Letters: November 2025
Readers discuss sustainable fuels, the magic of the placebo effect and the deaths of DFT and expensive calculators
Technology in transition
I read with great interest the articles by Phillip Broadwith (‘Biofuels burning out’) and Julia Robinson (‘UK biofuels production collapsing in face of cheap imports’). Both pieces commendably capture the challenges facing these critical industries, and the policy vacuum created by ill-conceived and poorly aligned government strategy – irrespective of the tie colour in office.
However, I believe an opportunity was missed to highlight the importance of these industries in providing fossil-free alternatives within a pragmatic, technology-neutral transition. While electrification is rightly a key pillar of defossilisation, Broadwith’s suggestion that biofuels offer only ‘small benefits’ risks oversimplifying the issue into a binary choice between electrification and nothing. In practice, we should pursue the right technology, not the right ideology.