On the Subject of Bio Fuels

Bio-Fools is becoming a catch phrase in the growing case against the bio fuel advocators.
Globally the European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. Biofuels production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and other government leaders are publicly still buying into the whole misguided conception that human endeavor can reverse climate change. That topic provides a whole other issue and body of scientific evidence that is a closely related but biofuel is the focus of this commentary.

The evidence that will be cited here at the very least clarifies the opportunity for Canadian government leaders to make their political decisions based on more than the house of cards built in the last few years by people such as Al Gore and David Suzuki.
The global spin gains momentum when organizations like the European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel. The negative factors to this statement have only been footnotes in the calculations that substantiate them.

Two recent studies further bring this issue to the forefront of the bio fuel buzz. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science 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. Timothy Searchinger is the lead author of one of the studies and a prominent researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University. His study details how 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. The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy. In the wake of these new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’ most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists sent a letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of biofuels policies.

Vegetable oil prices are going up globally because of increased demand for biofuel crops.
More new land is being cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits.
Existing crops go for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.
U.S. Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.
Compounding these issues: tax credits for ethanol. The cost of reducing CO2 emissions through this subsidy exceeded $1,700 per ton of CO2 avoided in 2006 and the cost of reducing oil consumption over $85 per barrel according to the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S.

Here is another issue presented by Paul Crutzen, Nobel chemistry prize winner. He claims that corn-based biofuels could in fact be much worse due to the NO2 emissions caused by fertilizer application.

Farming for biofuel production is helping fertilizer company stocks be a hot buy for 2008. Companies such as the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan, the worlds largest supplier of such products enjoyed record profits and a more than doubling of share prices in 2007 due to demand for their products.

Globally there are numerous negative factors that are not getting much visibility when compared to news items such as British billionaire Richard Branson announcing plans to run biofuel in his passenger jets. Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd., the U.K. carrier controlled by Branson, is preparing to fly a plane powered by biofuel, the first in commercial aviation. Boeing is also expressing some public interest in this direction.

On the other hand high environmental impacts of bio fuels are not sparkly news items.
A study by leading scientists in Switzerland exposed the environmental impacts of biofuels caused by increased agricultural cultivation. In moderate latitudes low crop yields, cause intensive fertilizer use and mechanized tilling that cause the unfavorable environmental impacts and increased soil acidification. In tropical regions agriculture development causes biodiversity loss, the clear-cutting of rainforests agriculture sets great quantities of CO2 free and causes air pollution. Pesticides such as Daconate used in Brazilian sugar cane bioethanol production contains a lot of arsenic causing harmful toxicity.

The results of this study show on the whole that promoting biofuels, for instance, through a tax break, must be done in a differentiated way because all biofuels do not reduce environmental impact as compared to fossil fuels. The report downplays the potential of domestic bioenergy and concludes it will remain so in future. The report says if energy plants were cultivated in Switzerland on a large scale, it would have a negative influence on the food self-sufficiency of the country, or would cause added environmental impact by requiring the intensification of food production. This report comes from a Switzerland, a country that is seeking to increase bio fuel consumption.

Globally, staples such as pasta in Italy, corn based breads in some of the poorest countries and barley for beer are increasing in price partly because cheap nutritious food products are being converted in an inefficient energy source.
A team of UK-based scientists recently suggested that reforestation and habitat protection was a better option. Writing in Science, they said forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could achieve on the same area of land. The growth of biofuels was also leading to more deforestation, they added. "The prime reason for the renewables obligation was to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions," said Renton Righelato, one of the study's co-authors. "In our view this is a mistaken policy because it is less effective than reforesting," he told BBC News. Dr Righelato, chairman of the World Land Trust, added that the policy could actually lead to more deforestation as nations turned to countries outside of the EU to meet the growing demand for biofuels.
Experts at the World Water Week conference in Stockholm voiced concern that growing food crops to be used to make biofuels could jeopardize water supplies. "When governments and companies are discussing biofuel solutions, I think water issues are not addressed enough," Johan Kuylenstierna, director of the annual conference, told AFP.
Recently in the Smithsonian magazine, Richard Conniff attacked the bio-fuels industry. Food price inflation ("Cargill's chief predicted that reallocation of farmland due to biofuel incentives could combine with bad weather to cause food shortages around the world"); CO2 pollution ("when ethanol refineries burn coal to provide heat for fermentation, emissions are up to 20 percent worse for the environment than gasoline"); supply unreliability ("Switching to corn ethanol also risks making us dependent on a crop that's vulnerable to drought and disease"); soil erosion ("…growing corn requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. It contributes to massive soil erosion, and it is the main source, via runoff in the Mississippi River, of a vast "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico"); and wildlife destruction ("The United Nations recently predicted that 98 percent of Indonesia's forests will be destroyed within the next 15 years, partly to grow palm oil").

Europeans, who have been on the environmental bandwagon much longer than in North America, get a substantial percentage of their energy from nuclear power whereas a new nuclear plant hasn’t been built in North America in a generation. That conveniently is a non factor in their carbon foot print.
It is an important question whether or not Canadian politicians will respond to this evidence. This is not secret information. It is factual reality and needs to be validated by politicians with the fortitude to bring it to the forum of public debate. Not be intimidated by the likes of David Suzuki when he says those who do not agree with him should be thrown in jail.
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton would raise the national renewable fuels goal from the current level of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012 to 36 billion gallons per year by 2022 and to 60 billion gallons by 2030. “Advanced biofuels,” such as cellulosic ethanol, would comprise an increasing share of that target over time. Hillary will set a greenhouse gas emissions target for cellulosic and other advanced biofuels to ensure that they move over time towards a standard of emitting at least 80% less greenhouse gas as compared to gasoline. In addition, she would provide loan guarantees to spur the first two billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol capacity. This is flawed logic.

If all the corn produced in America in 2005 were dedicated to ethanol production (and only 14.3 percent of it was), U.S. gasoline consumption would have dropped by only 12 percent. For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline all U.S. cropland would have to turn over to ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that.

Here in Canada it is very disconcerting to say the least when our highly respected Prime Minister Harper sidles up to this kind of political logic. It is the flavor of the day for environmental lobbies to talk about dirty oil from the oil sands in Western Canada and bizarre carbon storage plans. Who in Canada is talking about for instance, the future of nuclear energy production?
The PBMR(pebble bed nuclear reactor) could leverage gas by 30%, and coal by 100%, an especially significant statistic when applied against recoverable hydrocarbons from oil sands in Canada. The introduction of nuclear process heat into the world's energy market is happening in South Africa, China, Japan and to a lesser extent in the U.S.
PBMR technology could economically provide large amounts of heat in the range of 900 degrees. It is also the only carbon-dioxide-free source. Canada was once a world leader in nuclear technology but doesn’t appear to have any political will to move toward reestablishing this position.
We in Canada need strong hearted politicians who do not bow to ‘truthiness’ and stand up to public opinion that resembles lemmings lunging after the headlines on the 6 o’clock news. Our Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejuvenated global respect for Canada and the issue of energy needs to be tackled from this high ground not the mushy swamp of ‘inconvenient truths’ that are so easy to step into because sometimes it seems like such a harmless thing to do..