Biofuels and Mitigation/Adaptation
April 15th, 2008Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
In Europe the debate over biofuels production targets has become the most recent example of the larger debate over mitigation versus adaptation. Biofuels have been held up by some as offering a carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels, and thus contributing in some way to the mitigation of climate change. The European Union has gone so far as to adopt biofuel production targets.
At the same time the world has seen food prices increase dramatically in recent times with some people pointing a finger at biofuels as contributing to those price increases. The increased price of food means that those with the most tenuous access to nutrition could slip into malnutrition or worse. This is why one UN official called biofuels production policies a “crime against humanity.”
Deutsche Welle has a nice overview:
The European Union said it is sticking to its biofuel goals despite mounting criticism from top environmental agencies and poverty advocates.
“There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels,” Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said Monday, April 14.
But her boss struck a different tone, acknowledging that the EU had underestimated problems caused by biofuels and saying that the 27-nation block planned to “move very carefully.”
Yet the EU is wary of abandoning biofuels amid worries that doing so could derail its landmark climate change and energy package. In it, Europe pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020. Part of the package includes setting a target for biofuels to make up 10 percent of automobile fuel.
Biofuel a culprit in food crisis
Jean ZieglerBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Ziegler called biofuel a “crime against humanity”
In recent months food prices have increased sharply. Biofuels are seen as one of several culprits. Land that used to be planted with food crops has been converted to biofuel production, which has increased prices.
UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told German radio Monday that the production of biofuels is “a crime against humanity” because of its impact on global food prices.
The UN’s Ziegler isn’t alone in his criticism of biofuel.
The debate over biofuels illustrates that the debate over mitigation and adaptation is not just academic, but reflected in real world outcomes. It also highlights that policies can have unintended consequences. If we factor in recent research that claims that the carbon-cutting potential of biofules has been overstated, then it appears that the high hopes for biofuels as a contributor to mitigation probably need to be scaled back dramatically.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:20 am
It is interesting to me that this debate is framed as pro and con “biofuels.” We all know that it is possible to make biofuels from other material than food crops, and to make it from land where it is impossible to grow food crops. Technology is in development to make it from residues of various kinds, including cellulosic (trees, etc). So when we characterize “biofuels” as competing with food, are we throwing the policy baby out with the bathwater? And mysteriously to me, why is the issue being framed this way? Can’t we agree that some biofuels are less environmentally and socially damaging, and others more so?
April 15th, 2008 at 8:14 am
As of today, car fuel in the UK must contain 2.5% biofuel, as part of misguided government ‘targets’, despite widespread criticism. See
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347142.stm
At the risk of stating the obvious, a car using biofuel still emits the same amount of carbon. The claimed benefit is that the plants absorb the CO2 from the air, but so did the plants that were there before, so this argument is largely bogus. The rush to biofuels has accelerated the destruction of rainforest in Brazil and Indonesia. Other factors are the high energy (and hence CO2) costs of the fuel extraction process, transport, and the high levels of artificial fertiliser needed. All this in addition to the impact on food prices.
There is no easy way out of our unsustainable way of life.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am
“At the risk of stating the obvious, a car using biofuel still emits the same amount of carbon.”
It does, indeed. Possibly more. But where does that carbon come from? A field down the road that was planted last year? An oil well in the North Sea with plants that were fossilised many millennia ago?
Biofuels are not intended to take carbon out of transport but fossil carbon. In equilibrium, biofuels could puff out as much CO2 in a year as the crops that fuel them soak up.
Whether or not this is a realistic scenario is, of course, another matter.
The idea that biofuels compete with food is, indeed, bogus. Some biofuel plants create at least two products. One is bioethanol. The other is, get this, animal food.
Get your technology right and you can produce just as much animal food as you would if you did not process the crop. Piling on the irony, that animal food can be richer in protein than the original crop, reducing the need to chuck in imported protein supplements.
As with many things, then, knees jerking all over the place have little to do with technical reality. But who wants to spoil a good argument with uncomfortable facts?
All this means is that some biofuels are better than others, and the way to differentiate them is to conduct a thorough sustainability assessment.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:08 am
“At the risk of stating the obvious, a car using biofuel still emits the same amount of carbon.”
It does, indeed. Possibly more. But where does that carbon come from? A field down the road that was planted last year? An oil well in the North Sea with plants that were fossilised many millennia ago?
Biofuels are not intended to take carbon out of transport but fossil carbon. In equilibrium, biofuels could puff out as much CO2 in a year as the crops that fuel them soak up.
Whether or not this is a realistic scenario is, of course, another matter.
The idea that biofuels compete with food is, indeed, bogus. Some biofuel plants create at least two products. One is bioethanol. The other is, get this, animal food.
Get your technology right and you can produce just as much animal food as you would if you did not process the crop. Piling on the irony, that animal food can be richer in protein than the original crop, reducing the need to chuck in imported protein supplements.
As with many things, then, knees jerking all over the place have little to do with technical reality. But who wants to spoil a good argument with uncomfortable facts?
All this means is that some biofuels are better than others, and the way to differentiate them is to conduct a thorough sustainability assessment.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Apologies for the duplicate. The web site told me it had experienced an error.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
See: Algae: ‘The ultimate in renewable energy’
at http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/01/algae.oil/
Vertical algae farms “can produce about 100,000 gallons of algae oil a year per acre, compared to about 30 gallons per acre from corn; 50 gallons from soybeans”, and would likely mitigate against detrimental land cover changes in the future. Still, attention should be paid to the nitrate wastes from fertilization regardless of the product grown for biofuel purposes (recall the New Jersey size “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico brought on by the rush of US farmers to cash in on ethanol production).
April 16th, 2008 at 5:57 am
Not to be repetitious here, but there are many potential sources of biofuels that don’t require fertilization.
Again, I am concerned that biofuels are getting a bad reputation right now because of the corn cropping system. Biofuels are so much broader than that, and we can breed plants and design cropping systems any way we want for sustainability, including without fertilizers. And generally wood available for biofuels has not been fertilized.
So I agree with Michael, a sustainability assessment of a particular source of biofuel needs to be done before we could calculate the environmental costs and benefits. What surprises me about this discourse at the broader policy level is the swinging of the pendulum from biofuels are good to bad without stopping by the answer to this question “why not design them to be good, if you think they are bad?”