marklynas.orgWhy biofuels are not the answer 21 June 06
Guest posting by Almuth Ernsting
There are some curious myths about biofuels. One MEP in a very influential position, for example, is convinced that if we grow enough biofuels, CO2 levels in the atmosphere will return to pre-industrial levels. Those claims might well originate from a leading biofuel website which states that soya takes nearly four times as much carbon out of the atmosphere than is released by burning it. Magic.
It is easier to be confused by the massive difference between those studies which show that it takes an enormous amount of land to replace a tiny proportion of petrol and diesel, and others, like the ‘most optimistic scenario’ used by the Worldwatch Institute, which claim that we could derive a third of our transport fuel from biofuels without it affecting ecosystems or food crops. Who are we to believe?
The answer is actually quite simple: the ‘pessimistic’ figures are based on today’s technology. The ‘optimistic’ ones rely on second-stage biofuels, such as cellulosic techniques or biodiesel gasification. Those second-stage biofuels require different ‘feeds’ (including agricultural and organic waste, switch grass, and wood), and different refineries from today’s biofuels. They may have great potential, or very little at all. The main problem with those new biomass-to-liquid techniques is – well, that they don’t yet exist, at least not beyond the early research stages. They are unlikely to be commercially available until 2015-2020 at the earliest. Curiously, the most promising new technology, biodiesel from freshwater algae, has had its funding stopped by the US government and is ignored by the Worldwatch Institute. There are claims that it would yield 15,000 gallons per hectare of land (as opposed to 60 gallons per hectare for soya).
In this sense, one can compare the current biofuel boom with building more dirty coal-fired stations now because one day we might have those new gasification plants and might, with luck, be able to store all the CO2. Pollute now, with the promise of a brighter future – even though the infrastructure and markets put in place now will work AGAINST the better new technologies.
The Worldwatch Institute believes that biofuels might lead to higher grain prices, but that this might improve food security in poor countries. Given the global shortage of grains and the fact that climate change will be reducing harvests ever further in future, their logic escapes me.
The picture for today’s biofuels is grim. In the US, one of the more optimistic recent studies suggested that corn-based ethanol might have 13% less greenhouse gas emissions than petrol. Even those tiny gains are now cancelled out, and perhaps reversed, as ethanol refineries switch from gas to coal. The most efficient crops are palm oil, sugar cane and jatropha, grown in the tropics. Unfortunately, these are linked to massive CO2 emissions from the destruction of rainforests, grasslands and peat swamps. The Worldwatch Institute hopes for standards as good as the Forest Stewardship Council, but voluntary standards do not work in the violent and virtually lawless agricultural frontiers of the Amazon or Borneo.
Agricultural expansion in Indonesia is threatening the release of 50 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Expansion into the Amazon is threatening the collapse of the rainfall system which keeps the entire region moist. Beyond an unknown threshold of deforestation, the Amazon is likely to dry up, die back and turn much of Latin America and the grain-growing regions of the US into desert or semi-desert, whilst releasing another 70 billion tons of carbon. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Amazon are the key regions for biofuel production. For the sake of the climate, we need a moratorium on biofuel promotion now!
To take part in the debate and help us develop the biofuelwatch campaign – sign up to our yahoo group via the website.
Comments
Douglas Coker
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:11 AM
The Journey to Forever site seems to contain some last decade wild optimism on biofuels. But I presume that nonetheless it is OK to pursue local schemes which use waste oil which would otherwise be dumped.
I wonder if there is a tendency for some to seek magic (silver) bullet solutions because they don’t want to admit to the scale of the problem we face. A few low energy light bulbs here a splash of bio-diesel there and other than that business as usual.
The role of the big corporates and misguided governments is worrying. Increasingly they will see the need to change from a fossil fuel trajectory to something different. In their haste they may well be prompting all sorts of unintended consequences in pursuit of market dominance.
Good post Almuth – thanks.
Douglas Coker
Pablo de Goyeneche
June 23rd, 2006 at 02:46 PM
I calcule how much water you need for replace only a 20% of our oil comsuption in Chile (South america). Here we import 240.000 bpd of oil. One hectarea of Corn produce about 3000 liter of ethanol per year. You need about 0.6 liters/sec of water for the growth of the corn plant. Well you need a “RIVER OF 500 m3/sec” only for the corn plantation for the replace of the 20% of our oil import. Well in chile we have a lot of rivers, but in the midle of our country, when the corn plant growth well we dont need this river.
June 26th, 2006 at 04:35 PM
The EU are currently undertaking a public consultation about the Eurpean Biofuel Directive. The Directive puts a demand on member states that, by 2010, 5.75% of all motor fuel must come from biofuels. One of the stated aims of the Directive is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately the opposite will happen. The reasons are outlined below, but are quite long. This is background data, which people might like to read at their leisure.
Could I please first urge everyone to take action and in turn ask anyone they know who shares our concerns to take part in this public consultation. The closing date is 10th July, 2006, so we haven’t got much time left, (which sounds like the whole climate change issue…). Apparently the consultation started in April. It hasn’t been very public. ‘biofuelwatch’ only found out about it from a German coalition last week. The coalition has already submitted a 1,000 responses. The biofuel industry has already submitted their views. There is information on the consultation on the EU website, but this is hidden away. ‘biofuelwatch’ have gone through this information and a response can be found at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk, Sending this should speed up the process. This is an excellent opportunity and a very timely one to help rectify a potentially extremely damaging environmental policy.
Background data to the European Biofuel Directive.
According to the ‘Malaysian Star’, demand for biodiesel made from palm oil will come from the EU. The UK company, Biofuel Corporation, favour palm oil as their main source of supply. The EU Biomass Action Plan does not guarantee environmental and social safeguards. According to WWF, large scale biomass plantation projects like the massive planned oil palm plantation in Kalimantan, Indonesia, entail the destruction of vast swathes of rainforest. They specifically state that this will, “contribute to climate change as the rainforests are an important carbon sink”. The importance of preserving rainforest can not be overstated if runaway global warming is to be averted. According to Oxfam half of the planets rainforest were destroyed in the Twentieth Century.
In Indonesia the total area planted with oil palms tripled between 1990 and 2000. In Malaysia in the same period it doubled. According to a case study on Malaysian Palm Oil by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board and the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute, 87% of Malaysia deforestation from 1985-2000 can be attributed to oil palm expansion. According to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Indonesian labour costs are a fifth of Malaysian labour costs and land costs are a quarter, making Indonesia the cheapest producer of palm oil in the world.
Oil palm plantations destroy 2 million hectares of Indonesian rainforest every year. In Sumatra and Borneo up to 10 million hectares of rainforest have been destroyed by plantation owners. At current trends oil palm plantations will triple in size by 2020. As soon as the European Biofuel Directive was passed, both Malaysia and Indonesia declared their intention to become major providers of biodiesel made from palm oil, and to expand oil palm plantations into virgin rainforests. More recently, Friends of the Earth Indonesia have identified the growing biodiesel market in Europe as one of the two key threats to Borneo’s rainforests (see here: http://www.eng.walhi.or.id/kampanye/hutan/konversi/060412_palmoilplantation_/)
When the European Biofuel Directive was discussed, studies were done to find out how ‘climate-friendly’ fuels derived from sugar beet, rapeseed oil and other crops grown in Europe are – even though it was estimated that Europe could only meet half the demand of the 5.75% target by 2010. No studies were done into the effects of importing biofuels from the tropics. In other words they knew full well that the test was not deeply flawed, based on a false premise and therefore not valid.
There needs to be an independent scientific assessment as part of the review of the European Biofuel Directive, with independent and science-based monitoring continued on an ongoing basis in future. This must look at all the different sources of biofuels. It must look at various criteria to establish how sustainable they are. The criteria must include life-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases (including from land-use changes), the impact on old-growth forests, wetlands and natural grass lands, biodiversity, water and soil, on local food supplies, and on the human rights of local communities (which are often violated in Indonesia or the Amazon as palm oil and soya plantations advance).
The independent assessment must also study how great a proportion of Europe’s motor-fuel can be replaced by sustainable biofuels. This could be 5.75% – but it might be more or less.
There need to be full safeguards that those biofuels linked to the destruction of old-growth forest will not be imported into Europe, nor others shown to have a negative effect on the environment or local communities.
The UK version is The Department of Transports Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation. The RTFO Feasibility Report’ said:- “The main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations).” The government understandably decided the way to prevent this was not to import environmentally destructive fuels. The government asked whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The ‘Feasibility Study on Certification for a Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation’ said it would. The UK will therefore not be banning environmentally damaging imports.
According to the ‘Guardian’ and ‘Reuters’, Tesco is now supplying petrol with 5% biofuel in order to comply with the EU and RFTO, 381 filling stations supply bioethenol and 23 biodiesel. The ethanol is produced from sugar cane in Brazil. Tesco buy it from Greenergy. Brazil is looking to double its bioethanol production over the next decade and increase biodiesel production for export using, soya, palm and castor oil to supply the EU, US and other Western countries. Gordon Brown announced at meetings with the IMF and World Bank last month, details of a joint British- Brazilian- South African and Mozambican initiative incentivising bioethenol. The governments Climate Change Programme has measures to encourage biofuel use.
European governments inability to face up to the fact that we all have to reduce emissions means relying on another ‘magic bullet’. The solution will make the problem worse. This is yet another example of how their policies are directly at odds with their stated aims of stabilising the climate at a safe level. If the worlds carbon sinks are destroyed, it doesn’t matter how much we reduce our emissions, it will not be enough.