Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Drunk on ethanol
Editorial, Los Angeles Times
Basing energy policy on corn could fuel a potential disaster.
—
…Alcohol is best taken in moderation, and that applies to cars as much as people. Ethanol isn’t all hype — it’s a promising alternative fuel that could stretch gasoline supplies and cut emissions. But as politicians try to outdo one another by approving ever-bigger ethanol subsidies, production mandates and research grants, few are considering the environmental and economic effects of a massive, rapid rise in ethanol production. These are so severe that unless the mania ends soon, they could far outweigh any gains.
The United States is the world’s top producer of ethanol, most of which is made from corn. The bulk of our home brew is used as a fuel additive to make gasoline burn more efficiently; such use took off a few years ago after it was found that the more commonly used additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, was contaminating groundwater. California is among more than two dozen states that have banned or restricted MTBE, with most replacing it with ethanol. It’s also blended into a fuel called E85, a mix of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.
Corn-based ethanol is cleaner and more energy efficient than gasoline, though not by much. Studies agree that it reduces greenhouse gases, even if they differ on the magnitude.
…Nonetheless, Congress sees the kernel of something much bigger in ethanol. The 2005 energy bill mandated that production nearly double, to 7.5 billion gallons a year, by 2012; we’re on track to easily pass that goal. In his State of the Union address in January, Bush upped the ante by calling for 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels (meaning mostly ethanol) by 2017. The Senate responded by passing an energy bill in June mandating 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022.
One problem here is that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. In fact, when you produce such enormous quantities of corn-based ethanol, lunch gets more expensive for everybody.
…Bait and switchgrass
Of course, not even the most enthusiastic ethanol boosters expect to make 36 billion gallons of the stuff out of corn. The great hope for the future is “cellulosic” ethanol, which can be made from a wide variety of biological matter. Cellulosic ethanol is an exciting development because it’s much more energy efficient than corn ethanol and emits less pollutants. It can also be made out of waste materials such as wood chips or cornstalks, though the fuel source considered to have the most potential is switchgrass — a native plant that once blanketed the American prairie.
Yet even cellulosic ethanol has production limits. Making it out of plant materials gathered from forest floors, as some have proposed, would reduce the health of forests. Farmers intentionally leave cornstalks and other crop waste in their fields in order to till them into the soil; removing it would reduce soil quality and thus require more fertilizers. And widespread switchgrass cultivation once again raises worries that conservation lands would be dedicated to farming.
The other thing about cellulosic ethanol is that it doesn’t actually exist — no one has yet figured out how to make it economically in commercial quantities.
…The ethanol craze, like so much of U.S. energy policy, is designed more to please small but politically powerful constituencies such as corn growers and Detroit automakers than to solve the nation’s energy problems. There is no other way to explain the flip-flops by presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain, who as senators were critical of ethanol but, desperate to the win the primary in corn-growing Iowa, have more recently become ethanol boosters.
(20 August 2007)
Biofuels and the future
Ron Oxburgh, Online Opinion
In the space of 12 months, the biofuels industry has gone from climate saviour to environmental scapegoat. But in the longer-term, it has a crucial – and sustainable – role to play.
Mentioning biofuels is, unfortunately, becoming a good way of raising the temperature of a conversation. Strident headlines warning of disappearing rainforests and orang-utans, impoverishment or famine certainly attract attention, but are not leading to a well-informed debate. We need to stop lumping all biofuels together. There are some that are good, and some that are not so good. ..
Produced responsibly they are a sustainable energy source that need not take any land needed for food production; they need not cause environmental degradation; they can help solve the problems of the waste generated by western society; and they can create jobs for poor people where previously there were none. Produced irresponsibly, they, at best, offer no climate benefit and, at worst, have detrimental social and environmental consequences.
In other words, biofuels are pretty much like any other product. Present day biofuels (the so-called first generation) largely come from food crops; I would agree with many of their critics that they do not offer a long-term solution. But looking to the future, the next generation of biofuels will.
Biofuels can all be used in two ways: either combusted, with their energy used directly (e.g. for heat and/or to generate electricity); or they can be used to make liquid fuels for vehicles. ..
Lord Oxburgh was chairman of Shell Petroleum until last year, currently chairs the UK House of Lords Committee on Science and Technology and is chairman of bio-diesel company D1Oils.
(13 Aug 2007)
Biofuels switch a mistake, say researchers
Tristan Farrow, Guardian
…Increasing production of biofuels to combat climate change will release between two and nine times more carbon gases over the next 30 years than fossil fuels, according to the first comprehensive analysis of emissions from biofuels.
Biofuels – petrol and diesel extracted from plants – are presented as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels because the crops absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow.
The study warns that forests must not be cleared to make way for biofuel crops. Clearing forests produces an immediate release of carbon gases into the atmosphere, accompanied by a loss of habitats, wildlife and livelihoods, the researchers said.
Britain is committed to substituting 10% of its transport fuel with biofuels under Europewide plans to slash carbon emissions by 2020.
“Biofuel policy is rushing ahead without understanding the implications,” said Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, a conservation charity. “It is a mistake in climate change terms to use biofuels.”
(17 August 2007)
China, India face water risk from biofuel: IWMI
Adam Cox, Reuters
Present plans by China and India for biofuel production could mean they face water scarcity by 2030, a researcher said.
Charlotte de Fraiture, a Colombo-based scientist with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), said in an interview that she did not “see a lot of potential for biofuel production in either China or India because of the water.
“It’s not that I’m saying don’t go for biofuels. It’s just that India and China are two water-short countries.”
(15 August 2007)
Forget biofuels – burn oil and plant forests instead
Catherine Brahic, New Scientist
t sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.
They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.
The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game,” says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France (see Complete carbon footprint of biofuel – or is it?).
What is more, environmentalists have expressed concerns that the growing political backing that biofuel is enjoying will mean forests will be chopped down to make room for biofuel crops such as maize and sugarcane. “When you do this, you immediately release between 100 and 200 tonnes of carbon [per hectare],” says Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust, UK, a conservation agency that seeks to preserve rainforests.
(16 August 2007)
