"Biofuels can be good," says UN; scientists not so sure

Posted by jamie — 16 November 2007 at 6:22pm - Comments

The head of the UN Environment Programme has warned that the biofuel market could crash if suitable environmental standards aren't established. According to the BBC, "Achim Steiner... said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed." The story also picked out Indonesia's tropical peatlands for special mention of what it terms "biofuel folly". (Nice phrase, I'll have to remember that one!)

Mind you, Steiner was making those comments in response to an independent group of scientists who criticsied the stance taken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on biofuels, which was described as "naive".

"One of the scientists, Tad Patzek from University of California Berkeley, US, said: "In the long-run, the planet cannot afford to produce biofuels because we're going to run out of the land and water and environmental resources. In addition, because of the land use changes, drying up peat-swamps, burning tropical forest, these biofuels involve up-front enormous emissions of greenhouse gases that will never be recouped by their later use," he told BBC News."

There's also a link to a neat primer on the history and nature of biofuels which I haven't come across before, giving some context to the environmental debate. As anyone who saw QI the other week will know, Rudolph Diesel (inventor of the engine, not the jeans) designed vehicles to run on biofuels, not petrochemical ones - a good one to remember for pub quizzes.

Article tagged as: biofuels, climate change, deforestation, forests, indonesia, IPCC
Comments Commenting is now closed

The concept of carbon capture may have been demonstrated technically, but whether it's commercially viable is another matter and no one has proven that yet.

Gordon Brown's speech earlier this week made reference to a project that will "explore options for demonstrating CCS with coal fired power generation in China". Note that he was talking about merely exploring options, not actually building a CCS system.

That and "a competition to build in Britain one of the world's first commercial CCS coal projects, demonstrating the full chain of CO2 capture, transport and storage" means that it hasn't been done yet. Betting our future on technology we don't even have yet (at least, not in a form any commercial operation will use) is just daft.

I'm not disputing the theory of carbon-negative biofuels, but at the moment it's just that - a theory. And surely the scale of operations needed to make a real dint in CO2 levels would bring you back to the problem of available land, deforestation and food security.

Why twiddle our thumbs waiting for a techno-fix to become viable when there are practical fixes (energy efficiency, combined heat and power etc etc) that we can implement right now to cut our emissions? It just creates the illusion that we can pretty much carry on as we are with business as usual when we need fundamental, wholesale changes to the way we live.

web editor
gpuk

By jamie - 22 November 2007 at 12:19pm

Interesting stuff on the source of the letter, thanks for pointing that out. I was referencing the BBC's story and hadn't gone to the trouble of looking further into the credentials of Patzek et al but here's an example of some of his earlier work. Sloppy on my part so I've also made a strikeout on the story above.

Dubious motives aside, the point about biofuels not being viable in the long term is, I think, still valid - at least, not on the scale being proposed. The commitments by various nations to biofuel targets (10 per cent in the EU and 15 per cent in China by 2020) are going to put more pressure on developing economies to turn over cheap land (eg rainforests and peatlands) over to agriculture; in fact, it's already happening - see our report, Cooking the Climate. But if there's evidence around suggesting that biofuel crops can ease poverty and (I'm not sure how this works) hunger, can you provide links to the research?

I'd also question the carbon negative idea. Carbon capture and storage is unproven technology even on the coal-fired power stations it's normally associated with, and if it works it won't capture the emissions generated by the use of agrochemicals, transporting the harvested crops, refining them and transporting the fuel to the point of sale. Unless, that is, renewable or sustainable energy is used at every step of the way.

But we're not anti-biofuels per se; what we don't want to see is a rush to use them en masse on the basis that they'll allow us to continue using cars and other transport at the same levels we do now while reducing our carbon emissions. A limited use of properly-regulated biofuels can make a small contribution to emissions reductions, but they're not the magic green bullet they're being made out to be.

But do watch the assumptions you make: your suggestion that I or anyone else at Greenpeace wants to keep people in poverty and help them "die quicker" is misguided at best, gob-smackingly offensive at worst.

web editor
gpuk

By jamie - 20 November 2007 at 6:13pm

The concept of carbon capture may have been demonstrated technically, but whether it's commercially viable is another matter and no one has proven that yet. Gordon Brown's speech earlier this week made reference to a project that will "explore options for demonstrating CCS with coal fired power generation in China". Note that he was talking about merely exploring options, not actually building a CCS system. That and "a competition to build in Britain one of the world's first commercial CCS coal projects, demonstrating the full chain of CO2 capture, transport and storage" means that it hasn't been done yet. Betting our future on technology we don't even have yet (at least, not in a form any commercial operation will use) is just daft. I'm not disputing the theory of carbon-negative biofuels, but at the moment it's just that - a theory. And surely the scale of operations needed to make a real dint in CO2 levels would bring you back to the problem of available land, deforestation and food security. Why twiddle our thumbs waiting for a techno-fix to become viable when there are practical fixes (energy efficiency, combined heat and power etc etc) that we can implement right now to cut our emissions? It just creates the illusion that we can pretty much carry on as we are with business as usual when we need fundamental, wholesale changes to the way we live. web editor gpuk

By jamie - 22 November 2007 at 12:19pm

Interesting stuff on the source of the letter, thanks for pointing that out. I was referencing the BBC's story and hadn't gone to the trouble of looking further into the credentials of Patzek et al but here's an example of some of his earlier work. Sloppy on my part so I've also made a strikeout on the story above. Dubious motives aside, the point about biofuels not being viable in the long term is, I think, still valid - at least, not on the scale being proposed. The commitments by various nations to biofuel targets (10 per cent in the EU and 15 per cent in China by 2020) are going to put more pressure on developing economies to turn over cheap land (eg rainforests and peatlands) over to agriculture; in fact, it's already happening - see our report, Cooking the Climate. But if there's evidence around suggesting that biofuel crops can ease poverty and (I'm not sure how this works) hunger, can you provide links to the research? I'd also question the carbon negative idea. Carbon capture and storage is unproven technology even on the coal-fired power stations it's normally associated with, and if it works it won't capture the emissions generated by the use of agrochemicals, transporting the harvested crops, refining them and transporting the fuel to the point of sale. Unless, that is, renewable or sustainable energy is used at every step of the way. But we're not anti-biofuels per se; what we don't want to see is a rush to use them en masse on the basis that they'll allow us to continue using cars and other transport at the same levels we do now while reducing our carbon emissions. A limited use of properly-regulated biofuels can make a small contribution to emissions reductions, but they're not the magic green bullet they're being made out to be. But do watch the assumptions you make: your suggestion that I or anyone else at Greenpeace wants to keep people in poverty and help them "die quicker" is misguided at best, gob-smackingly offensive at worst. web editor gpuk

By jamie - 20 November 2007 at 6:13pm

About Jamie

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

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