marklynas.orgSay no to biofuels 19 August 08
Biofuels can never be used sustainably on a large scale to power transport. The only solution is to shift rapidly to electricity.
Beware simplistic solutions to complex problems. Humanity is in a fix: for over a century our advanced industrial civilisation has been almost entirely fuelled by fossil hydrocarbons – oil, coal and gas – extracted from geological reserves under the Earth’s surface. We have known for years that the combustion of these fuels releases carbon dioxide, enhancing the planet’s natural greenhouse effect and condemning us all to a fiery future unless we leave the majority of remaining reserves under the ground. What to do? Biofuels are an obvious solution: replace ‘mineral’ petrol and diesel from fossil reserves with biological fuels extracted from plants and the result will be no net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. This is because the carbon released in combustion was originally sucked out of the air when the plants grew using energy from the sun. So once enough cars run on biodiesel or ethanol, humanity will effectively have switched to a solar energy economy and the problem will be solved.
Or will it? Perhaps the strongest argument against biofuels is that they simply replace one ecological problem with another. Humanity is already exerting tremendous pressure on the planet, largely because of agriculture. The UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a landmark report authored by thousands of experts, found that over the last 50 years humanity has changed the planet’s ecosystems “more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history”. This has already led to a major loss of biodiversity, and at least 60% of the Earth’s ‘ecosystem services’ (things like freshwater, air purification, fisheries and so on) are being degraded or used unsustainably. In other words, humanity is already living far beyond its means – we are hitting the ecological buffers in many other areas apart from just global warming.
Perhaps the strongest argument against biofuels is that they simply replace one ecological problem with another.
A large-scale shift towards biofuels – extracting fuel from the biosphere rather than underground – can only worsen the human agricultural pressure on ecosystems, as we shift from producing not just food but also fuel from increasingly scarce cultivable land. Some of the worst examples of biofuels causing the destruction of valuable ecosystems – such as the conversion of Indonesian tropical forests to palm oil plantations – are already well-known, thanks to vociferous campaigns by groups like Friends of the Earth and Biofuelwatch. Using palm oil for biodiesel production is little short of madness, even from a strictly climate change perspective – far more carbon is released when the forests are cleared (particularly when the peat underlying them is drained and burned) than will ever be clawed back through the replacement of fossil fuels. A similar equation applies on Amazonia, where the expansion of soya production (soya is another biodiesel feedstock) is also driving deforestation. Indonesia and Brazil are amongst the top ten carbon emitters in the world due to the degradation and destruction of their forests, thanks increasingly to biofuels.
But there are other less visible problems too. Most farmers apply nitrogen-based fertilisers to their crops to stimulate production. Most of this nitrogen isn’t captured by the plants, but runs off into rivers and lakes, causing algal blooms which kill fish and deplete oxygen levels. Whole areas of the ocean are now classified as ‘dead zones’, because of this agricultural runoff. Indeed, the planet’s natural nitrogen cycle has been even more dramatically altered by humans than the carbon cycle, although this is gets much less attention than the issue of climate change. But the two issues are interlinked: fertilisers also degrade on land to produce nitrous oxide, a very powerful greenhouse gas. A recent scientific analysis by a team led by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen found that biofuels can “contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O [nitrous oxide] emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings”.
These two issues – nitrous oxide and emissions from land-use change – should by themselves be enough to rule out a large-scale shift to biofuels. But the ecological concerns raised by biofuels run even deeper than this. With more than six billion people on the planet, humanity has already run short of agricultural land for food production, and the conversion of virgin forests and grasslands into farmland monoculture can only worsen the current extinction crisis. Some charismatic species like the orang-utan in Borneo and Sumatra are directly threatened by biofuels production, but there are countless other less visible victims of agricultural expansion: in total, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, a third of all amphibians and 70% of plants are currently threatened by human activity, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), whose director Julia Marton-Lefevre now talks of a “global extinction crisis”. These species are important not just for economic or aesthetic reasons, but because the whole earth system – air, oceans and climate – depends vitally on living organisms: biology is as much a part of our Earth as chemistry and physics. If we wipe out biodiversity, we risk triggering escalating impacts which will eventually rebound on human societies too.
Biofuels are currently only a small part of this equation, but any increase in agricultural production can only intensify the extinction crisis. Some of this comes about through a displacement effect: even if biofuel feedstocks, whether corn, sugar cane, soya or palm oil, come from supposedly ‘sustainable’ sources, the gap in food supplies caused by their use will necessarily drive further deforestation and agricultural expansion in other areas. But some of the damage is much more direct. For example, 20,000 acres of Kenya’s Tana River wetlands – home to 350 species of birds, as well as hippos, elephants, rare sharks, reptiles and primates – are currently slated by the country’s government for destruction to produce sugarcane for ethanol, to be exported to the west for use in cars. In Cote d’Ivoire another wetland, the Tanoe Swamps Forest – a last refuge for three highly endangered primates – is due to be converted into palm oil, again for biofuels production.
if ‘cellulosic ethanol’ were ever to take off in a big way, it might present an even greater threat than today’s generation of biofuels
Biofuels supporters frequently advocate the use of plants like the oilseed-producing drought-tolerant shrub jatropha, which they argue can be grown in ‘marginal’ areas in poorer countries without reducing food production. However, these ‘marginal’ areas are often precisely the places where a semblance of biodiversity still clings on. In addition, if crops like jatropha become successful, they will doubtless be expanded into food-producing areas and forests alike: unless strict laws are in place, economic incentives will always trump humanitarian or ecological concerns. Similarly, so-called ‘second-generation’ biofuels are also touted as a radical improvement on current fuel production from food crops. By brewing ethanol from crop waste or wood, the argument goes, biofuels production can be ramped up without driving up food prices and starving the poor. But if this ‘cellulosic ethanol’ were ever to take off in a big way, it might present an even greater threat than today’s generation of biofuels. Entire forests would likely be liquified in order to produce petrol and diesel for motorists – not just in rich countries, but increasingly in rapidly-industrialising nations like India and China. If world oil prices continue to rise, pressure to find substitutes like biofuels can only escalate.
That is not to say that all biofuels are bad. Burning old chip fat in car engines is beneficial, but only on a tiny scale and because it uses waste oil. Biogas produced from human sewage could be used to replace natural gas from underground. And biomass – from coppice woodland, for example – can be a good way to produce heat and power, but again only on a limited scale. So with biofuels largely out of the equation, how should we tackle global warming? The best way to reduce emissions from vehicles is not to find new sources of liquid fuels, but to shift rapidly to the production of electric cars and trucks, which can plug into the grid to recharge. This electricity in turn must come from wholly renewable sources, which means wind, solar and wave or tidal power. A 100% renewable economy may sound like a pipe-dream, but it is technologically entirely feasible, and economically represents an enormous opportunity for growth in jobs and manufacturing, as Germany has already begun to discover. Over the century ahead humanity has to learn how to supply its energy needs in ways which do not destroy the capacity of the planet to support life. Neither biofuels nor fossil fuels meet this test – but luckily there are plenty of energy sources that do.
A shortened version of this article was published by the Independent on 18 August 2008
Comments
Tony
August 19th, 2008 at 11:42 AM
A thought provoking piece Mark. I find myself in agreement with alot of what you say (minus the CO2 stuff you know my views on that by now) and this raises a question I posed in an earlier comment on your website namely throwing the baby out with the bath water in terms of good environmentalism. What I mean is that if you exclude yours and my views on Global warming and concentrate on “good old fashioned environmentalism” then there is much work to do. Pollution, biodiversity, forests being chopped down to grow cash crops, air quality the list is very long, these things need urgent attention and as you say the growing of crops to make biofuel is as urgent as any. This measure came about because the powers that be were panicked into a situation where they had to be seen to be doing something about a percieved threat. So, inevitably, big business were more than helpful in helping them to sort out this problem and growing biofuels (which many environmentalists at the time thought a good idea but have since changed their minds) seemed to be a quick fix. Marry in haste and repent at leisure springs to mind as far as this is concerned and We now have the Devils own job of reversing this growth. There is too much money to be lost and there isn’t enough eggs in the world to go round to plant on the faces of those who thought it was a good idea. The real worry is that once AGW is discredited as a theory then the bath water will follow swiftly as ordinary citizens hold up their hands and shake their heads and suspect that other environmental concerns are merely theory and not really to be taken as a threat. In my mind this is the real danger.
M Forskitt
August 20th, 2008 at 06:06 PM
“The best way to reduce emissions from vehicles is not to find new sources of liquid fuels, but to shift rapidly to the production of electric cars and trucks, which can plug into the grid to recharge.”
That’s not such a good solution as it looks when you consider the emissions from producing all those new vehicles, and scrapping/recycling the old ones.
I would also suggest that biodiesel for on-farm use is probably the only way to keep farm machinery going to maintain our current food production system going until we can make a transition to smaller, human scale food production.
In both cases the problem is the pragmatic one of how to get from one state to another without causing total breakdown in the system during the transition.
Alex Lawrie
August 21st, 2008 at 09:59 AM
Biogas is not just available from human sewage; anaerobic digestion will probably take off fastest using agricultural wastes, from manure to vegetation. The process is very climate friendly – it traps methane that would otherwise have been released to the atmosphere, and produces a rich compost with most of the carbon and nitrogen retained. There is a surprisingly large biogas potential, and compressed natural gas is more energy dense than any battery technology can presently achieve. At the very least, it could be the answer for rail, road freight and long range vehicles; possibly a fair number of private cars too. It requires much less modification (it can be used in a conventional petrol engine, or diesel at a stretch). The economics are very nearly ripe for widespread adoption. All that having been said, I agree with the thrust of the article – gas will always be a premium fuel, and we should try to do as much as possible with renewable electricity.
Terry Brennan
August 22nd, 2008 at 01:03 PM
Dear Mark, A very sensible article. However…
I’m very aware that you (and George Monbiot) have consistently taken an opposition to biofuels (and carbon offsets for that matter). Credit to you both for that.
But despite your objections, biofuels have still been pushed & promoted by several prominent ‘green’ organisations. And the result is the current situation that you (& Monbiot) predicted of rising food prices and potential mass starvation.
So who is taking responsibility for this pending disaster? No one it seems.
In my opinion, there is a growing dark side to the green movement – green capitalism and green imperialism – that has no sentiment for the poor and underprivileged of the world. This is clearly evident in biofuels and carbon offsets policies.
To your credit, as I have said, you have spoken out against biofuels and carbon offsets.
But I’m afraid you (and Monbiot) must take a little responsibility for this. Because the irrational CO2 alarmism that you promote have kicked open a door for ‘green’ capitalists to exploit.
This situation can be retrieved. Your bog states:-
“I’d like this site to develop into something of a debating hall about climate change and other related issues….”
Really? In that case, stop the alarmism and have a sensible rational debate about the science of CO2. Anyone who is aware of recent peer reviewed science (eg Schwartz or Spencer) will know that climate sensitivity to CO2 is overstated. Anyone who still thinks the modern era is significantly warmer than a millenium ago is not aware of the disgraceful abuse of peer review by Ammann, Mann, and their cohorts. Anyone who just wants just observational facts should be aware that the NOAA buoys have been detecting cooling oceans since 2002; that satellites have been detecting a cooling atmosphere for almost as long; and that the Antartic ice sheet continues to grow to record extents. Anyone who thinks that there are just a few mad skeptical scientists needs to get out and read more. Right-wing oil-funded loonies? Some for sure, but not all. Both sides of this debate have their loonies promoting bad science for spurious motives.
That’s why you should re-open the debate.
You’ve got nothing to lose. Even if all the scientific arguments were inconclusive, you’ve still got the precautionary principle – and that is the biggest trump card of all.
Come on Mark, do it. Otherwise things like biofuels and carbon offset programmes will continue to gather pace, and other spurious anti-CO2 measures will start being accepted without sufficient debate. Hasn’t Monbiot already begun an about turn on nuclear power?......
Terry Brennan
August 22nd, 2008 at 03:47 PM
Dear Mark, I don’t wish to be rude but your blog states :
“Debate is encouraged, but offensive or ad hominem postings will be removed. Please keep comments short and relevant.”
Really? I see my comment posted earlier today has been removed. Why? It wasn’t rude, offensive, or a particular strong criticism of you. In fact it was quite complimentary on your stance against biofuels.
Some of my comments merely suggested that you and other prominent greens should re-open the carbon debate, because it is CO2 alarmism that has made it possible for damaging biofuels schemes (as well as carbon offset schemes, and now the re-emergence of nuclear power). So those comments were relevant.
Perhaps you objected to my comments about the abuse of peer review by certain climate scientists? If so, snip that sentence but leave the rest.
So, I would be ever so grateful if you re-inserted my original posting and let your readers have their own say, please.
(Otherwise I would happy to exchange a point of view or two in a personal correspondence via email)
Thank you.
Terry Brennan
August 22nd, 2008 at 03:57 PM
Dear Mark, Apologies. Ignore my last posting.
It appears that most comments are invisible until clicking on “submit comment”. So my original posting had not been removed as I had thought.
Peter Goodchild
August 22nd, 2008 at 08:20 PM
Has anyone heard the word Vegan?
Peter Goodchild
August 24th, 2008 at 11:04 AM
The livestock industry accounts for 18 % of greenhouse gases. This is more than the whole transport sector worldwide, including aircraft. Makes sense to adopt a vegan diet.
Not many fish left in the sea now, one third sea caught, are used to make fishmeal that is fed to animals. This all adds the the destruction of the marine environment, including the difficulty of sea/ water based birds to feed themselves. Think and be green-Go Vegan.
Johnnie
August 28th, 2008 at 04:55 AM
I agree
- bio fuels wa a wrong path .. BUT (big one) it was taken, at least by some, in good faithsave, leave to manage or allow to die – ActonClimatethe really tough quesitons are ahead relating to climate changes to come… why not let some people pay more, say, to consume solar-based super vehicle or bio fuels surely we can discuss this. Try thinking in triage termsLynn Vincentnathan
August 28th, 2008 at 02:36 PM
Yes, I agree that we need more electricity produced by alt energy, and this is going to be a bigger part of the solution (I can hear the EMF-fearing people screaming now about the power lines going through their backyards).
But we need to do everything, starting with “reduce” (& reuse & recycle). Every single little bit needs to be done—like carrying a hanky to wipe hands in public restrooms, instead of using paper towels, like biofuels from wastes (that would decompose into methane otherwise).
And RE M Forskitt’s comment, “That’s not such a good solution as it looks [re EVs] when you consider the emissions from producing all those new vehicles, and scrapping/recycling the old ones”—the good news is that I.C.E. vehicles can be converted into electric vehicles.
There are EV conversion clubs in the U.S. (see: http://www.eaaev.org ). At 1992 Earth Day I drove around in an old ICE Toyota converted to electric. They don’t have all the nice features like regenerative breaking, but they can get commuters from point A to point B. They take either a car that has blown its IC engine, or one with a good engine & sell that. I asked if a lady could make a conversion, and the guys told me that one fellow had never even held a screwdriver in his life made a conversion, and that the motor was sort of like a sewing machine motor with petal. I could ID with that.
Now that I moved to a place in Texas to get on to GreenMountain’s 100% wind power, I don’t live near an EV club. But I hope someday to get the time to make a conversion.
Then maybe also find some way to convert the moringa trees in our backyard (that grow like weeds straight up 30 feet in a couple of years & we have to keep cutting them down) into biofuel. See the presentation on the right column at http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa . With GW, I suppose the subtropical/tropical growing range for these may be expanding just with what’s in the pipes.
I expect to see some “biofuel” conversion kits in a few years—just throw in your yard waste that would decompose into methane anyway, and out comes biofuel for your car.
Helena
September 1st, 2008 at 12:49 PM
I am beginning to feel seriously worried. Last Saturday I read that the Swedish-Russian expedition ISSS-08 (http://isss08.wordpress.com) have confirmed that Siberian methane is oozing up. Any thoughts on that Mark? Should we be afraid now?
Ian
September 3rd, 2008 at 03:07 PM
Hi Mark Do biofuels derived from algae suffer the same pitfalls as crop based biofuels? what are your thoughts?
Carl Johnson
September 4th, 2008 at 09:10 AM
The balance of scientific consensus seems to indicate that only large scale “farming” of bio-fuel crops would produce anything like the amount of power we require to reduce Co2 emissions and end our dependency on fossil fuel. The problem is basically to acheive these levels the amount of land that would have to be given over to the bio-crops is not available. Hence there would be massive de-forestation and the loss of a huge amount current food producing farm land. The result being a net increase in the rate of global warming and a reduction in food supply globally. Move to nuclear NOW.
mark
September 5th, 2008 at 10:13 AM
Terry – I’m sorry, but you need to be a bit clearer about your grounds for doubting the mainstream thrust of climate science. What peer-reviewed papers are you looking at specifically? Please provide a list, as I’m sure it would be helpful to everyone.
D Tryse
September 11th, 2008 at 05:19 PM
Terry Brennan: “Anyone who is aware of recent peer reviewed science (eg Schwartz or Spencer) will know…”
Is that the same Spencer who is also a intelligent design advocate? And who’s for hire to ExxonMobil funded think tanks? And the same Schwartz who’s recently revised his earlier 1.1+-0.5K sensitivity estimate to 1.9+-1.0K, which is “somewhat lower than the central estimate of the sensitivity given in the 2007 assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but consistent within the uncertainties of both estimates.” A revision Roy Spencer happily ignored in his testimony before congress….
It’s always fun to take a few minutes to read up on these guys…they never disappoint….
On Spencer: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/ http://www.exxonsecrets.org/wiki/index.php/Deniers:Scientists:Roy_W._Spencer
On Schwartz: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/09/climate-insensitivity/ http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapCommentResponse.pdf
Chris
October 20th, 2008 at 11:02 PM
Spencer is on Exxon’s payroll, so his credibility in the scientific community ought to be nil.
Schwartz has repeatedly been criticized by other credible scientists for understating climate change because his methods are “unrealistically low”.
We simply do not have enough room on this earth to do these unrealistic proposals.
However, I do feel that the criticism that “plugging in” the electricity grid is has some serious shortfalls. Right now, a huge amount of this world’s electricity comes from coal. It doesn’t solve our problems if we go from petroleum to coal.
I must agree with James Lovelock (and I see that you have too in your other article) that nuclear power is our only real hope, especially given the narrow time scale that we have.
Aryan Schmitz
October 29th, 2008 at 05:08 PM
Mark, although there are bad examples of production of biofuels there are good examples as well. Sugercane ethanol as well as cellulosic ethanol from waste material are often good examples and ethanol is a practical, low tech, non toxic and cheap container for solar energy that already can compete with petrol.
Ethanol is also an alternative fuel that can replace petrol here and now in existing petrol engines, reducing CO2 emmissions with as much as 80% compaired to petrol.
I think that we eventuelly need to use combinations of plug-in electric and biofuel powered vehicles, an intresting alternative is an electric hybride with a stirling engine that could use any heat source even solid fuels like wood pellets.
I’d say no to nuclear and fossil fuel instead!
/Aryan
michael@karnerfors.se
November 17th, 2008 at 01:22 PM
@Chris: “Spencer is on Exxon’s payroll, so his credibility in the scientific community ought to be nil.”
Who said what, and who paid them is not important. It is what he said and what the peer review said about it. If anothe rperson had said the exact same thing, this would not change the validity of the arguments because it would be the exact same argument.
This may seem like a contradiction coming from me in that I slammed Greenpeace in an earlier post in saying that they have a vested ecnonomic interrest in portraying nuclear power as troublesome. But this comes after the peer review, which their stance failed, and goes to explain why they maintain that position despite facts talking against their stance.
taibmahmud
December 26th, 2008 at 02:07 AM
This what happen to my country, Malaysia. The government are now trying are trying to build more jatropha farms to replace the oil plam. The politic action was all behind this matter.
Rhys
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:51 AM
Great article! these are most surprisingly striking ideas for me, all the time i thought that biofuels are real solution of the ecological problems, but now I see that as you say “they simply replace one ecological problem with another”... This news is not so nice and I hope that soon it will be solved!
Mason
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 AM
That a nice and reasonable idea, but you know, that electricity is also not so easy to be received. The easiest way to get electricity is atomic power stations, but it i so dangerous… i a case of axplosion huge radion can kill too many people…
Tom
March 28th, 2009 at 09:28 PM
By brewing ethanol from crop waste or wood, the argument goes, biofuels production can be ramped up without driving up food prices and starving the poor. But if this ‘cellulosic ethanol’ were ever to take off in a big way, it might present an even greater threat than today’s generation of biofuels. Entire forests would likely be liquified in order to produce petrol and diesel for motorists – not just in rich countries, but increasingly in rapidly-industrialising nations like India and China. If world oil prices continue to rise, pressure to find substitutes like biofuels can only escalate. I honestlz think that this is great idea. Tom – riding lawn mower guide
Samantha
April 5th, 2009 at 06:58 PM
What are some of the downfalls to algae biofuels? All I’ve heard or read on that subject are positive aspects, but it can’t be all good, and no one seems to be addressing the problems with that as a fuel source.
Samantha
April 5th, 2009 at 07:01 PM
What are some of the downfalls to algae biofuels? All I’ve heard or read on that subject are positive aspects, but it can’t be all good, and no one seems to be addressing the problems with that as a fuel source.
Jump higher
May 21st, 2009 at 03:42 PM
This is weird, Why would I say no to biofuels?