Earlier this month, two independent studies in the journal Science dropped a bomb into the already controversial world of biofuels. To cop the New York Times‘ lede, the studies found that:
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account…
Yesterday afternoon, when I finally got around to reading the articles, my chin hit the floor. The NYT was far too gentle: they don’t just show that biofuels have worse GHG emissions than gasoline, but drastically worse emissions—and for virtually every type of biofuel, including cellulosic ethanol (except in some highly specific conditions).
For really the first time, the studies are factoring in the carbon lost from land conversion. The authors argue (persuasively, in my opinion), that it’s crooked accounting to simply do a GHG analysis of crops versus petroleum. After all, the crops used for biofuels don’t grow in a vacuum. What really happens is that new land—Indonesian rainforest, Brazilian woodlands, American grassland — is cleared and ploughed to make way for biofuel feedstock crops. Existing agricultural land, of course, is already in production for food and fiber.
The clearing is a death sentence for wildlife in some of the most biodiverse places on earth. It also releases huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere—called the “carbon debt.” In fact, the carbon debt run up by land conversion is, in most cases, far more than is saved by subsituting biofuels for petroleum products. (Details on the studies’ are below the jump; abstracts are here and here.) It would take decades at best, centuries at worst, to repay the carbon debt. And this when we need steep emissions reductions now.
Look, I’m sure there will be further debate, and maybe even counter-studies. (The biofuels industry appears to be fighting back already.) But in a way, uncertainty could be the real problem for biofuels, as well as for the latest fad in climate policy, low-carbon fuel standards. Either biofuels are a climate catastrophe, as these studies indicate; or we have no idea what biofuels do to the climate because experts don’t agree. And that second option is the best case scenario, at least in the near term.
The worst case scenario, of course, is what the studies show. Corn ethanol is plain awful, needing many decades to repay its carbon debt even when planted in abandoned cropland. But corn ethanol is benign compared to biodiesel. The best biodiesel scenario from the study (soybeans planted on Brazilian grassland) would take nearly four decades to repay its carbon debt. Other biodiesel scenarios are even worse: palm oil planted on former southeast Asian tropical rainforest takes 86 years to repay its carbon debt; biodiesel from soybeans on tropical rainforest would take at least 300 years; biodiesel from palm oil on peatland rainforest would take more than 400.
To be fair, the authors point out that future generations of very specific kinds of cellulosic ethanol—municipal waste or desert algae, for example—could have positive GHG benefits. (And, presumably, the boutique biodiesel from french fry oil, which can never scale to meaningful production levels, is not quite so awful.) But the hope for a benign biofuel future is predicated on our demand for fuel not inducing futher land conversions. And that’s a very big “if.”
In any case, those future climate-friendly fuel sources are mostly hypotheticals. Real-world stuff isn’t so promising. I quote:
…if American corns fields of average yield were converted to switchgrass for [cellulosic] ethanol, replacing that corn would still trigger emissions from land use change that would take 52 years to pay back and increase emissions over 30 years by 50%.
Ouch.
I’m bearish on biofuels. And if you want my opinion, biofuels are really just the latest in a long line of Hail Mary’s that try to avoid ending Americans’ car addiction. There’s always a technological miracle around the corner—just wait a few more years—then we’ll have plug-in hybrids running off clean or surplus energy; then we’ll HyperCars or FreedomCars that can cross the continent on a tank; then we’ll have Segways that will revolutionize personal travel. I could go on. In the meantime, we avoid the bread and butter fixes we’ve known about for decades, and we keep sending ever greater amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
This is really happening. Right now, maybe the single biggest threat to good cap-and-trade programs like the Western Climate Initiative is that policymakers will avoid capping transportation fuels, which are easily our largest source of emissions. The latest attempt to punt involves adopting a low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS), which is supposed to be a big boon for biofuels. (Depending on its construction, an LCFS can work like a cap on absolute emissions or a cap on the intensity of emissions.) The LCFS would quantify the lifecycle carbon emissions of every fuel stream entering the economy. To begin with, that’s an analysis of mind-bending complexity. But now, in light of the new studies in Science, it appears that an honest LCFS would either favor conventional oil or simply be technically infeasible because the accounting is so incredibly complex.
Or—and this is the biggest danger—the LCFS would use an accounting like we’ve seen in the past: one that favors biofuels, but that downplays land conversion or other factors. In that case, the carbon reductions could be a chimera.
There is a very real chance that LCFS, or something like it, will trump a general cap on transportation emissions. If that happens I am going to start calling it cap-and-pray. Pray that some new miracle solution can keep us all in our cars with no climate consequences.
For the record, I don’t pretend to be an expert in biofuels or in life-cycle analysis. But remember, these are peer-reviewed papers by respected researchers in a top science journal. (And in case you’re wondering, the authors’ affiliations don’t indicate a prediliction to anti-ag positions; they hail from places like Iowa State University, the University of Minnesota, and the USDA.)
Finally, I’ve hunted around a little—not a lot—for counters to these studies. I couldn’t find much, but please do share if you know of any! In the meantime, my take is that the findings are damning, even if they’re not the last word on the subject.
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Postscript: A commenter points me to a letter from two government researchers that objects to one of the two studies (the Searchinger et al. study). To drastically summarize here, the letter makes the following principal claims: 1) US ethanol production won’t rearch the levels used in the study because of current legislation; 2) Average corn yields in the US and other countries will increase, meaning that le
ss land will be converted; 3) Brazil and China will not convert much additional land because of current legislation and practice in those countries; 4) Ethanol refining processes can become more efficient in the future; and 5) There’s a lot of biomass already available from forest growth, crop residues, and other sources.
Without spending too much more time on the keyboard for this post, I think that most of letter’s claims are debatable, at best. (But go read it for yourself, and tell me why I’m wrong!) In any case, the letter concludes by acknowledging what I take to be the central problem — uncertainty:
…indirect land use changes are much more difficult to model than direct land use changes… While scientific assessment of land use change issues is urgently needed in order to design policies that prevent unintended consequences from biofuel production, conclusions regarding the GHG emissions effects of biofuels based on speculative, limited land use change modeling may misguide biofuel policy development.
Exactly. But “limited land use change modeling” is what we’ve seen in the past. That’s what got us into biofuels. Uncertainty of this nature is a double-edged sword, one that should cut against biofuels until we’re confident they’re not a danger.
Corey N.
Excellent post. Land conversion has always been my biggest concern about biofuels, and that was before I even thought about impacts to the global carbon budget (increased demands on water supplies and habitat loss were my biggest worries). Global warming sucks up all the media attention these days, but in my mind, we can’t forget the effect our actions have on the rest of the natural environment as well. Am I more environmentally responsible if I fill my car with biodiesel but that biodiesel came from palm oil grown in cleared orangutan habitat? I know how I answer that… Anyway, I’m glad to see that people are starting to take a harder look at some of the assumptions behind biofuels.
public
Hi Eric,A letter criticizing the Science report is available here.I haven’t read it yet myself, so no insight into what it says.
Eric de Place
public, thanks for sharing! I’m bumping the letter up to a postscript in the main post.
calderhome
Biofuel production is shrinking the human food supply, causing water shortages, and accelerating topsoil erosion which leads to desertification of the planet. See: “The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!” http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.htmlGlobal food prices rise 40% in 2007 alone and will continue to rise quickly as food production is shrunk by ethanol and biodiesel expansion. Why are we paying more for fuel that is worse for the environment and starves people?
Arie v.
To add to what calderhome is saying, these food increases are regressive, impacting the poor and staples such as tortillas in Mexico. Unfortunately we are a nation that has learned to “New Deal” our way out of trouble in the past with works projects, increased subsidies and jobs. Biofuels provide the illusion of being able to do the same for the energy crisis. Simply reducing consumption would be un-American.
Rich
Great post. I agree we are postponing the end of our car addiction with all this biofuels talk. Why are so many bright minds obsessed with keeping the cars running? Does it have something to do with sunken costs? Are we forcing down that bushel of rotten apples we bought?
sf
There is some (maybe not too significant) biomass available from eating less meat, feeding existing corn to refineries instead of livestock.
revjessecard
In reply to sf about reducing biomass available:(all number from the USDA ’01/’02)The US has 349 million acres cultivated with crops. About two Montanas-worth. Four crops make up 80% of this; feeder corn (80 million acres), soybeans (75 million acres), alfalfa hay (61 million acres) and wheat (62 million acres).All but wheat is primarily used for livestock. 90% of the soy is feed. For comparison, all the US’s vegetables used 3 million acres.This doesn’t include the 8.3 more Montanas of grazing-land, but I’ll assume those cows/sheep are eating otherwise unusable land.So, in other words the biomass available from eating less meat is extremely significant. If the US were primarily vegetarian we could have all that land for food or [shudder] biofuel production.One of the most significant lifestyle changes you can make is to eat vegetarian.
CitizenJ
First off, this is a proper debate and it is important to open it up to the considered fact finding and judgement being applied. Thank you, Eric.I wrote in another forum just minutes ago that biofuels have many attributes to be considered.Our society, and nearly all of the regional characteristics we cherish, have direct relationships to “energy.” Things don’t work without it. Choices are fairly clear; use much less, or/and generate more of it. We’ll find that the answer is “both” I think.Biofuels will eventually permit an important portion of our use to be produced locally.King County may be the only working regional full cycle in the United States: waste to conversion to crops to crushing to refining to reuse in mass transportation. Examined under the harsh light of these studies, even this example may not come out positive. But I’ll submit that without examples, even imperfect ones, change does not take hold. We need change.Life is incremental. Little steps become bolder.Biofuels have an important role because so much personal decisionmaking and experience can be produced, the dollars are recirculated in the local economy not shipped far away, and real environmental effects will be realized. The challenge is to understand the full scope of costs and then vote with our dollars for the best choices, and leverage the implications of those decisions to help steer society.
simmonsrc
Eric, thanks for stirring the debate on biofuels. I agree with your conclusions but with a couple of tweaks. I’m writing as one who straddles the debate—as a consumer and a sort-of farmer. Our hilly forty acres in Southern Iowa has grown nothing but unharvested switch grass and the inevitable weeds and thorn brush for the past 22 years, in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP takes crop land out of production, keeps it in reserve for emergencies (I don’t think the current energy crunch is the emergency they had in mind) and provides terrific habitat for wildlife. This year thousands of acres of CRP grassland will be plowed for corn, due largely to the higher corn prices brought about by the corn ethanol fad, which is already beginning to fade. (Do “fad” and “fade” share a common root?) Once investors lose their shirts and shoes on corn ethanol, land owners will look for other options. If our new administration is paying attention, it will push for conversion to switch grass and other energy-rich crops that can be planted once a decade and harvested repeatedly. Your post seems to suggest that ethanol from switch grass presents the same energy loss problems as from corn and soybeans. But switch grass and other grasses have the huge advantage of being semi-permanent. Once established they offer years of repeated harvests with steadily reducing energy costs. Repeatedly cutting the grass thickens the root structure and discourages weeds, so it gets better with every cutting for the first few years. Anothr tweak: one of the commenters on your post suggests that corn used for ethanol is corn removed from the food chain. In fact, the feedstock is great stock feed. Once processed for ethanol, corn is lower in starch and more digestible than unprocessed corn, and sold at a premium to cattle and hog growers. To those (me) who think we all eat way too much meat, that’s no great attribute. But it does need to be entered correctly into the energy equation. Also missing from your excellent post and from the Times article so far as I can see, is the geopolitical factor. Does conversion to biofuels lessen our dependence on foreign oil? If so, that in turn reduces the likelihood of future wars. Right there’s an incalculable savings in energy waste, in carbon loading of the atmosphere and in human suffering, which has to be the urgently important element in anyone’s energy calculations.
Jeremy TF
Excellent post. This is a rich topic with several diversions that don’t factor into this specific study. At the end of the day, it all comes down to total energy used and the source of said energy.Specifically, I do not own/drive a car yet I consumer more than 600 gallons of biodiesel each year. I use B99.9 to heat my home. Now, I would be feeding the problem described in this article if I simply called the local oil provider and asked for bio-fuel because most oil companies deliver soy fuel that comes off a tanker from overseas, or via a rail car from the Midwest. In either case, this is potentially adding to the problem.This being said, I carefully choose a local provider/refiner that uses 95% waste vegetable oil (locally sourced) as its fuel stock and 5% new canola crops from <200 miles from the refinery. This waste oil arrived via a long chain of growing, use, etc. yet has found its way to a final downcycle as fuel. This is not taking food crops and converting them to fuel in the sense that this article exclaims. It is taking a food crop that was used as a food crop 'first' and then re-used as a fuel crop. Is it expensive to heat this way? It is. About $3.50/gallon for something that has already lived its life and is now on to a second life. You should have to pay for the privilege of using a recycled product for fuel. My point is thus: if you purchase bio-fuel and do not take its composition into consideration, then you are no better off than purchasing a shiny red tomato and never looking to see where it came from. Yes, it’s red and will look smashingly delicious on your Garden Burger, but it’s devilishly different than the big fat tomato from your garden, grown from organic seeds purchased from a local farmer. Bio-fuel is one of several opportunities to diversify our fuel source in a less detrimental way. But with great opportunity comes great responsibility. Turning mono-crop food into mono-crop fuel is an irresponsible way to leverage the opportunity presented by bio-fuel, but it shouldn’t negate the positive opportunities.We need to use less fuel overall, and not assume that we can simply continue to behave the same way and just change the brand of what we put into our tanks. We need to become more informed and make conscious, deliberate, educated decisions about what we fuel our lives with. Simply turning your head away while you fuel your tank will not work. Become informed. Grow your own tomatoes, and if you can’t, then buy a tomato from someone down the road who grows tomatoes responsibly, using methods that do not harm the biosphere. If we apply this methodology to all aspects of our life, we will make better, healthier, more informed decisions that add value to the world, instead of chiseling away at it.
ethan
The new information out is certainly a blow to the biofuel industry. However, unlike some, I am not ready to dismiss the potential of biofuel. If the industry adjusts, technology continues to advance and comsumers continue to buy; algae, waste wood and other sources still seem to be a viable alternative to reducing emissions as some percentage of our transportation usage. These recent studies are not going to make me stop using biodiesel yet. I am going to be careful where my fuel originates from and monitor the direction the industry goes but still support their attempts to make change, as well as be profitable. I personally think that biofuels are not the “Hail Mary” because I believe the technological advances are realistic and in achievable in the near term. Eric’s point about a LCF method of regulation is well taken and I agree. I would really like to see a Cap and Auction system. Biofuel production is a perfect example of why in fact. Cap and Auction would make all emitters have to deal with their actions and thus either promote cleaner production or pay a steep price otherwise.
patrick
Actually the New York Times misinterpreted the studies. It is not about biofuels used today for the most part. In particular, one study, Searchinger, is based on a scenario that no one really thinks will happen – 30 billion gallons per year of corn ethanol. If anything, the studies say accelerate development of advanced biofuels feedstocks including cellulose and algaes. Seed my post at http://climatesolutions.org/?s=journal=94
Elisa Murray
See this follow-up post as well by Eric.
Maxwell
I highly recommend Patrick Mazza’s post. A 2, soon to be 3, part response to these studies. Most comprehensive and useful. A local and sustainable biofuels and bioenergy component to our energy solutions does seem doable if we get it right and ask the right questions.Mazza quotes USDA Agricultural Research Service scientist David Laird “The scientific debate should be focused on how to design integrated agricultural biomass-bioenergy systems that build soil quality and increase productivity so that both food and bioenergy crops can be sustainably harvested.”also posted @ Harvesting Clean Energy Journalhttp://harvestjournal.squarespace.com/
Morgan
Freakin sweet
kaen
as we known, biofuel has effect both positive and negative direction, but i believe we wil be able to sole all problems that we will face in future like lack of food, water etc. by high technology and continue developing of tecnology.