BIOFUELS

Where Did Biofuels Go?

New Studies Raise Environmental Risks, Point to Sustainable Policies

To some, biofuels represent the future of renewable energy; to others, they represent everything that’s wrong with government subsidized industry boondoggles. For most clean technology advocates, however, opinions fall somewhere in the middle: mixed emotions-at best-about first-generation biofuels like corn and sugarcane ethanol, and hopes about more sustainable, second- and third-generation biofuels like cellulosic ethanol and algal biodiesel. Recent research continues to improve our understanding of the complex emissions calculus of trading biofuels for gasoline-along with the health and environmental impacts; and in the last few months, scientists have refined principles that can guide sustainable public policies.

Wherever you stand on this debate, it’s hard to deny that, as a whole, our national fervor for biofuels has cooled considerably over the past year-as has interest in the multitude of ethanol start-ups that sprung up to cash in on the craze, many of which now find themselves squeezed by the recession or, worse, bankrupt. What started as an attempt to make the country less reliant on foreign sources of fossil fuels in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks soon morphed into a mega-industry, buoyed by an administration and Congress eager to show off their “green” credentials.

Many congressmen saw it as a golden opportunity to bolster their electoral fortunes by pouring millions into politically influential agristates. In 2004, a young Democratic senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, praised corn ethanol as a vital component of our energy policy. “Instead of continuing to link our energy policy to foreign fields of oil, it should be linked to farm fields of corn,” he said during a Senate speech.

In the summer of 2005, Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which required refiners to blend 7.5 billion gallons of biofuels into gasoline by 2012; European Union nations followed suit in short order, pledging to obtain 10 percent of their transport fuels from biofuels by 2010. At the peak of the boom, investors were pouring tens of millions into a range of flashy new ventures, each more ambitious than the last. The overwhelming critical, and popular, reception that greeted Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth only made the appeal of green, renewable forms of energy more irresistible.

Even as refiners were busily erecting new plants to ride the investment craze, some among the scientific and environmental community were already beginning to sound the alarms about biofuels’ risks. For one, many pointed out that corn ethanol’s vaunted prowess in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was erroneous; indeed, when the fuel costs of growing corn and producing ethanol are taken into account, corn ethanol’s carbon footprint is actually larger than that of gasoline. To make matters worse, ethanol production is a terribly inefficient process, and shifting more land to cornfield has many detrimental environmental impacts, including increased soil erosion, higher fertilizer and pesticide use, and higher water consumption.

At first, these findings did little to diminish the enthusiasm for biofuels. Aside from some moderate hand-wringing, politicians kept the subsidy taps flowing; most investors didn’t even skip a beat. It wasn’t until global wholesale food prices began their sharp rise in 2008, prompting widespread concerns about food availability and starvation (particularly in developing countries), that governments and investors faced a popular backlash.

Reports published by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization and other international agencies concluded that, at best, biofuels would only offset a moderate share of fossil fuel consumption over the next decade and that their costs-in terms of deforestation, resource use and displaced food production-often outstripped their purported benefits.

Scientists have also warned that the health and environmental costs could be significant. A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that increased corn ethanol production would worsen the Gulf of Mexico “dead zone,” an area practically devoid of life that is the size of New Jersey. A more recent study published in the same journal found that the combined climate change and health costs associated with first generation ethanol production and combustion could greatly exceed those of gasoline if large tracts of agricultural land are displaced as a result-though, on the positive side, it did also find that cellulosic ethanol production from sustainable sources (prairie biomass, corn stover, or switchgrass) would drastically lower emission costs.

The primary objection raised against biofuel production is that it could cause widespread deforestation in tropical countries such as Indonesia, Brazil, and Malaysia. Holly Gibbs, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, cautioned at a recent scientific meeting that policies that favored biofuel crop production could worsen climate change by accelerating the destruction of rainforests. Brazil and Indonesia, which have two of the world’s most coveted first-generation biofuel crops (soybean and palm oil, respectively), have experienced a boom in production that has resulted in the conversion of large tracts of once lush rainforests into mono-crop farmlands. In Indonesia, palm oil production tripled during the 1990s and doubled again between 2000 and 2007.

According to Gibbs, the destruction of rainforests results in the release of more greenhouse gas emissions than are conserved through the use of current-generation biofuels, creating what is called a “carbon debt.” Because rainforests are some of the planet’s largest carbon reservoirs, storing over 340 billion tons in the aggregate, recouping the losses incurred by deforestation could take several centuries to millennia.

While doubts still abound about the future of biofuels, many scientists and environmentalists believe that an emphasis on sustainability can provide a viable path forward for biofuel production. An article co-authored by 23 scientists in the journal Science last year laid out several guiding principles for industry and legislators, advising them to consider both the environmental and politicoeconomic consequences of biofuel production and urging a rapid shift to cellulosic ethanol production.

Existing policies are inadequate, they warn, and risk altering the landscape of the planet for the worse if nothing changes. Embracing sustainability as a way of life need not mean banishing biofuels; it simply means revamping our current approach so that we recognize the national and international implications of our actions.

“Sustainable biofuel production systems could play a highly positive role in mitigating climate change, enhancing environmental quality, and strengthening the global economy, but it will take sound, science-based policy and additional research effort to make this so,” the authors conclude. In selecting Dr. Steven Chu, the former director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, to head up the Department of Energy, President Obama has given the sustainable biofuel movement a shot in the arm and made clear his intention to invest considerable resources into a robust renewable energy research agenda. By taking these recommendations to heart, Mr. Obama can begin to lay the groundwork for an enduring energy infrastructure that will far outlive his presidency.

Jeremy Jacquot is a graduate student in marine environmental biology at the University of Southern California and is a contributing writer for DeSmogBlog, Discover Magazine, and Popular Mechanics.

Tags: biofuels

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