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A really bad day for biofuels
Michael O’Hare, The Reality Community
This is a really big deal. (The original articles are here, behind the AAAS paywall.)There is now more than good reason to expect that no biofuel from seeds, possibly none (even cellulosic) grown on land that could grow food, will reduce global warming if substituted for petroleum products. The insight of the papers discussed in the article, and work by some others who have been worrying at this bone for years without anyone paying enough attention, is a remarkable synthesis of economics and plant/earth science.
The first piece of the puzzle is the recognition that if a piece of forest is cut down, or natural grassland plowed up, to grow biofuel, decay and/or burning of what was there before releases an enormous puff of carbon into the atmosphere that needs to be counted along with the carbon releases of the biofuel crop. Even spreading the initial release over decades of biofuel growing, it is large enough to push almost any biofuel’s global warming intensity way above that of gasoline, especially because it all occurs right at the beginning of the future rather than a few years or decades down the line.
The second piece is the recognition that it doesn’t matter where the biofuel is actually grown. Consider ethanol from corn grown in the US: the corn used is no longer in the food and feed corn market, so corn prices increase just as though a catastrophe suddenly destroyed a big part of the corn harvest. This price increase stimulates a variety of responses, including (in varying amounts that we will need to do some fancy economic modeling to estimate precisely):
-humans will eat less corn
-humans will eat less meat (this saves a lot of corn)
-farmers will grow more corn.
The last of these can happen, in turn, in three ways. First, corn growing will intensify with additional fertilization, and this generates N2O releases; N2O is a potent greenhouse gas. Second, some currently uncultivated land will be tilled and planted with corn (see the first piece above).
Third, land used for other crops will be committed to corn, for example by growing corn every year instead of a corn-corn-soybean rotation. Soybean prices now go up (remember, soybeans and corn both are traded internationally) and farmers (for example, in Brazil) convert some pasture to soybeans with the release of stored carbon noted earlier. This raises beef prices, so it becomes worth it to a marginal rancher to cut down another piece of forest for cows: another big puff of carbon. The global warming effects of these carbon releases are worldwide, of course; it doesn’t matter whether a pound of CO2 comes out of a coal power plant in China or a natural gas plant in the US or a piece of forest burned in Indonesia.
The bottom line of these complicated chains of events is that using crops for biofuels anywhere induces land use changes somewhere, and while the effect isn’t a simple acre-for-acre replacement, and we don’t know exactly how big the land-clearing carbon hit should be for a generic gallon of biodiesel or bioethanol, betting now is that it is most unlikely to be small enough to view crop-based biofuels as green substitutes for petroleum.
Small amounts of diesel and ethanol will probably be available from trash and agricultural waste like the tree branches and bark scraps the logging industry leaves around to decay, or cornstalks, or McDonald’s used frying oil, and these are environmentally OK because they don’t induce land use conversion.
(11 February 2008)
Mentioned by Kevin Drum at his blog at Washington Monthly:
I was waiting for biofuels guru Mike O’Hare to weigh in and tell me if these studies were legit. Last night he finally did, and he says this is the real deal
The Politics of Biofuels
Robert Rapier, The Oil Drum
In response to a recent query from an independent student newspaper in the UK, I wrote up an editorial piece on the politics of biofuels. That essay is reproduced below the fold. (The original can be found here.)
One of the intentions was to point out for European readers why the U.S. and the EU have begun to diverge on their biofuel policies. In the U.S. this is mostly a political issue, because our primary biofuel is home grown. In the EU, biofuels are mostly imported, so the EU can take a more objective view.
(13 February 2008)
Biofuel demand leading to human rights abuses, report claims
Jessica Aldred, Guardian
EU politicians should reject targets for expanding the use of biofuels because the demand for palm oil is leading to human rights abuses in Indonesia, a coalition of international environmental groups claimed today.
A new report, published by Friends of the Earth and indigenous rights groups LifeMosaic and Sawit Watch, said that increasing demands for palm oil for food and biofuels was causing millions of hectares of forests to be cleared for plantations and destroying the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.
The report, Losing Ground, said many of the 60-90 million people in Indonesia who depend on the forests are losing their land to the palm oil companies.
Pollution from pesticides, fertilisers and the pressing process is also leaving some villages without clean water.
“The unsustainable expansion of Indonesia’s palm oil industry is leaving many indigenous communities without land, water or adequate livelihoods. Previously self-sufficient communities find themselves in debt or struggling to afford education and food. Traditional customs and culture are being damaged alongside Indonesia’s forests and wildlife,” the report reads.
It claims that oil palm companies often use violent tactics as they move in to convert the land to plantations.
(11 February 2008)
Dark side of a hot biofuel
Tom Knudson, Sacramento Bee
In Indonesia, oil palms feed world thirst for clean fuel, but forests, climate and species pay a steep price
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Every morning, the cage doors swing open and 34 orangutan orphans climb into the outstretched arms of their human mothers.
Grabbing at wrists, tugging at elbows, these baby apes cling to the young women like Velcro, happy to be free of their cages, to play in the dappled sun of the nearby forest for a few hours.
It’s primate day care, a scene that seems choreographed for the Animal Planet channel. But this spectacle of one hominid helping another is more than entertainment. It is a genuine reflection of environmental collapse.
These rust-red fluff balls were born in the wild, in the steamy, lime-green rain forest of tropical Indonesia. Today this jungle is being leveled and its great apes captured, killed and orphaned to grow palm oil, a plantation crop refined into biofuel for environmentally conscious consumers in Europe and the United States.
We live in a world of wanna-be-green commerce, of guilt-ridden citizens eager to protect nature, shrink their carbon footprints and free themselves from Middle East oil. But not every new fuel and eco-friendly product soothes the planet. Some are saddled with environmental baggage of their own, with not-so-obvious links to pollution, climate change and deforestation.
During the past year, supported by a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, I have reported on two such cases: a gourmet line of “conservation-based” Starbucks coffee that was grown on a plantation in a threatened Ethiopian rain forest and a petroleum substitute fueling U.S. cars that was strip-mined from Canada’s boreal forest.
Nothing captured my attention like the orphaned orangutans of Indonesia. Here was a new generation of primates with no forest to explore, no mothers to mimic. Yet they clowned around at my feet, nearly stole my backpack and played tug of war with a stick. Other endangered species don’t do that.
As symbols of environmental change, orangutans are hard to beat. But their struggle is more than a tale of paradise lost. It is also – through the logging of Indonesia’s great rain forests and the resulting massive release of carbon into the atmosphere – a story with a broader connection to the warming of the Earth’s atmosphere and mankind’s role in triggering it.
(20 January 2008)
Photos at original. Other stories by Tom Knudson at the Sacramento Bee:
Starbucks calls its coffee worker-friendly — but in Ethiopia, a day’s pay is a dollar
U.S. thirst powers push for Canada fuel
Ethanol’s effects bother boaters
Gail Kinsey Hill, Portland Oregonian
Cleaner-burning – If not managed right, the mandatory fuel supplement can stall engines and corrode or dissolve parts
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Concerns about Oregon’s new gasoline-ethanol law are rippling through the boating community, raising questions about whether a requirement meant for motorists should have waded into the nautical.
Ethanol absorbs water. And, in concentrated form, it’s corrosive. If boaters aren’t ready for the switch to 10 percent ethanol blends, they may have to contend with stalled boat engines, clogged filters and disintegrating components, marine operators and boat owners say.
State officials acknowledge the potential for frustration, or worse.
(10 February 2008)
