Excellent points, thanks guys.
The question is though, will burning a biofuel produce anything nasty compared to decomposition?
Interesting point about the delay... the company I work for uses carbon credits, I didn't think about that aspect.
In that sense then, the trees simply serve to trap carbon until they die?
But then that is assuming that the forests as a whole won't stick around...
A healthy forest could grow and produce more trees, meaning, as whole, it's taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than it used to, even with the carbon neutral relationship of the individual trees.
Also, a point I made before is questioning if using biofuel (or an equivalent tbh) gets any extra points for replacing something that's a net contributor of carbon, eg fossil fuels.
I'm no expert, of course, but shouldn't an accurate measure of its efficacy / green credentials consider the carbon saving of the fuel source it replaces, or at least the most commonly available source.
So biofuel might be carbon neutral in nominal terms, when looking at the whole picture, it could be considered as green as its use has reduced carbon output compared to fossil fuels?
Seems that being 'green' is more than just its carbon output?
So for example, most eco friendly products will probably not be carbon neutral, but the thing theyre replacing is way worse so we can still call it 'green'.
Am I making sense here? lol
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