Are biofuels actually good for the environment?
Biofuels made from biomass, such as corn and soybeans, have been getting criticism lately for their impact on world food prices. Opponents of the alternative fuels say that using a portion of the world's farmland and the associated crop yields for the production of fuel will add to the pressure developing countries face in supplying their populations with adequate food supplies. To address these concerns, countries have started creating biofuels from crops that are either inedible or of low demand, such as sugarcane and rapeseed, or on land that is unarable for traditional food crops. While these may provide answers to questions about the impact on food supplies, there are many other questions to address.Many scientists are beginning to question whether biofuels will actually be able to help slow global warming, due to the indirect impact on land use worldwide required for the production of biofuels. The Wall Street Journal provided an example to illustrate this situation. If farmers in Brazil slash and burn more rainforest to grow food because land in the US is being used to grow grain for fuel, carbon dioxide emissions may actually increase overall. Corn-based ethanol has already been shown to increase greenhouse-gas emissions by 93% over using gasoline. Even biofuel made from switch grass grown on land that would otherwise have been used for growing corn would increase emissions by 50%. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to measure each biofuel's actual lifetime emissions to help determine which may have a positive impact on the environment, and weed out those that may be detrimental.
The emissions in question extend beyond carbon dioxide, however. A new study in Chemistry & Industry suggests that increasing the use of biodiesel worldwide may actually increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced. The study compared petroleum-based diesel to biodiesel made from rapeseed over the entire lifecycle of each fuel, from production to consumption. Surprisingly, both fuels emit about the same amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas biofuels are meant to address. However, the release of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is not released equally. Petroleum fuels release 85% of their greenhouse gases when burned in the engine, while over 60% of the emissions from biodiesel occur during farming of the crop. This is because agricultural fields release a large amount of nitrous oxide, something that is not a problem with petroleum. The study concluded that by running cars on traditional diesel and planting trees on the land that was intended to be used to grow the biodiesel crop, overall greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by one-third. A joint study between the University of California - Berkeley and Cornell University was done to determine whether distilling ethanol from corn, switch grass or wood biomass, and making biodiesel from soybean or sunflower plants can produce more energy output in the fuel than is consumed during production. The results:
However, this isn't the whole story. Yes, there are many situations where creating biofuel from biomass does not make sense, but who said it was necessary to turn everything we see into biofuels? It makes a lot more sense to have biofuels compete from an economic standpoint, being farmed from areas of land where nothing else will grow, and from plants that cannot be eaten anyway. Many of the early biofuel adopters have also discovered another ready source of biodiesel: fast food restaurants. While this certainly will never provide enough biofuel to make a dent in worldwide demand, it also doesn't have any negative impact on the environment. The fuel is sustainably grown and is used for food initially. Only after that utility is used up do we transform it into something that can power a vehicle as well.And there is plenty of room for other forms of biomass, as seen in the wood pellet-powered Precer Bioracer. The problem comes when we try to adapt our environment - in this case our farmland and rainforests - to meet the needs of our current technology - the internal combustion engine. If we adopted our current technology to suit our environment, we would create a situation that is much more sustainable. Another great example of this is the Woodgas Solar Camp Stove. iEnergy created the stove that can create the heat of a blast furnace using dead twigs gathered off the ground, and powered by a small solar panel. This innovative device doesn't even require planting new crops, and instead uses ambient biomass - fuel that otherwise would stay on the ground and create a greater risk of wildfires - in a safe and productive manner. What could be more sustainable than that? This article was produced by, and originally appeared on Biomass Authority here.
The emissions in question extend beyond carbon dioxide, however. A new study in Chemistry & Industry suggests that increasing the use of biodiesel worldwide may actually increase the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced. The study compared petroleum-based diesel to biodiesel made from rapeseed over the entire lifecycle of each fuel, from production to consumption. Surprisingly, both fuels emit about the same amount of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas biofuels are meant to address. However, the release of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is not released equally. Petroleum fuels release 85% of their greenhouse gases when burned in the engine, while over 60% of the emissions from biodiesel occur during farming of the crop. This is because agricultural fields release a large amount of nitrous oxide, something that is not a problem with petroleum. The study concluded that by running cars on traditional diesel and planting trees on the land that was intended to be used to grow the biodiesel crop, overall greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by one-third. A joint study between the University of California - Berkeley and Cornell University was done to determine whether distilling ethanol from corn, switch grass or wood biomass, and making biodiesel from soybean or sunflower plants can produce more energy output in the fuel than is consumed during production. The results:- Corn requires 29% more energy than is produced
- Switch grass requires 45% more energy than is produced
- Wood biomass requires 57% more energy than is produced
- Soybeans require 27% more energy than is produced
- Sunflower seeds require 118% more energy than is produced
However, this isn't the whole story. Yes, there are many situations where creating biofuel from biomass does not make sense, but who said it was necessary to turn everything we see into biofuels? It makes a lot more sense to have biofuels compete from an economic standpoint, being farmed from areas of land where nothing else will grow, and from plants that cannot be eaten anyway. Many of the early biofuel adopters have also discovered another ready source of biodiesel: fast food restaurants. While this certainly will never provide enough biofuel to make a dent in worldwide demand, it also doesn't have any negative impact on the environment. The fuel is sustainably grown and is used for food initially. Only after that utility is used up do we transform it into something that can power a vehicle as well.And there is plenty of room for other forms of biomass, as seen in the wood pellet-powered Precer Bioracer. The problem comes when we try to adapt our environment - in this case our farmland and rainforests - to meet the needs of our current technology - the internal combustion engine. If we adopted our current technology to suit our environment, we would create a situation that is much more sustainable. Another great example of this is the Woodgas Solar Camp Stove. iEnergy created the stove that can create the heat of a blast furnace using dead twigs gathered off the ground, and powered by a small solar panel. This innovative device doesn't even require planting new crops, and instead uses ambient biomass - fuel that otherwise would stay on the ground and create a greater risk of wildfires - in a safe and productive manner. What could be more sustainable than that? This article was produced by, and originally appeared on Biomass Authority here.
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Hi Dave,
Since you're quoting the work of Cornell entomologist, David Pimental, I thought you should know a little more about him. He and his publishing partner, Tad Patzek, are the frequently-quoted yet nearly anonymous authors who have written virtually every paper critical of biofuels in the past 15 years. They must use some form of new math because it contradicts every other researcher who has bothered to write on the topic. Here's an eye-opening description of Pimentel from Robert Zubrin's excellent book, Energy Victory:
"Who Is David Pimentel?
But how could such a distinguished professor from such a distinguished university be so wrong? This is a very interesting question, the answer to which must surely have horrified Hassett and any other Pimentel-quoting free enterpriser who bothered to look into the matter.
Pimentel is not just an opponent of ethanol production. He is also an opponent of beef production. He is an opponent of the use of pesticides and of modem agriculture in general, which he has attacked with an endless stream of defective papers since 1974. He denounces industry as well, in one paper making the wild claim that "we have calculated that an estimated 40 percent of world deaths can be attributed to various environmental factors, especially organic and chemical pollutants." He is also highly critical of housecats and pet dogs, which he deplores as "alien species" introduced into North America. He's against human immigrants, too-both legal and illegal. And then there are babies. Pimentel believes there should be fewer of them. Much fewer.
David Pimentel is a radical Malthusian. According to Pimentel, the earth has a maximum "carrying capacity" of 2 billion people, and the United States of 100 million people, and the populations of both must be reduced accordingly. This, according to Pimentel, can best be accomplished by "democratically determined population control practices." Using such methods, he says, the average birthrate can be reduced to 1.5 children per couple. The average standard of living in the United States will also have to be cut in half. "None of these solutions, unfortunately, will be painless," says Pimentel. No doubt.
In 2004 Pimentel ran for the board of the Sierra Club on a joint slate with forrner Colorado governor Richard Lamm, himself noteworthy for his advocacy of early life termination of the elderly. The platform of the Pimentel-Lamrn slate was to save the American environment by putting a halt to all immigration, and their campaign promptly received the enthusiastic support of a broad array of extremist organizations, including some with openly racist or neoNazi affiliations. This situation so alarmed the leadership of the Sierra Club that Executive Director Carl Pope put out a general alert to the membership to stop the takeover of the organization by "racist hate groups." Some of Pimentel's more ardent fans responded by branding his Sierra Club opponents with anti-Semitic epithets.
Of course, the fact that Pimentel's supporters include neo-Nazis doesn't necessarily make him one. However, as documented by journalist Betsy Hartmann in a New Scientist interview titled "The Greening of Hate," the distinguished professor from Cornell seems to place himself repeatedly on the boards of various obscure journals and organizations in company with some very questionable figures. For example, Pimentel is a member of the board of directors of the extreme Malthusian anti-immigrant Carrying Capacity Network (CCN). Self proclaimed "white separatist" Virginia Abernethy is the CCN's chairman of the board. With respect to the energy issue, the CCN's viewpoint is simple: Our problem is not that we don't have enough fuel, but that we have too many people. Get rid of the extra people, and the problem will be solved.
Environmentalists come in two varieties: prohuman and antihuman. Prohuman environmentalists seek practical solutions for real problems in order to enhance the environment for the benefit of humanity. Antihuman environmentalists seek to make use of instances of inadvertent human damage to nature as an ideological weapon on behalf of the age-old reactionary thesis that humans are nothing but vermin whose aspirations need to be contained and suppressed by tyrannical overlords to preserve a divinely ordained static natural (and social) order. This is the fundamental premise of Malthusian ideology, whose twentieth-century descendants notably include not only antihuman environmentalism but also Nazism. The same bestialist view of human nature is also the ultimate root of Islamofascism, so, as we will discuss in greater detail in the final chapter, it's not surprising to find them all in the same camp.
The Sierra Club includes both types of environmentalists, as well as many people who join it simply to participate in its outdoor activities. By naming humans as such, rather than specific human activities, as the enemies of nature, the Pimentel-Lamm campaign was an attempt to purge the Sierra Club of its humanistic currents and turn the nation's flagship environmental organization into a fascist juggernaut. Fortunately, the antihuman ticket lost. "