I've suspected this for years now, but finally the science is proving it to be the case -- biofuels are not the answer to our energy problems, they're a huge (and growing) part of the problem. This week's Time Magazine cover story nails it, starting with its title -- "The Clean Energy Myth" (or, "The Clean Energy Scam" in the online edition). This really isn't that complicated:
...the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.[...]
This destructive biofuel dynamic is on vivid display in Brazil, where a Rhode Island--size chunk of the Amazon was deforested in the second half of 2007 and even more was degraded by fire. Some scientists believe fires are now altering the local microclimate and could eventually reduce the Amazon to a savanna or even a desert. "It's approaching a tipping point," says ecologist Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center.
Obviously, this is disastrous, so why are politicians pushing for more and more "biofuels" - in essence, chopping down rain forest and raising the price of food to hungry people in order to fuel our Hummers and SUVs?
Why is so much money still being poured into such a misguided enterprise? Like the scientists and environmentalists, many politicians genuinely believe biofuels can help decrease global warming. It makes intuitive sense: cars emit carbon no matter what fuel they burn, but the process of growing plants for fuel sucks some of that carbon out of the atmosphere...There was just one flaw in the calculation: the studies all credited fuel crops for sequestering carbon, but no one checked whether the crops would ultimately replace vegetation and soils that sucked up even more carbon. It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots. The deforestation of Indonesia has shown that's not the case. It turns out that the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels. A study by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman concluded that it will take more than 400 years of biodiesel use to "pay back" the carbon emitted by directly clearing peat lands to grow palm oil; clearing grasslands to grow corn for ethanol has a payback period of 93 years. The result is that biofuels increase demand for crops, which boosts prices, which drives agricultural expansion, which eats forests. Searchinger's study concluded that overall, corn ethanol has a payback period of about 167 years because of the deforestation it triggers.
Not every kernel of corn diverted to fuel will be replaced. Diversions raise food prices, so the poor will eat less. That's the reason a U.N. food expert recently called agrofuels a "crime against humanity."
The bottom line is not pretty for biofuels proponents:
...several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
In short, using food (and the land to grow it) for fuel is not the answer to our energy problems. Neither are non-food crops like switchgrass. In fact, as the Time Magazine cover story concludes, "biofuels aren't part of the solution at all. They're part of the problem."
Dr. Howard C. Hayden, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut laughs at the notion that wind power can ever make a significant contribution to our energy needs, "After all, since wind energy schemes have a thousand-year head start on fossil fuels, there must be some reason why wind makes so little contribution to our energy picture!" Indeed there is - Dr. Hayden explains, "To produce an average of 1000 MW, the power produced by any large conventional (coal, oil, nuclear, gas) power plant, would require about 833 square kilometers of wind turbines. That's the area of a mile-wide swath of land extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Multiply that by about 30 and you have California's electricity."After decades of embracing, supporting and subsidizing windmills, California now has 3,200 wind turbines. However, this made no difference at all to the state's recent energy crisis, as the net contribution of all of these wind turbines was still only about 1.1% of California's electricity. But what about if California had 100 times as many windmills? Could they get 100% of their power from windmills?
"Not a chance," says Dr. Hayden. "Most of the time, the windmills would produce very little power, and, of course, when there's no wind, there's no power at all. At those times, other power sources have to be ready to produce 100% of the power requirements so windmills do not allow any other power plants to be taken out of service. In the several times per year that the winds were strong enough that the windmills could produce their full capacity, the 320,000 hypothetical windmills would produce about five times as much power as California needed at the moment. Under those circumstances, about 80% of them would simply have to be turned off, because at all times the power put into the grid must equal the power consumed."
The story is similar with solar power. Dr. J. Terry Rogers, Carleton University Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering, has shown that an efficient solar plant would have to occupy over 600 square kilometres, about the same as that of Metro Toronto, to match the energy provided on a regular basis by the Pickering nuclear station. The construction of such massive solar plants would require millions of tons of concrete, steel and glass, the production of which would produce air pollution equivalent to several years of fossil fuel plant operation. These behemoths would also ruin the local natural environment for wildlife and could even upset local weather patterns due to ground reflectivity changes caused by the mirrors. Not surprisingly, Dr. Rogers maintains, "Solar energy can never be a significant contributor to large-scale energy needs in a major industrial country like Canada."But what about installing photovoltaic cells on the roofs of residential houses to collect the home's energy needs. Dr. Rogers shows that this too is vastly insufficient. "Assuming that the roof is oriented at the optimum angle for solar energy collection (most would not be), the average electrical energy produced in a day in December for a typical single-family dwelling in the Ottawa area would be about 10 kilowatt-hours, compared to a typical demand for an average December day of about 50 to 60 kilowatt-hours, ignoring space-heating needs," calculates Dr. Rogers. "If space-heating needs are included, the average daily demand in December would be more than 200 kilowatt-hours. Of course, the energy from the solar cells would not be available at night or on cloudy days."
Dr. Rogers concludes, "We should certainly use solar energy in applications where it makes practical and economic sense, such as designing houses to make better use of passive solar energy." But a major transition to solar energy is simply impossible, no matter how much wishful thinking environmentalists engage in.
Rogers is just completely wrong about the economics and technology of solar power. It's hard to even know where to start, he's so off base about amazing technologies like this. Also, see here and here.
Rogers and solar energy I much less about. However, I do know this: without huge government tax incentives and subsidies, home solar power generation is not cost-effective with the state of the technology today. It is much like hybrid cars. The total cost of ownership break-even point, when compared with a similar standard fuel vehicle, is out around year 6 or 7. Unless there is some kind of tax incentive or other motivator (such as HOV lane usage), there is no reason to buy one from a strictly economic point of view.
As long as Big Oil gives up its $807 billion a year:
King Coal and the oil barons like to pretend that their industries dominate the energy sector because their products are cheaper and more efficient than alternative fuels, giving them a competitive advantage in the free market. This is a myth. The dominance of fossil fuels is the direct result of corporate welfare and crony capitalism that would make a Nigerian dictator balk. Direct federal subsidies to Big Oil - everything from loan guarantees and research support to outright tax breaks and waived royalty fees - amount to as much as $17 billion a year. That taxpayer money distorts the marketplace, artificially lowering the price of gasoline and making it difficult for other fuels to compete. Little wonder that the oil industry was able to report profits of more than $137 billion last year.Hidden subsidies to the industry are even higher than the direct benefits it receives from our government. Studies show that oil pollution causes at least $4.6 billion in damages each year to crops, forests, rivers, buildings and monuments - destruction that Big Oil is not held liable for. The industry also fails to pick up the annual tab for the $54.7 billion that Americans pay to treat the host of debilitating illnesses caused by oil pollution. In addition, taxpayers spend as much as $100 billion each year to defend the industry's infrastructure around the world, maintaining bases in the Middle East and providing military escorts for oil tankers bound for America. And that does not include the more than $100 billion that the Pentagon has spent annually in Iraq since the war began - another expense that should appear on Big Oil's tally sheet.
According to Terry Tamminen, former director of the California EPA, the true costs of our oil dependence run as high as $807 billion a year - or $2,700 for every U.S. citizen. If all the hidden costs that Americans currently pay for oil were reflected in the price at the pump, gasoline would cost more than $13 a gallon. In short, taxpayers and consumers are essentially giving the oil industry a subsidy of $10 for every gallon of gas sold in America. If we simply eliminated those subsidies and created a truly free market, renewable sources of energy would beat oil - as well as nuclear power and coal, which receive equally grotesque subsidies. It is only through these giant subsidies that gasoline has a prayer of competing with alternative sources such as biofuels and wind, which produce energy far more cleanly and efficiently, at far less cost.
The potential in biofuels is the genetic and metabolic engineering of microbial organisms (bacteria, algae, yeasts) to produce ethanol, other biofuels, or even C6-C8 hydrocarbons from the direct fixation of atmospheric C02. Imagine growing algae in vats powered by sunlight (directly or indirectly) and pulling the carbon from the air and producing ethanol. This is the promise and future of biofuels.
Someone will figure this out in the next 10 years and become very, very rich.
P.S. The algae research is intriguing, in large part because growing algae doesn't take up precious land. Also, the energy conversion ratios I've seen for algae have been eye-popping.
Yeah, wrt algae and certain bacteria, the nirvana is getting the yields high enough that you won't take up any land. It's all about the genetics still, and algae research is behind the curve; we know a lot more about some carbon- and nitrogen-fixing bacteria (simpler genomes), but I think algae will be the eventual answer.
I kind of look at it as, we have about a 1/100 (and growing) chance of hitting the land-free, game-changing jackpot with an algae-based biofuel industry, where it really is carbon neutral. That would really be the jackpot, because we could then focus on wind/solar/nuclear/hydro/geo for our electric grid energy needs, and use the biofuels components for much of our transportation energy needs.
http://www.valcent.net/s/Ecote...
I'm not sure if this model is completely workable, but certainly it's way better than the corn model.
And, most importantly, I think researchers and the energy industry need to keep pushing in many directions, including bio-fuels. So don't give up on the bio-fuel thing, just say that the first attempt isn't good at all and keep looking for improvements to make it good (as well as investing in all the other possibilities).
It could be that diverse energy supplies are our future. While that's not as efficient as two or three, it could be the compromise we have to make in order to combat global warming.
The next step, which is more difficult but I believe biotechnologically feasible, is to have the algae DIRECTLY produce the ethanol -- e.g. cellularly produce ethanol and secrete it into the broth. Plants and yeasts already do this to a small extent (ethanol is produced in anaerobic growth), so the question is, how do you genetically engineer the organism to actually want to mass produce ethanol (by removing natural 'circuits' in the bacteria's physiological metabolism) while keeping it viable and robust. Not easy, but do-able.
That's the holy grail of biofuels, as that website alludes to. Mix air, sunlight, water, and salt, and get free fuel.
Thanks for the website link, Eric -- interesting read.
* Most Amazonian rainforest destruction is done to support increased cattle ranching and illegal logging. This is also true in indonesia.
* Look at the high plains aquifer, it didn't just start dropping when we decided to make the big push to ethanol, it has been dropping rapidly since the 1950s. Look at the colorado river delta. Look up the Great Snowy River project in Austrailia.
* None of these projects though can compare to mountain top removal by big coal, or the Alberta oil sands projects.
Finally for those who pull the food canard, I would like to point out that the only two "foods" really in trouble from ethanol are the big mac and a coke. Coke's number one ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. The big mac's is grain feed unhealthy beef that is killing you. Don't get me started on when grainfed instead of ranged chickens have done to the once healthy eggs.
The bottom line is this: biofuels are certainly not "great," and they're definitely not "green." And, actually, the scope of the problem here is far, far greater than the (big) problem of mountaintop removal. In this case, we're talking about the entire Amazon rainforest being wiped out.
http://www.mongabay.com/brazil...
As this report shows:
"Cattle ranching is the leading cause of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. This has been the case since at least the 1970s:government figures attributed 38 percent of deforestation from 1966-1975 to large-scale cattle ranching. However, today the situation may be even worse."
Saving the rainforest is a talking point, but as a means to save the rainforest there are tons of things which would have a substantially bigger impact.
Finally as I've said many time, current biofuel technologies are a transitional mechanism to the new greener systems that are about to come on line. Phase 1 build a biofuel based economy with autos, gas stations, distrubution and distallation facilities. Phase 2 market forces will force producers to move to lower cost, more abundant stocks such as algae and cellulose. It is an inevitability, and will be the great green revolution of our lifetimes. The only question is how much longer the oil companies get to shut us down.
http://www.americanfuels.info/...
http://www.foodandfuelamerica....
We are witnessing a giant PR war between Monsanto and the Pro-Ethanol forces and the API on the ohter side.