Biofuels:green energy or deforestation diesel?

[n2doc]

Biofuels: Green energy or grim reaper?


VIEWPOINT
Jeffrey A McNeely

Biofuels could end up damaging the natural world rather than saving it from global warming, argues Jeff McNeely in the Green Room. Better policies, better science and genetic modification, he says, can all contribute to a greener biofuels revolution.With soaring oil prices, and debates raging on how to reduce carbon emissions to slow climate change, many are looking to biofuels as a renewable and clean source of energy. The European Union recently has issued a directive calling for biofuels to meet 5.75% of transportation fuel needs by 2010. Germany and France have announced they intend to meet the target well before the deadline; California intends going still further.

This is a classic "good news-bad news" story. Of course we all want greater energy security, and helping achieve the goals (however weak) of the Kyoto Protocol is surely a good thing. However, biofuels - made by producing ethanol, an alcohol fuel made from maize, sugar cane, or other plant matter - may be a penny wise but pound foolish way of doing so.

Consider the following:

:bluebox: The grain required to fill the petrol tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person per year. Assuming the petrol tank is refilled every two weeks, the amount of grain required would feed a hungry African village for a year
:bluebox: Much of the fuel that Europeans use will be imported from Brazil, where the Amazon is being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and Southeast Asia, where oil palm plantations are destroying the rainforest habitat of orangutans and many other species. Species are dying for our driving
:bluebox: If ethanol is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilisers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces, and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind
:bluebox: Meeting the 5.75% target would require, according to one authoritative study, a quarter of the EU's arable land
:bluebox: Using ethanol rather than petrol reduces total emissions of carbon dioxide by only about 13% because of the pollution caused by the production process, and because ethanol gets only about 70% of the mileage of petrol
:bluebox: Food prices are already increasing. With just 10% of the world's sugar harvest being converted to ethanol, the price of sugar has doubled; the price of palm oil has increased 15% over the past year, with a further 25% gain expected next year.

Little wonder that many are calling biofuels "deforestation diesel", the opposite of the environmentally friendly fuel that all are seeking. With so much farmland already taking the form of monoculture, with all that implies for wildlife, do we really want to create more diversity-stripped desert?

more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5369284.stm

[poopfuel]

1. see discussion below

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x67105

[nealmhughes]

2. George Monbiot has warned of this already. But the deforestation issue

really applies to the tropics. There are a lot of places to produce oil crops that are now used for pasture or else just fallow: rape, hemp, etc. Unfortunately, palm oil gives the biggest bang for the tree, and areas of Indonesia/Malasia are already cutting down their trees to grow palms and importing food when they did not before.

Ethanol is a lose/lose proposition, in my viewpoint. Biodiesel is more a win/win, if the world curbs its appetite for destruction of forests and food crop areas. Many oil seed crops can be also used as food for humans and animals.

Maize is being touted in the US due to the strength of the corn producers there and the large amount already in production as food/animal feed. Rape/canola and hemp are very viable alternatives for direct oil production compared to the distillation energy and soil nutrient depletion from maize.

[greenman3610]

3. bio fuels from grain are simply version 1.0

more advanced processes are already developed to make
bio fuels from sewage with algae

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10381404

A New Zealand company has successfully turned sewage into modern-day gold.

Marlborough-based Aquaflow Bionomic yesterday announced it had produced its first sample of bio-diesel fuel from algae in sewage ponds.

It is believed to be the world's first commercial production of bio-diesel from "wild" algae outside the laboratory - and the company expects to be producing at the rate of at least one million litres of the fuel each year from Blenheim by April.

To date, algae-derived fuel has only been tested under controlled conditions with specially grown algae crops, said spokesman Barrie Leay.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. "version 1.0" --very succintly put.

So many of these projections seem to be based on the assumption that we're going to use the "business as usual" established processes, when they're already in the process of being replaced by better ones.

[Chemical Bill]

5. I drive to work on biodiesel.

The situation now is that soy is grown and processed for cattle feed. There is much oil left over, which is now starting to be processed for biodiesel. So biodiesel is a byproduct of food production (at this point).

Ethanol has the corn industry behind it, so we are making ethanol from a crop that is not the best producer per acre. Perhaps that should be the focus of the complaints about ethanol, rather than saying is will take food from people at some point in the future.

Actually, the cattle industry is using 17 pounds of plant protein for every pound of meat protein, IIRC. Perhaps this is taking more food from people than ethanol.

>The grain required to fill the petrol tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person per year. Assuming the petrol tank is refilled every two weeks, the amount of grain required would feed a hungry African village for a year

Are we feeding all the hungry Africans now? Will future ethanol production take food from them? Or will it just make it harder for poor people here to afford meat.

>Much of the fuel that Europeans use will be imported from Brazil, where the Amazon is being burned to plant more sugar and soybeans, and Southeast Asia, where oil palm plantations are destroying the rainforest habitat of orangutans and many other species. Species are dying for our driving

I'm not in Europe. People in Iraq are dying for our driving, which is a more immediate concern to me.

>If ethanol is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilisers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces, and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind

Too many ifs for me, plus that EROEI that "appears" to come from the oil industry, via Cornell.

>Meeting the 5.75% target would require, according to one authoritative study, a quarter of the EU's arable land

The EU would do well to study the UNH biodiesel initiative, as the EU can, and does, use biodiesel fuel right now.

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

>Using ethanol rather than petrol reduces total emissions of carbon dioxide by only about 13% because of the pollution caused by the production process, and because ethanol gets only about 70% of the mileage of petrol

Another reason to use biodiesel.

>Food prices are already increasing. With just 10% of the world's sugar harvest being converted to ethanol, the price of sugar has doubled; the price of palm oil has increased 15% over the past year, with a further 25% gain expected next year.

Another reason to use biodiesel.

>Little wonder that many are calling biofuels "deforestation diesel", the opposite of the environmentally friendly fuel that all are seeking. With so much farmland already taking the form of monoculture, with all that implies for wildlife, do we really want to create more diversity-stripped desert?

Did everybody catch that? The article uses ethanol as a bad example, citing hypotheticals, no less, and then trashes biodiesel. That should put to rest any question about trusting the authors of this piece.

Bill

[JohnWxy]

6. Oh geez, more opining without getting informed. Hardly worth the time,

but:
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If ethanol is imported from the US, it will likely come from maize, which uses fossil fuels at every stage in the production process, from cultivation using fertilisers and tractors to processing and transportation. Growing maize appears to use 30% more energy than the finished fuel produces, and leaves eroded soils and polluted waters behind.


Using ethanol rather than petrol reduces total emissions of carbon dioxide by only about 13% because of the pollution caused by the production process, and because ethanol gets only about 70% of the mileage of petrol
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Do I really have to repeat this again? There is all kinds of actual research (not disinformation from Pimentel and Patzek) from reputable people showing ethanol from corn offers a positive net gain (from such sources as Michael Wang, Argonne National Laboraatory - Dept of Energy; Colorado State Universiaty, Michigan State University and the U.S. Depatrment of Agriculture to name a few) whcih keeps climbing as engineers learn how to increase efficiencies. Close loop systems are being built which almost eliminate use of fossil fuels. Pimentel'and Patzek's bullshit has been debunked by Farrell et al from University of California as published in the Journal Science (January of 2006 - READ IT).

Ethanol from cellulosic sources is being developed and it's expected to be commercially viable in about 5 to 6 years. Then ethanol will be made from agricultural and forest product waste and grasses. Low till farming techniques significantly reduce erosion and Iowa farmeers demonstrated you can reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer (by 16%) and still get just as much productivity out of the land. Reduced fertilizer use results in less runoff of fertilizer. MOre can be accomlished with reduction of fertilizer usse by timing application of same with the growing season.

there's more to criticize in sited article but running out of time.