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Comment by ghostly_s | Hacker News Reader

The existing solution is actively wreaking havoc on the environment. I don't know the specifics of this crop but generally agricultural products absorb a substantial amount of carbon when growing, so releasing some of that carbon by later burning has the potential to be close to carbon-neutral. Whilst petroleum fuels are 100% carbon negative.

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Aviation is a relatively small amount of global carbon dioxide emissions (2.5% or so). However, there is some evidence that their emissions are much worse than they seem on paper due to NOx and water vapour emissions high in the troposphere. Even if coconut oil was a remotely viable alternative it would do nothing to address these other issues.

There's more to the environment than the greenhouse effect. Coconut plantations would compete with rainforest in much the same way palm oil ones do, since they have more or less identical growing climates.

If you want to use biofuels, use a plant that grows in low-value areas like open fields. Something like corn or sugarcane.

Corn ethanol is a scam and consumes as much energy to make as it “produces.” Let’s not do that either.

Nobody who had looked at it believes that. Even the well known critics admit it is energy positive. The ratio isn't very good, but it is energy positive.

Maybe slightly. But it also wastes land that could be growing food, raising food prices.

Brazil grows sugarcane just for this purpose, and Russia uses a weed... the Jerusalem Artichoke, grown as a weed, and made into biofeedback. I made biofeedback from both of these plants. But coconuts? That is coco nuts.

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