Biofuels: green dream or climate change nightmare?

Posted by jamie — 9 May 2007 at 12:00am - Comments

As you may have already seen, along with WWF, the RSPB, Friends of the Earth and enoughsenough.org, we've placed an advert in several of today's papers warning the government about the environmental risks of biofuels as an alternative to petrol and diesel. Hang on, I imagine some of you are saying right now, aren't they supposed to be clean and green with the power to save us from the tyranny of fossil fuels? Well, yes... and no.

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Biofuels such as ethanol (a petrol replacement that Brazil is doing so much to champion) and biodiesel can indeed have advantages over more traditional fuel sources. Made from processed agricultural crops such as sugar cane and oil palm, burning biofuels only releases the carbon dioxide those plants absorbed during their lifecycle, not massive quantities of compressed, fossilised carbon that has been locked out of the carbon cycle for millions of years. So naturally, they could form part of the solution to climate change, at least if it doesn't take a huge amount of energy to actually make them which is sometimes the case.

The battle between cars and people

As a result, the government has grabbed onto biofuels like a drowning sailor and in the proposed Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) is insisting that all fuel companies increase the amount of biofuels they supply. Sounds like a great idea, until you look at how they're produced. As George Monbiot has been pointing out for several years (see here, here and, more recently, here), if their production isn't properly monitored and controlled, it could spell disaster for rainforests, our own food and water supplies and even climate change.

I know it's stating the bloody obvious but these crops need to be grown somewhere. There's a finite amount of arable land on the planet and most, if not all, of that is already being used to feed the 6 billion plus population. Monbiot points out that if we rely on crops for our fuel supplies, it will "set up a competition for food between cars and people" and that crop prices are already rising as a result. As food becomes more and more expensive, you can bet it won't be those sitting behind the wheel of a 4x4 going hungry.

With prices for biofuel crops rising ever higher as demand increases, the temptation to open up new areas of arable land is just too great. Illegal timber isn't the only reason the rainforests of south-east Asia are being torn down, and in Indonesia vast areas that were once virgin forest are being replanted with palms, the oil from which goes into a multitude of supermarket products and, increasingly, biofuels. With species such as orang-utans already highly endangered, the expansion of oil palm plantations into their remaining habitat could be the final straw.

Deforestation = climate change

The link between deforestation and accelerated climate change is well-established, not least in the Stern Review which said that 18 per cent of emissions are as a result of forest destruction. Another fact in our own press release that caught my eye is that biodiesel from soya grown on deforested land would take 200 years before it could be considered 'carbon neutral'.

But to even attempt to meet the world's current fuel demands, colossal tracts of land would need to be turned over to biofuel production so the irony is that instead of reducing emissions, this supposedly 'green' alternative could actually be increasing them by an order of magnitude.

So what's the answer? Do we now campaign for an immediate ban on all biofuels? No, because as I mentioned above they can offer part of the solution. However, the government's RTFO needs to ensure that biofuels do actually reduce climate change emissions and that forests and other valuable habitats aren't bulldozed to grow them. But even more importantly, we need to be using less fuel in the first place by making our vehicles more efficient and, wherever possible, getting out of our cars and onto buses, trains, bicycles or Shanks's pony.

So that's something we can all do right there: if you have a car, it should be the most efficient model available. You could also use it less, and start cycling or walking more. If you've done all of that, there's still something you can do: the government is asking for people's views about biofuels so we all have a chance to influence what goes into the RTFO.

Send a email to the transport minister, Stephen Ladyman, telling him that we need for rigorous controls on biofuels. Otherwise the green dream really will become a nightmare.

I wasn't trying to make a distinction between 'good' and 'bad' CO2 (and you're right - such an idea is nonsense), but there's no denying the net effect of burning biofuels compared with that of burning fossil fuels is very different.

In the less than 150 years, we've released vast quantities of carbon (in the form of carbon dioxide) that has been locked out of the carbon cycle for millions of years in the form of oil, coal and other fossilised deposits. By doing this over a very short space of time, geologically speaking, we're unbalancing this natural process to the point where we've saturating the atmosphere with CO2 and its resulted in climate change.

Biofuels, on the other hand, are only releasing the carbon accumulated during the lifetime of the plant in question. So while ethanol does indeed release CO2, it's considered carbon neutral because that CO2 would have been removed from the atmosphere only a few months or years beforehand. The net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere hasn't increased and as jdelavegal points out above, a mature forest is also carbon neutral, absorbing as much CO2 as it releases.

And while hydrogen fuels might be part of a good energy mix, I don't think nuclear power is the way forward.

web editor
gpuk

If we could power everything on old chip fat, the world would indeed be a better place. The sad thing is that, unless we all become morbidly obese, there isn't enough of it to fuel the nation's cars.

Shame.

web editor
gpuk

If you could provide the address of your web page, I'd be happy to.

web editor
gpuk

I didn't mention the emissions related to fertilisers, pesticides etc which absolutely, they do need to be taken into account. But the line you quoted was indicating the standpoint used to justify the use of biofuels and their reduced emissions when burnt compared to fossil fuels, not an indication of the emissions generated over the complete lifecycle.

And further on, that was my point - even without factoring in fertilisers and so on, the emissions caused by the forest clearance that's taking place to clear land for biofuel cultivation hadn't, until relatively recently, been taken into account either. So without proper sustainability controls and (as you point out) appreciation of emissions over the full lifecycle of any biofuel, they may have no benefit and may even have higher emissions than more traditional fuel sources.

I'm afraid I'm a bit fuzzy on entropy and thermodynamics though so I'll have to take your word for it :)

web editor
gpuk

If you could provide the address of your web page, I'd be happy to. web editor gpuk

I didn't mention the emissions related to fertilisers, pesticides etc which absolutely, they do need to be taken into account. But the line you quoted was indicating the standpoint used to justify the use of biofuels and their reduced emissions when burnt compared to fossil fuels, not an indication of the emissions generated over the complete lifecycle. And further on, that was my point - even without factoring in fertilisers and so on, the emissions caused by the forest clearance that's taking place to clear land for biofuel cultivation hadn't, until relatively recently, been taken into account either. So without proper sustainability controls and (as you point out) appreciation of emissions over the full lifecycle of any biofuel, they may have no benefit and may even have higher emissions than more traditional fuel sources. I'm afraid I'm a bit fuzzy on entropy and thermodynamics though so I'll have to take your word for it :) web editor gpuk

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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