|

Conventional Biofuels are Evil, Part 43124

Byoliveridley

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat – New York Times

I think it is time to conclude that anyone who talks up biofuels is a) affiliated with an agri-biotech firm b) Big farmer c)Lobbyist, or d)Politician beholden to a,b and c.

It’s not even close. Clearing hitherto productive forest/grassland for biofuel growth  releases 93 times the amount greenhouse gases saved by the use of this biofuel. Diverting farmland for biofuel use makes things worse as the crop substituted will then be grown on land cleared.

The studies do give sugarcane and biofuel from agricultural wastes a cautious maybe. Corn ethanol and palm biodiesel will lead to the destruction of our ecosystems, make food more expensive and scarce, and actually exacerbate global warming.

References

  1. Joseph Fargione, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, and Peter Hawthorne. Land
    Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt. Science, page 1152747, 2008.
  2. Timothy Searchinger, Ralph Heimlich, R. A. Houghton, Fengxia Dong, Amani Elobeid, Jacinto Fabiosa, Simla Tokgoz, Dermot Hayes, and Tun-Hsiang Yu. Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change. Science, page 1151861, 2008.

Blogged with Flock

Tags:

Similar Posts

  • Best Primer to Climate Change ever

    Byoliveridley

    The Beeb does it again. Best use of simple graphics to clearly explain science.

    Gulf Stream

    1. Surface currents carry warm, salty water from the tropics.
    2. The water cools, its density increases and it sinks to the deep ocean.
    3. The cold water flows back to the equator, driving the “ocean conveyor” which in turn contributes to the Gulf Stream that warms northern Europe.
    4. As ice melts, freshwater dilutes the warm salty water from the tropics.
    5. The water becomes less dense so does not sink as fast, weakening the “conveyor” and therefore possibly disrupting the Gulf Stream.

    Gulf Stream

    Dramatic temperature shifts have happened in the past, driven partly by changes in a major ocean currents.

    A “great ocean conveyor” helps transport heat around the globe via surface and deep-sea movements of water.

    Scientists are exploring whether global warming might slow or shut it down – a scenario considered “low probability, high impact”.

    This could disrupt mostly wind-driven surface currents such as the Gulf Stream, which brings milder weather to Northern Europe.

    Low Probability, High impact indeed, aka the “Hell Freezes Over” Scenario. The Gulf Stream example is one of my favorites, check all the other animation out, it is great.

  • Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules – New York Times

    Byoliveridley

    smokestacks.jpgThis is the NY Times headline, not mine!

    Judges Overturn Bush Bid to Ease Pollution Rules – New York Times

    But on Friday, the court said the agency went too far in 2003 when it issued a separate new rule that opponents said would exempt most equipment changes from environmental reviews — even changes that would result in higher emissions.

    With a wry footnote to Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” the court said that “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world” could the law be read otherwise.

    “We decline such a world view,” said their unanimous decision, written by Judge Judith W. Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. Judges David Tatel, another Clinton appointee, and Janice Rogers Brown, a recent Bush appointee, joined her.

    The winners this time —more than a dozen states, including New York and California and a large group of environmental organizations — hailed the decision as one of their most important gains in years of litigation, regulation and legal challenges under the Clean Air Act.

    The provision of the law at issue, the “new source review” section, governs the permits required at more than 1,300 coal-fueled power plants around the country and 17,000 factories, refineries and chemical plants that spew millions of tons of pollution into the air each year.

    The proposed rule would have allowed powerplants to avoid putting new controls in as long as the cost of equipment did not exceed 20% of the replacement cost of the plant. Fuzzy math, anyone! This would have let to major incentives to not build new plants using cleaner technology, but keep the “grandfathers” running. A lot of the old plants were exempted from some of the strict controls by being grandfathered into the act. Well, call me cruel, but grandfathers eventually die! I thought of this proposed rule as the “Bionic Grandpa” provision! Glad that the courts did not like it.

  • Paint companies blame bad genes in lead paint case

    Byoliveridley

    Gene defense in lead paint case rankles – Yahoo! News

    But one of the nation’s largest paint companies has another explanation — bad traits that were simply passed on in their genes. “Their argument is … they have a family history of poor performance. Basically, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” said Michael Casano, who is representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages

    Well, take the Bell Curve, add dollops of greed and you can make a transparently racist argument that five families, all poor and black, of course, have some mysterious genetic defect that perfectly mimics the effects of lead poisoning on children.

    If not detected early, children with high levels of lead in
    their bodies can suffer from:

    • Damage to the brain and nervous system

    • Behavior and learning problems (such as hyperactivity)

    • Slowed growth

    • Hearing problems

    • Headaches

    Hmm, if all these symptoms were genetic in nature, I wonder if the lawyers that make this case would let their children ingest some lead paint everyday for a few years, I am sure their perfect genes will protect them? It would be a great control group, No?

  • Canada – No new coal plants?

    Byoliveridley

    For a minute I thought the pain from playing volleyball last night, plus opening my computer up sleepily at 5:45 in the morning before catching an early bus to work had me hallucinating, but yes, the Canadian federal government actually wants to impose a moratorium on the construction of new coal fired power plants unless they include sequestration (which to me means no new power plants).

    The federal government is planning sweeping new climate-change regulations for Canada's electricity sector that will phase out traditional coal-fired power

    Any new coal plants will have to include highly expensive – and unproven – technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions and inject it underground for permanent storage, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said in an interview yesterday.

    Ottawa also plans to impose absolute emission caps on utilities' existing coal-fired power plants and establish a market-based system to allow them to buy credits to meet those targets, Mr. Prentice said.

    via reportonbusiness.com: Ottawa takes aim at coal power.

    I have a certain distrust for this government, so details are crucial. The right things are being said:

    1. All new plants will need sequestration
    2. A cap and trade to deal with existing coal fired power plants
    3. Phase out of facilities after “fully amortized life” – Not clear on exactly what that means
    4. 90% Emissions free power sector by 2025

    As the article points out, Canada relies on coal much less than a lot of other countries, only 18% of current emissions are from coal, as opposed to the US, where about 40% is from coal.

    So, time to celebrate? Not exactly. Canada’s latest release of 2007 data indicates horrendous performance.

    Canada 2007 GHG Inventory

    Overall, total increase was 6 Megatonnes from 2004 to 2007. But the increases from the Tar Sands were nearly 16 Mt, meaning most of Canada’s other sectors saw decreases, thanks to a number of mild winters and greater efficiency.

    Clearly, this performance is going to continue until the Tar Sands are included in any CO2 reduction strategies, whatever we do, or don’t do with the coal will have a little bit of impact, but will definitely not help Canada achieve any of its short or long term goals.

    So, one cheer for this announcement. I suspect that the administration needs something to take to meetings, and is hoping that a coal moratorium will distract people from the biggest culprits, the Tar Sands and our insanely high per capita GHG footprint. A “no new coal” moratorium would be a huge deal in the States, and off the charts in China or India as far as reducing emissions go. But Canada, not bad, but definitely not good enough!

    The Tar Sands will only be stopped when the US steps up to the plate and gets its Cap and Trade going.

  • EPA Calls for End to Releases of Chemical in Teflon Process

    Byoliveridley

    Check out this story from the January 26, 2006 LA Times.

    In a rare move to phase out a widely used industrial compound, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday that it was asking all U.S. companies to virtually eliminate public exposure to a toxic chemical used to make Teflon cookware and thousands of other products.

    EPA’s system of regulating chemicals leads to some really perverse incentives. The burden of proof shifts to the EPA to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a chemical has definite harmful effects on humans at ambient exposure levels. So the preferred route has been for the EPA to “suggest” to the companies to participate in a voluntary phaseout.

    No one knows how the chemical is getting into people’s bloodstreams and in the bodies of polar bears and other animals. Although it is used in production of cookware, it is not found in the cookware, clothing and other fluoropolymers after manufacture.

    Well, not quite. This from a paper published in the Environmental Science and Technology on January the 25th.

    Polyfluorinated telomer alcohols and sulfonamides are classes of compounds recently identified as precursor molecules to the perfluorinated acids detected in the environment. Despite the detection and quantification of these volatile compounds in the atmosphere, their sources remain unknown. Both classes of compounds are used in the synthesis of various fluorosurfactants and incorporated in polymeric materials used extensively in the carpet, textile, and paper industries. This study has identified the presence of residual unbound fluoro telomer alcohols (FTOHs) in varying chain lengths (C6-C14) in several commercially available and industrially applied polymeric and surfactant materials…

    This study suggests that elimination or reduction of these residual alcohols from all marketed fluorinated polymers and fluorosurfactants is key in reducing the prevalence of perfluorinated acids formed in the environment.

    Well, that explains it a little better, this article from ES&T provides a nice executive summary like context.

    An emerging theory that explains how PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and other PFCAs (perfluorocarboxylic acids) have contaminated the Arctic has received a boost from a new modeling study published in this issue of ES&T (pp 924–930). The theory contends that Arctic contamination is due to atmospheric transport and breakdown of fluorotelomer alcohols, chemicals that are used in products that include stain protectors, microwave-popcorn bags, fast-food wrappers, polishes, and paints.

    Well, it sure looks like we need to focus much more on the PFOA precursors rather than on the PFOA itself. Dupont and 3M are not going to be happy about that!

  • California takes coals out of the fire

    Byoliveridley

    Seriously, for every bit of bad news you read in the New York Times about coal, you read a good news story about the LA Times about coal!

    State acts to limit use of coal power – Los Angeles Times

    The California Energy Commission on Wednesday imposed new rules that effectively forbid the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and all other municipal utilities in the state from signing new contracts with coal-fired power plants. The move, together with identical regulations imposed on private utilities in January, is a significant step toward reducing the contribution of California, the world’s sixth largest economy, to global warming.

    This is important because California is a huge market and is imposing its market power wisely. It will buy coal power if sequestration actually works.

    Technorati Tags: ,

2 Comments

  1. Does this mean local producers of biofuels are contributing to global warming? or is this study more about the effects of neo-liberal business practices aka globalization? i.e. destroying rainforest for new biofeul crops and shipping the raw goods long distances. Can we paint all biofuel producers with the same brush?

    BTW – I don’t really have a horse in this race AND I am for the end of using combustion engines some day. Plus I’m not a, b, c. or d. I’m just thinking about selling my gasoline vehicles and getting a diesel to run biodiesel.

    But I am concerned these studies may have corporate sponsorship that could have serious pro-oil bias. (I am ready to be wrong.) I learned recently about what happens when the media hypes a new article in the journal Science BEFORE it can be vetted in a open manner.

    I’m asking some science friends in the know to look into it. 🙂

  2. Brian:

    I read the abstracts. The papers are not yet out on academic institutional subscriptions, so I will know more in a day or two. The work is genuine and reinforces the scientific wisdom that biofuels based on conventional commodity agriculture such as corn ethanol, palm oil biodiesel, etc are not sustainable, dangerous and will cause many more problems than they solve.

    Biodiesel made from leftover grease, on the other hand, is not that bad. What the science is telling us is that uncultivated land is a huge carbon sink and every time you clear land not previously used for agriculture and start growing input intensive crops such as corn, you are screwing the carbon balance over.

    So, simple rule of thumb, look for the source of the biofuel. If it is from a cultivated plant, it is not acceptable (sugarcane may be an exception, but not a sustainable one if Brazil starts chopping down its rain forests to grow cane). If it from some previously unutilized waste product such as vegetable oil, fast food grease, agricultural waste, etc, the lifecycle analysis is much more favorable as land use and the destruction of carbon sinks do not come into the picture.

    On a side note, big oil is already diversifying its holdings in the US corn ethanol based economy and stands to benefit a lot from the promotion of conventional biofuels. So, they are not in conflict, but in concert here. Big oil has the money and the infrastructure know how to get involved in new refinery building, pipelines, etc. Also, fertilizer production uses a lot of oil and natural gas, and increased corn planting leads to, you guessed it, increased oil/natural gas sales!

    On getting a car to run biodiesel, again, the source of your fuel is the most important thing. Piedmont Biofuels tries very hard to use local feedstock and locally generated waste. So they’re good. But if you start buying biodiesel sourced from Malaysia, woe betide you!

Comments are closed.