Biofuel myths

In the International Herald Tribune Eric Holt-Giménez writes that we need a public enquiry into the myths about biofuel:

 

• Biofuels are clean and green.
• Biofuels will not result in deforestation.
• Biofuels will bring rural development.
• Biofuels will not cause hunger.

Grain’s agrofuel report

Grain, an NGO that supports poor farmers in poor countries, has published a large report that is getting a lot of publicity.

The press release is here, the report, a special issue of the magazine Seedling, is here, further reading here.

We begin with an introductory article that, among other things, looks at the mind-boggling numbers that are being bandied around: the Indian government is talking of planting 14 million hectares of land with jatropha; the Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120 million hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops; and an agrofuel lobby is speaking of 379 million hectares being available in 15 African countries. We are talking about expropriation on an unprecedented scale…

Terraforming Terra

What should scare us most, climate change or hubristic schemes to mitigate climate change?

The unintended negative consequences of e.g. biofuel production from food crops are large, and include tortilla riots in Mexico because of rising food prices, destruction of rainforests in Indonesia to make way for palm oil plantations, and a general expansion of land under cultivation.

Here is a harbinger of things to come. A company plans to dump iron particles into the ocean in a 100 by 100 kilometer area near the Galapagos Islands in order to stimulate the growth of plankton.

In this case it is not the action of some mad scientist, it is business. The company is peddling “carbon offsets”.

What will be next? Why not seed the stratosphere with sulphur particles and claim carbon credits for that?

The biofuel fiasco and other well-meaning attempts to improve nature - think of the introduction of rabbits in Australia - should make us vary of climate change interventions.

How should we experiment with our poorly understood, nonlinear planetary systems? Very, very carefully.

Climate change is not as scary as climate change mitigation schemes that are driven by the combination of a powerful rent-seeking lobby, investors’ feeding frenzy, opportunistic politicians, and political correctness. Biofuel from food crops is one such scheme. There will no doubt be other even more ambitious schemes in the future. The danger is that they will do more harm than good, and that they will be almost impossible to stop because of the groups that benefit from them.

Update: BBC: Galapagos experiment sparks alarm.

Let me add that I don’t think that dumping 100 tons of iron filings in a 10,000 square kilometer area in the ocean is a cause for alarm. It is not going to trigger a new ice age, destroy the Galapagos ecosystem, or end intelligent life on Planet Earth. The main effect will be to relieve some rather naive people of some of their cash when they pay for carbon offsets.

The $40 billion handout

This week’s survey in The Economist of business and climate change explains why the US is likely to get a cap-and-trade system (as in the EU), rather than a carbon tax.

If the American governments adopts a cap-and-trade system [...], it will hand out permits to pollute. They are, in effect, cash. According to Paul Bledsoe of the National Commission on Energy Policy, those allowances are likely to be worth in the region of $40 billion. Companies therefore want to be involved in designing those regulations. As Mr Rogers explains: “There is a saying in Washington: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.” [...]

A tax would be a better option. Unlike a cap-and-trade system, which stipulated the amount of CO2 that may be emitted and allows the price to vary, a tax sets a price and lets it determine the quantity emitted. [...] But the prospects for a tax are not good. Business - particularly in America - is allergic to the very word; and the allowances which companies tend to be handed in the early stages of a cap-and-trade system have an obvious appeal to companies concerned about rising costs.

There is an academic discussion (e.g. here and here) about which is better, a carbon tax or cap-and-trade. But the discussion will remain academic. The $40 billion cap-and-trade allowance giveaway offers so many opportunities for patronage, lobbying, and campaign contributions from firms that stand to benefit that it is hard to see how a carbon tax could stand a chance. And on top of that, it is called a “tax”.

Quote of the day

From this week’s survey of business and climate change in The Economist,

Climate change is fashionable, and although fashion has the virtue of being able to transform the dull and worthy into the hip and happening, it is, by definition, transitory. Hollywood stars will probably get bored of their Priuses, and executives may become weary of mouthing green platitudes and move on to whatever branch of corporate social responsibility next catches the popular imagination.

Sustainable consumption

Below the fold, the second part of the report on sustainable consumption from Stratfor. The first part is here.

Cargill CEO on biofuel and food shortages

From today’s Financial Times,

Cargill’s new chief executive has warned that the boom in renewable fuels could be derailed by a succession of poor harvests, intensifying upward pressure on food costs as land is devoted to energy-related production.

Gregory Page, a 33-year veteran of the world’s largest agribusiness group, reiterated his concern that biofuel mandates and other incentives will distort the allocation of land, with the potential to create food shortages around the world in the wake of “weather-related crop problems”.

“The big risk is that we are sowing the seeds of unintended consequences,” Mr Page said in an interview with the FT ahead of his installation as chief executive on June 1.

More here.

Environmental Idealists versus Realists

The realists are winning. In the EU they have been greatly strengthened by the demonstrated willingness of Russia to use energy for political blackmail. The idealists are in the impossible position of simultaneously arguing that climate change represents the possible end of the world, but that the situation is not so dire that we need to turn to nuclear energy or “clean coal” technology.

Pretty good article from Stratfor below the fold.

Biofuels and greenhouse gasses

The demand for biofuels is driving the destruction of forests and the emission of greenhouse gasses.

Origin of greenhouse gasses:

• Deforestation 25%
• Transport and industry 14%
• Aviation 3%

From The Independent (via EcoWorld),

Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025.

Indonesia became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world last week. Following close behind is Brazil. Neither nation has heavy industry on a comparable scale with the EU, India or Russia and yet they comfortably outstrip all other countries, except the United States and China.

What both countries do have in common is tropical forest that is being cut and burned with staggering swiftness. Smoke stacks visible from space climb into the sky above both countries, while satellite images capture similar destruction from the Congo basin, across the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.

If CO2 offsets make sense in aviation (a rather large “if”), then people who use biofuels in their cars should buy offsets to make up for the CO2 emission caused by the deforestation taking place when biofuel plantations are established. But this is absurd.

A sensible first step would be to get rid of all subsidies for biofuels. Why should EU taxpayers, for example, subsidize palm oil plantations, rainforest destruction, and greenhouse gas emissions in Indonesia and Malaysia?

Ethanol and respiratory-related deaths

From ScienceDaily,

Using ethanol-based fuel instead of gasoline would likely increase the ozone-related death rate in Los Angeles by 9 percent in 2020, according to a new study by atmospheric scientist Mark Jacobson. (Credit: Mark Z. Jacobson)

The deleterious health effects of E85 [a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline] will be the same, whether the ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products, Jacobson noted. “Today, there is a lot of investment in ethanol,” he said. “But we found that using E85 will cause at least as much health damage as gasoline, which already causes about 10,000 U.S. premature deaths annually from ozone and particulate matter. The question is, if we’re not getting any health benefits, then why continue to promote ethanol and other biofuels?

Biofuel news

In what can perhaps best be described as an outbreak of common sense, the government of Denmark says that first-generation biofuels, based on food crops such as sugar, palm oil and corn, are not sustainable and will not qualify for tax breaks.

A Danish company, Novozymes, estimates it will be four to five years before the second-generation fuels are on the market. These will be based on enzyme systems that can break down cellulosic material, and they will offer an 85% cut in carbon emissions, including the energy needed to produce them.

Story here.

Biox: dead man walking

Instant transformation of corporate image from good to bad. How do you do it? Simple, just add palm oil.

Is geothermal energy the next big thing?

After wind energy, solar cells, and biofuels, will geothermal energy take off?

It could be the New, New Thing.

It is not without problems; individual sites can become depleted if used excessively.

But all renewable energy sources have their drawbacks. Wind generators, for example, use lots of cement, steel, and space, have lots of moving parts, are noisy, kill birds, and only work when the wind is blowing. But they are still seen as benign.

On Iceland, an investment fund, Geysir Green Energy, was recently established with an initial $100 million investment for the purposes of investing in geothermal energy. Given Iceland’s experience in this field, this can been seen as an initial step towards commercializing Icelandic experience and technology worldwide, e.g. that of the company Enex.

Other companies in this field,

Calpine Corporation

Ormat Technologies

Update: A comment on Muck and Mystery,

It isn’t clear if the technologies will be adopted with enthusiasm since money often flows to projects that are subsidized whether they make any sense or not without subsidies. Geothermal makes sense, but may not capture political minds and hearts. I think it will eventually come into its own, but perhaps not soon.

See Heat Mining for some discussion of recent work on enhanced geothermal systems (EGS).

Biofuel blues

“…In the past year, corn prices have doubled as demand from ethanol producers has surged.

“This ethanol binge is insane,” says Hitch, who’s president-elect of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assn. (NCBA). “This talk about energy independence and wrapping yourself in the flag and singing God Bless America — all that’s going to come at a severe cost to another part of the economy.”

From Business Week, Ethanol’s Growing List of Enemies.

The last stand of the orangutan

The distribution of the orangutan on Borneo.

From The Last Stand of the Orangutan - State of emergency: illegal logging, fire and palm oil in Indonesia’s national parks (pdf).

A UNEP rapid response assessment prepared for the 2007 UNEP Governing Council. The survival of orangutans and other rain forest wildlife in Indonesia is seriously endangered by illegal logging, forest fires including those associated with the rapid spread of oil palm plantations, illegal hunting and trade.

Forest fire and deforestation in Indonesia are also resulting in substantial emissions of carbon dioxide, in addition to the decrease in habitat for Orangutan and other keystone species of the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. The smoke from the burning forests are spreading over Southeast Asia in the summers. As burnt forest areas are left open, they are commonly claimed for rubber and palm oil plantations, thus permanently reducing the available habitat…

More here. Maps and graphics from the report here.

The Tortilla Crisis

The Times (of London) has the story,

Tortilla crisis hits the poor as clean fuel drives up corn price

…Tens of thousands of farmers, trade unionists and consumers gathered in Mexico City’s central square this week to protest against the rising price of the staple of the Mexican diet since pre-Hispanic times. “No corn, no country,” protesters chanted as they massed for the first big demonstration against Mr Calderón. Workers on the minimum wage could now spend a third of their earnings on tortillas alone…

Prices have also been affected by an increased US demand for corn as a source of ethanol, the alternative, ecofriendly fuel…

The palm-oil biofuel eco-nightmare

— Just a few years ago, politicians and environmental groups in the Netherlands were thrilled by the early and rapid adoption of “sustainable energy,” achieved in part by coaxing electrical plants to use biofuel — in particular, palm oil from Southeast Asia…

…when scientists studied practices at palm plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia, this green fairy tale began to look more like an environmental nightmare. Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

Read the story in the New York Times.

EU will need imports to hit biofuel targets

The EU Commission is telling consumers and companies which technology they should use, in this case how much ethanol should be blended into fuel. This is a bad idea, it will prevent innovation in alternatives to ethanol. It is, of course, also a gift to the farming lobby and investors in biofuels.

It may very well have the effect that more rainforest will be cleared in Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia. From Financial Times,

Europe will need to import thousands of tonnes of bio-fuels to hit stringent new targets proposed by Brussels yesterday.

Oil companies said a law requiring all petrol to be blended with 10 per cent ethanol by 2020 would call for supply from countries such as Brazil that could produce vast quantities at cheap prices.

“Europe cannot produce enough,” said Peter Tjan, of the European Petroleum Industry Association. “We will swap oil from Saudi Arabia for biofuels from Brazil and Malaysia. Does that help energy security?”

Under the plans, filling stations in the European Union would have to offer two blends of petrol from 2009: E5, with 5 per cent ethanol, and E10, with 10 per cent. By 2020, only E10 would be permitted. Restrictions on ozone emissions would be loosened to allow the blending…

Bioethanol is usually made from wheat or sugar, but the energy required to grow and distil the grains reduces the benefit of using it as a fuel - a litre cuts emissions by less than half on average. Deforestation to clear farmland could contribute more to climate change than the resulting fuels save in emissions.

Sustainable alternative energy - biofuels in Indonesia

From Financial Times (registration necessary),

Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Agro Resources and Technology signed a deal yesterday with China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Hong Kong Energy Holdings to develop biofuel projects worth $5.5bn in two remote provinces.

The three companies intend to plant 1m hectares of oil palm, sugar cane and cassava over the next eight years in Kalimantan and Papua to generate bioethanol from the latter two crops and palm oil, according to a Sinar Mas statement…

Susili Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesias president, has said he want to prioritise alternative energy development to reduce dependence on oil and gas, in spite of objections from environmentalists. This includes targeting $22bn in investment to develop 6m hectares of plantations for biofuels…

The Sinar Mas Group is controlled by Indonesia’s Widjaja family whose Asia Pulp & Paper in 2001 defaulted in $14bn in debt in the biggest corporate default in emerging markets history. Kalimantan is the Indonesian portion of Borneo, while Papua is the country’s easternmost province on New Guinea island.

The Papua development will involve clearing vast swathes of virgin rainforest, including additional areas for support facilities. Many communities will almost certainly be uprooted, according to Palm Oil Watch, a non-governmental organisation monitoring the sector…

“We are also worried about the impact these vast monoculture plantations will have on the environment, particularly as the Chinese don’t have much experience in this sector.”…

Is clearing the rainforest in order to produce biofuels a good idea? Obviously, “sustainable” and “alternative” does not necessarily mean “good”.