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US Continues Down Perilous Biofuels Path
US car manufacturers plough a lonely furrow on biofuels
When the motor manufacturers are in dispute with the US Environmental Protection Agency, you wouldn't win much for guessing which side I'm likely to be on. But this time you'd be wrong.
The EPA has to decide whether or not to allow more ethanol to be blended with gasoline. At the moment the limit for ordinary motor gas (petrol) is 10%. The agency is inclined to raise this to 15%. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is trying to prevent or postpone it. I'm with the car makers, though not for the reasons they cite; ethanol's effect on a vehicle's performance is not what keeps me awake at night. Since 2004 I've been banging on about the impact of biofuels on the environment and global food supplies, and I've been horribly vindicated. In 2008 the expansion of biofuel production was directly responsible for the decline in global food stocks, which caused grain prices to rise, catalysing famines in many parts of the world. Cereal stockpiles declined by 53m tonnes; the production of biofuels, mostly by the US, consumed almost 100m tonnes, according to a piece in the Economist on 6th December 2007. As the UN's special rapporteur, Jean Ziegler says, turning food for people into food for cars is, "a crime against humanity".
It's also a crime against the environment. In almost all cases, biofuels made from grain or oil crops create more greenhouse emissions than petroleum. This is partly because they lead to an expansion in total crop production, which means that forests must be cut down, unploughed pastures must be tilled and wetlands must be drained to accommodate it. The carbon stored in both the vegetation and the soil is released and oxidised. Two papers in Science (here and here) show that when land clearance is taken into account, biofuels made from grain or oil crops cause a big increase in emissions.
It's also because grain crops require nitrogen fertilizers, which produce emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas roughly 300 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. All told - apart from used chip fat (which can supply only a tiny fraction of motor fuel demand) - we're better off using petroleum.
But while other countries are starting to re-assess their biofuel programmes, the US is still ploughing ahead. Fuel suppliers are legally bound to blend 9bn gallons of biofuels into gasoline every year. This will rise to 36bn gallons a year in 2022. The Waxman-Markey Bill, passed recently by the House of Representatives, leans heavily on biofuels to meet US greenhouse gas targets. This is only because their total greenhouse impact has been deliberately ignored by legislators.
The US is committed to ethanol not because of concerns about the environment but because of the power of the agricultural lobby. Big Farmer grows all the policies it wants in Washington, as cornbelt representatives rely on grain barons and crop chemical manufacturers for political donations. Ethanol is the best thing that has happened to US agro-industry in decades: it greatly raises demand for grain while disproportionately rewarding the biggest growers (there are no niche markets here). So stand back and watch the battle of the lobbyists: Big Motor versus Big Farmer.
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19 Comments so far
Show AllThe biofuel scam in the US is just a thinly disguised subsidy for agrabusiness, especially Monsanto. People can expect to pay more for food because 'by law', more and more land must be used to grow fuel. Eventually, I hope, people will come to realize that we can not go on with the 'one man - one car' existance we've been living. Monsanto is pushing GMOs as a means of getting to where we think we want to be, but the cure WILL be worse than the illness.
Ethanol *is* a crime against humanity and the environment for the reasons cited in the article. Congress' continued support of this sham is a clear indication that our political class have no intention of seriously adressing climate change. Just more window dressing to assauge our guilt. Disgusting!
Consumption is part of the problem but all bio-fuels are not dependant on depriving humanity of food crops,deforestation,or resource depletion.Algae could be grown in pools on barren land as part of resource recovery and waste water remediation facilities Algae can then be processed into Deisel fuel and food..Green wastes of all sorts are presently to a large part wasted in the U.S.Just trigeneration modification could increase efficiancy multi-fold in conventional plants.Industrial Hemp can provide food, fuel ,fiber,and discourage deforestation by providing paper pulp fiber,structural panels and beams even and automotive bodies.A.V.E. turbines can be used on smokestack industy plants for co-generation,waste heat for trigeneration ,solar,wind,tidal and geothermal plants can provide zero emission electricity.There are more solutions then there are problems here! Lets get working.
The optimal solution is, of course, for humanity to cap its population, and reduce its environmental footprint using sustainable policies - and unless we come up with a much cheaper and environmentally acceptable energy source, this means we'd better get ready to consume a lot less of everything on a per capita basis, including food, clothes, and furniture. I suspect we have two choices, either we'll move to 800 sq ft apartments and ride buses and/or drive tiny electric cars at 30 mph, or we'll live in caves after modern civilization collapses.
"cap" it's population is what they're doing.....
Besides enriching agribusiness, there is also the defense argument for biofuels. By this mythology the US becomes less dependent on Middle Eastern oil as it grows more fuel. Of course, the argument is fatally flawed since, as Monbiot points out, it takes about as much energy to grow a crop of corn and convert it to ethanol as it does to get energy out of the ethanol. Switchgrass gives a slightly better return, but not much. However the mythology gets fair play in the news and unsophisticated people will be taken in by it.
For those readers who are not American: You must understand that for two hundred years Americans believed that the market would solve all our problems. In the 30's and now, that assumption has been called to question. It takes time to admit a major underpinning of your belief system is wrong and then to change your actions in accordance with acceptance of new assumptions. Everyone has been here: Europeans as they tried to cope with industrialization, Eastern bloc countries as they threw off sovietization, Japan as it dealt with militarism. Now it is the turn of Americans. Other people should not be feeling superior. It takes time to change.
I thought the same about biofuels until I saw Josh Tickells film "Fuel" and heard him answer questions after the special screening here in Honolulu. It is a great film ..... really a "must see" for anyone (there trying to make a 30-minute version for schools) who still has a spark of humanness in them. It has a penetrating political message in the first part (which as we well know can be very depressing) but then shifts gears and ends up with very positive can do answers. People left cheering.....and with hope.
Of course he disagreed with ethanol fuels especially corn, soy, and palm oil versions. But claimed bio-diesel is one of the answers in a trifecta along with electric cars, and mass transit. It's just finding the right organic matter to make it from. He had high hopes for, get this, algae as a fast growing, inexpensive and non polluting alternative.
He said just days after he released the first version of his film two "scientific" papers mysteriously showed up blaming biofuel for every evil under the sun, including starvation, deforestation, pollution and herpes (kidding) when it is obvious to anyone who stops and thinks for a minute that the gas/oil industry has been accomplishing this quite will on their own for the last 100 years but all of a sudden their scapgoating the biodiesel moment for all their sins. My guess is the oil business does not what to become obsolete until every last drop of oil is traded 27 times (real number for 2008) before it get to your tank. Bit Josh reminds us that the stone age didn't come to and end because they ran out of stones... somthing better came along.
My jury is still out on this subject but I truly believe that Josh tickell is a sincere and passionate seekerafter truth and solutions that are not greed based.
Ralph you are exactly right, no right thinking biofuels advocate promotes food crops or even croplands for biofuel production.
Algae, weeds and waste, and vegetation that grows on subcroplands is all any intelligent biofuels advocate considers using today.
Interestingly, one of the articles that Monbiot cites refutes his argument. After making the same claims that he does, it continues:
"In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages."
In other words, if you don't follow the big agri-business model that everyone is basing their arguments on, then ethanol can be very beneficial.
"We can make alcohol fuel out of what we have, where we are. Alcohol fuel can efficiently be made out of many things, from waste products like stale donuts, grass clippings, food processing waste-even ocean kelp. Many crops produce many times more alcohol per acre than corn, using arid, marshy, or even marginal land in addition to farmland. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of the autofuel we get from the Mideast."
That quote was taken from the following site, which has real information on the viability of ethanol.
http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/node/518
Whenever I see an article about ethanol, the first thing I look for is the author differentiating between corn ethanol and cellulose ethanol. Then I look for a wider reference to biofuels.
The big problem with ethanol is that it got hijacked by billionaire Ag corps. That got subsidies at the same time ethanol was mandated as an alternative to MTBE, a gas additive to reduce emissions with a bad habit of ending up in the water supply. This resulted in land the equivalent size of California being put into corn production. There are places in America where you can see nothing but corn from horizon to horizon, and we are talking about prime crop land that usually is designated for food production.
Switchgrass and other alternatives used for cellulose ethanol are entirely different. They are PERENNIAL, drought resistant, and disease resistant native plants. They do not require prime cropland and can be grown on marginal crop areas. The deep roots actually holds and improves top soil. Then areas where it is grown easily becomes wildlife habitat.
One of the more promising directions is biofuel generated by algae. They have pilot programs in Arizona where greenhouses are set up next to traditional power plants. The emissions are pumped into the greenhouses and the algae uses the carbon dioxide, grows biofuel for DAILY harvests and the waste product is oxygen.
So the real issue with ethanol is how to get it "un ripped off" by the Ag Corps. And we should build flex fuel vehicles that are prepared to burn richer ethanol mixes, as they are already doing in Brazil.
I am not sure scientists who study carbon cycling understand the reduction in the "carbon footprint" that biofuels are supposed to confer, whether it is switchgrass or corn. Grass decays naturally, the stems and leaves degrading within a year or two. Decomposition creates carbon dioxide. Trees, on the other hand, tie up the carbon as cellulose at least for fifty or sixty or more years. Of course, eventually they will decompose.
All of which is to say that we need to do more research before we run into this (perhaps) blind alley. It is clear that biofuels represent a threat to food production and will have heinous effects on poor countries. Since we run on a market economy (which does not take human suffering into account), we will not take these ethical arguments seriously.
A much overlooked aspect of biofuels is that is takes water to produce them, a lot of it. See: The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue? Driving with biofuels costs 50 gallons of water per mile (paper in ES&T).
And if you have to use biomass to move one person plus 1 ton of metal, plastics and four wheels most efficiently (miles per acre, you should convert convert the biomass to electricity, not to ethanol. See: Greater Transportation Energy and GHG Offsets from Bioelectricity Than Ethanol (paper in Science).
A very few factors of how the fuel crunch will play out become more clear.
Major, fairly controlling interests in government and business control fossil fuels. These will continue to resist change to that economy that assures their power. Their power depends on monopoly or near-monopoly, and that depends on scarcity. They favor biofuels because these require devoting dedicated land to a material product that can be provided or denied.
People in control of those products will not cease or slow their business because others suffer and die. Instead, they will try to escalate their business to buy themselves personal surcease from the problems they cause.
The only responses that might change this involve collective action from suffering masses. If the gas dries, the sea rises, the aquifers dry, and part of the grain belt goes desert, enough suffering will occur to motivate such response.
How violent that is probably depends on how early the response begins and how responsive government and organizations are in shutting down abuses now central to the industrial economies.
A very few factors of how the fuel crunch will play out become more clear.
Major, fairly controlling interests in government and business control fossil fuels. These will continue to resist change to that economy that assures their power. Their power depends on monopoly or near-monopoly, and that depends on scarcity. They favor biofuels because these require devoting dedicated land to a material product that can be provided or denied.
People in control of those products will not cease or slow their business because others suffer and die. Instead, they will try to escalate their business to buy themselves personal surcease from the problems they cause.
The only responses that might change this involve collective action from suffering masses. If the gas dries, the sea rises, the aquifers dry, and part of the grain belt goes desert, enough suffering will occur to motivate such response.
How violent that is probably depends on how early the response begins and how responsive government and organizations are in shutting down abuses now central to the industrial economies.
How about used cooking oil? There's certainly plenty of that around.
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A32175
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A28273
readers seem to have a tunnel vision when suggesting ideas related to articles published in the press. what would happen to coocking oil prices when there is so much competion for its consumption for fuel? and how much this will affect poor people who are already in a dire position to put food on the table for their families(that is if they own tables)? my suggestion is to look for innovative energy sources that will help the poor cope up with their poverty rather than add burden to them.
"readers seem to have a tunnel vision when suggesting ideas related to articles published in the press. what would happen to coocking oil prices when there is so much competion for its consumption for fuel?"
We're talking about used cooking oil, which people have to pay to dispose of. Burning up used cooking oil won't make anyone go hungry. Why waste it? It's something that won't burden anyone. I'm also not suggesting that it would be our only option. It would be a start.
biofuel is not the only problem that the us has created. it is the ethanol that really caused bad consequences affecting poor people. when bush visited brazil and signed the corn-for-ethanol treaty with lola of brazil, corn prices jumped 30% in the world market. that drastically affected poor people which corn to them is a staple food. so much for bush's compassionate conservatism.
“Algae, weeds and waste, and vegetation that grows on subcroplands is all any intelligent biofuels advocate considers using today.”
“…Many crops produce many times more alcohol per acre than corn, using arid, marshy, or even marginal land in addition to farmland. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of the autofuel we get from the Mideast."”
Most “wasteland” has been created by civilization and agriculture. Arid, marshy, and “marginal” lands are either lands that SHOULD be marshy or other wilderness, or should be restored and reclaimed as useful, productive land producing many crops in permacultured, small communities and maybe transformed cities—for now. I haven’t seen math to show whether such methods can produce enough to satisfy civilization without radical transformation, but it seems unlikely, especially as climate change and other ecological destruction and consumption and population growth shrink carrying capacity and reduce water supply, making such things as algae pools etc. on any scale approaching enough to feed the beast also unlikely.
But even if it happens, any crop that yields enough to get the attention of the cancerous market economy of “growth” (actually, shrinkage—turning real wealth into trash and living beings into dead things and eating away at the real world) will be perverted, its DNA twisted against itself until it yields every drop possible. And every piece of land that can grow such crops will also be squeezed lifeless. If the problem were just the economy we might transform it, but our psychological affliction compels us to destroy every living being, and that can only be solved psychologically, and by Nature, who gets also smaller every year.
In dire circumstances the only pragmatic action is radical action.