists can copy-paste this one to keep an advertiser sweet and just spray clickable virtue out into the interwebs.

What a pity that this is little more than a grubby greenwashing exercise. Here’s the original press release splashed up on Newspress Australia:

This is exactly how greenwashing works. See, on the 20th of July 2022, the Toyota Newsroom posted this little gem:

Six private companies establish Research Association of Biomass Innovation for next-generation automobile fuels

Fantastic stuff, isn’t it?

Six private companies just got off their arses, had a few meetings and decided to do the right thing, finally. Yes!

Who are these corporations exactly? Well, let me count them down for you. There's two different flavors of Toyota, the Motor Corporation and also the infrastructure version of the same thing, in Japan. Too sides of the same Toyota coin. Plus, there’s an oil company named Ineos, and Suzuki, Daihatsu, and Subaru.

They all devoted what is little more than a rounding error in their balance sheets to the formation of this grandiose-sounding but largely concept.

The ‘Research Association of Biomass Innovation’. They must have had a dozen meetings just about the name.

Problem is this is a concept, mainly because of pesky things like the laws of thermodynamics. See, unlike the laws of humans, thermodynamics can't actually be bent right. So that's a real problem.

Carbon neutral biofuel is an unworkable but fantastic-sounding prospect. It's impossible to do biofuel with carbon neutrality - nobody's done this successfully and even if you could do it on a really, really small scale (in the equivalent of a thimble) - it simply doesn't scale. And it doesn't scale pretty damn fast.

Effectively this association is just a kind of shiny toy that a grubby carmaker like Toyota can trot out whenever it needs to look green, such as when it needs to say to the government or to members of the public, ‘Well, look at all the green initiatives we've got over here…’ Usually this happens when appealing for taxpayer-funded grants.

If greenwashing was money laundering, this association is the local casino.

Let’s not forget that all of these companies that make up the association are all owned or partly owned by Toyota.

For the full takedown of Toyota’s epic greenwashing association BS, watch the full report above. Or you can catch up on the latest skullduggery which should tell you everything you need to know about Australia’s most beloved, sacred carmaker here:

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