The studies do find some benefit from biofuels but only when planted on agricultural land too dry or degraded for food production or significant tree or plant growth and only when derived from native plants, such as a mix of prairie grasses in the U.S. Midwest. Or such fuels can be made from waste: corn stalks, leftover wood from timber production or even city garbage.
But that will not slake a significant portion of the growing thirst for transportation fuels. "If we convert every corn kernel grown today in the U.S. to ethanol we offset just 12 percent of our gasoline use," notes ecologist Jason Hill of the University of Minnesota. "The real benefit to these advanced biofuels may not be in displacement of fossil fuels but in the building up of carbon stores in the soil."
Of course, there is another reason for biofuels: energy independence. "Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can begin to address the challenge of energy security," Bob Dinneen, president of industry group the Renewable Fuels Association said in a statement. "The alternative is to continue to exploit increasingly costlier fossil fuels for which the environmental price tag will be great."
But the environmental price tag of biofuels now joins the ranks of other, cheaper domestic fuel sources—such as coal-to-liquid fuel—as major sources of globe-warming pollution as well as unintended social consequences. As a result, 10 prominent scientists have written a letter to President Bush and other government leaders urging them to "shape policies to assure that government incentives for biofuels do not increase global warming."
"We shouldn't abandon biofuels," Searchinger says. But "you don't solve global warming by going in the wrong direction."
See what we're tweeting about
37 Comments
Add CommentBiofuels are Bad? Finally, what I've been saying for the last few years. Biofuels are a scam and a myth, already costing us in higher food costs. The powerful people want to ensure that they can bottle-up any energy source, charge us for it and tax it. Big subsidies with our tax dollars to the mega corporations for biofuel and "clean coal", almost none for conservation, solar power, and fully electric cars (already produced and "killed" by GM). Where's the new farmable land and fresh water supply gonna come from? What'll happen to all the trees we're supposed to plant for the other myth, "carbon sequestration"? Don't people realize that we had nothing BUT biofuels until fossil fuels were discovered, and that all the trees were cut and whales were slaughtered for lamp oil?!? Yet they'll keep pushing biofuels with no scientific support. Please stop them!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiofuel does not have to compete with food. Use sea weed and other non or rarely eatable biological material instead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy two cents worth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBiofuels are a fantastic way to deal with the tons of bio waste thrown away daily. On any given day every restaurant, household and business throws away paper, oil and food. Converting this waste to fuel would reduce the amount of garbage we throw into landfills and provide a few percentage points of our fuel needs. Reusing this material would not require the cutting down of a single tree anywhere.
My second Cent. There are several zero emission engines in use today (battery powered cars, hydrogen fuel cell powered cars). If we mandated a shift of the largest polluters (cars, trucks and busses) to zero emission engines the green house impact of the US would be lower than it was 50 years ago. I am not ignoring the emissions from the power plants, I just feel that it is probably easier to reduce the emissions of a few thousand plants than the millions of vehicles (Think of the catalytic converter is. It reduces the smoke while reducing the gas milage).
This is definitely a scare tactic cooked up by 'Big Oil'. The truth is biofuels can be made from damn near anything and burn cleaner that oil. Nice try 'Big Oil'. The days of your record profits are at an end!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, I have researched oil and biofuels for the past 7 years. I want to be part of the solution. I will no longer support OPEC because there are better alternatives.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConventional biofuels are bad. Of that, there can be no doubt once land use change factors are taken into account. And don't forget the indirect effects ethanol and soy boydiesel advocates. U.S. farmers rush to corn is leading to increased deforestation in the Amazon thanks to linked markets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat said, biofuels from waste are a fantastic idea. Except that there is nowhere near enough cooking grease to fulfill even a fraction of our diesel needs. Good for the old VW bus, not so good for all the trucks on U.S. roads, let alone the world's highways.
As for cellulosic ethanol, well, it all depends on where and how it's grown. Remember corn stover and other waste products actually play a role in soil conservation (erosion prevention) and remediation (returning organic carbon to dirt). So we can't just take all that stuff and turn it into fuel. It has to be done smartly.
Switchgrass may not save us either as it likes to grow in wet, fertile soil, exactly the kind of soil we use to grow corn. And if we displace corn, well, there goes the Amazon again.
Algae anyone? Electricity perhaps?
The articale does not say that biofuels (the conept) is bad, Rather that the current implemention of that concept is flawed. Make and use biofules, but make sure that the net effect is REALLY positive, not negative.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, how much of the Bush funds have the Oil industries kicked in to get this one writen and published?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo conspiracy here. Simply science. Sorry if you don't like the conclusions. Both sides of this debate have their major corporate backers: in one corner Exxon Mobil and BP and in the other Archers Daniel Midland and Cargill.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuclear power is the ecological choice, the only one that can fulfill the core energy needs of our burgeoning world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/earth/27tier.html I am not alone. Stewart Brand has been stating this conclusion for several years now.
Wind and solar can only do so much practically, although it can provide significant power.
The only other plausible core power source is orbiting satellite solar power stations that beam power down to earth. Those designs were worked out long ago.
Thank you for this article. It is a much needed reality check. No matter what we do, all arable land will soon be needed to feed the world unless we have a new productivity revolution.
I'm hoping this pendulem swing of "global warming" ripples will return to a sane exchange of ideas..because we are going headlong into craziness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis was so obvious from the beginning.(like the war).An now ,what? lets have James Lovelock for president...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the corn grown in the US is used for animal feed. Once it's been used to brew ethanol, the spent mash is actually better animal feed than the raw corn. The ethanol brewing process makes the byproduct more digestible so the animals get more nutrition and less is crapped out as waste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor decades we've been using grain that could feed the 3rd world poor to make hamburgers.
Blaming biofuels is just a red herring.
I wonder what political effect this will have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm a layperson, and I've been somewhat confused by the issue although I tend to see that ethanol from corn is not a net good, but there was enough confusion that pro-ethanol politicians were able to semi-plausibly play the green card until now. Now this study gives me something authoritative to point to and say: You are not helping the environment; you are harming it and this is nothing more than a pork-barrel giveaway.
The same is absolutely true for sugar subsidies by the way. Terrible for the environment. We should import sugar and grow other crops.
Ditto dbiello and Roradze. Having been raised on a farm, I have
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisseen acres of deciduous forest holding tons of carbon rich forest and varied wildlife turned into relatively green-unfriendly cornfields and tobacco patches. I get almost physically sick when I read articles condemning genetically engineered food crops and urging organic farming. Perhaps I've dealt with more manure than most of these writers.
The productiveness of already cultivated land must be maximized with safely engineered and hybridized crops and fed with ever improving and closely monitored fertilizers and more efficient irrigation techniques. The feeding of the hungry becomes a much greater problem than theoretical unproven ill effects if we do not use such technology.
Finally, the French have shown modern Nuclear Energy to be safe and essential in any reasonable attempt to satisfy energy needs which neither produces CO2 nor deforests large areas of the world. I have fished in a nuclear reservoir for over 30 yrs and haven't caught a 3 eyed fish yet!
As far as I am concerned, any article/report that purports to contain such important information isnt worth a damn if it doesnt site the sciences funding sources. Otherwise it is no better, no more informative than the scientific reports that tobacco is good for you, and global warming is a lie rags put out by the industries to confound and confuse the issues. Nowadays, a Scientific Journal is only as good as its sources.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThough I agree with the content of this article, I'd like to know where the figures come from. I made similar calculations about biodiesel from soybean in Argentina and there's no 97 years period or three times soil and vegetation carbon as there is in the atmosphere. Figures seem to be threefolded .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, I'm worried about the new croplands in Argentina to produce a yearly estimated of 9 to 12 million tons of biofuels in 2015. These lands are mostly secondary woodland and grassland that are too dry and too far from seaports. The bio-diesel and the bio-ethanol reduce the cost of transportation, but this new croplands could release up to half a Gton of CO2 from the soil.
This article really opened my eyes! Grasses do seem to be a better alternative to reduce greenhouse emissions. However, my concern with that is the destruction of the grasslands if they are not replaced right away and the environmental impact on native species of animal life. I am not a scientist but am an avid reader and am very concerned with what havoc we sow to our dear planet earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk lets continue to burn oil, lets continue to explore third world contries, that is the way!!. Any person who has studied a bit of phisiology would know that the rate of the fixation of C in some mature Foreste stands is 0 or even negative. as far for short rotation crops is maximun. This kind of article is what oil industry wants. Our attention should be aiming: yes to prevent forest cuting to plant palm or other oil culture, yes to implementation of new pathways for celulose base technologies, yes to algaefuel, yes to forest biomass collection for fire risk reduction, but at the present to launch this controversy is only going to slow down the public awerness over the climate changes, but then, it may be just that dust for the eyes. But we dont have to take it much longer, because Algae fuel and biotechonology will economically kill the fossil oil industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing corn as a biofuel production element has never been viable in scientific or technical terms -- and even sugar cane or sugar beets, while more efficient, are still not viable methods. As a former article on Scientific American attests, algae are the only prospective technical venture that can create the needed energy per hectare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGene Tyner and others showed in the 1980''s that Nuclear power would be a net energy sink. That must have been one of the pracvtical reasons the US stopped builing new nuclear power plants around then. The renewed interest in nuclear power maybe just because people forgot why they stopped in the first place.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProducing ethanol from corn is just downright silly. What would be better is to stop human beings from consuming sugar of any sort. Human diets really diont need refined sugars. The etheaniol output from sugarcane will increase 6 times if white sugar is not made. Sothere just may not be any need to clear forest or replant grasslands.
For more discussion on this and facts on how this effects human food resources, go to: tinyurl.com/27xnfc
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWill our Presidential candidates now reverse their positions on ethanol? It was a badge of honor for some to brag about how much they supported billions of dollars of subsidies. Which one will have the political courage to admit mistakes were made?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother reason to develop the compressed air car. The fuel is everywhere and free. The challenge is to generate the electricity to power the compressors in an environmentally friendly way. And we're working on that now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, Dave Cary, but compressed air is NOT, repeat NOT a "fuel." Compressed air is merely an _energy STORAGE medium_, not a "source" of energy --- just like a rechargable battery is not a "source" of energy, but only an energy storage device. The energy to compress the air or charge the battery must come from some other PRIMARY source of energy --- like coal, oil, gas, nuclear, biomass, solar, or wind power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave you never pumped up a bicycle tire using a manual pump? Then you ought to know from hard personal experience that it takes WORK --- i.e., ENERGY --- to compress air!
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch --- and There Ain't No Such Thing As "Free Power," either.
The dangers of biofuel are indeed reasons for concern -- indeed, consternation. Is anyone taking them seriously enough to change directions?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt will indeed be interesting to see if this affects the U.S.'s ethanol position one iota. I wager not. Corn growers are a powerful constituency, whether from the individual farmer side or the giant agribusiness side (think Cargill and ADM). They are enthusiastic about corn-based ethanol from a profit perspective and don't necessarily care about climate change or pristine ecosystems or the international trade in food. Interestingly enough, John McCain is one of the few presidential candidates not to pander to the corn vote. The same cannot be said of anyone on the Democratic side.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe the article: As others have pointed out, the article doesn't say exactly what is the "accounting error" that caused others to overestimate the carbon load imposed by corn-based ethanol. (I don't believe the authors are in the pocket of big oil or other corporate interests. )
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe corn-based ethanol. We already knew it was a bad idea, and not likely to make a big dent in our petroleum consumption. And it affects the price and availability of food.
Re bio-ethanol generally. Cellulosic ethanol would be better than corn, if and when it becomes technically feasible, but it would still use arable land. And ethanol derived from any biological source, even seaweed or algae, would have ecological consequences, possibly severe.
Solar energy has the advantage of being safe and having low enviornmental impact. Rooftop solar panels will not come anywhere near making an appreciable difference in carbon output, but the US is blessed with millions of acres of non-arable, economically unproductive land in the Southwest that could be used to build large scale solar facilities (tens of thousands of acres). (See SciAm's article on such a proposal.) But it would also require some infrastructure changes (in transmission lines and energy storage; the authors of that article propose compressed air.)
Nuclear has those nasty waste products, but nuclear plants are easily integrated into the nation's existing energy distribution infrastructure.
And energy conservation has essentially no cost, and huge payoffs.
So it seems like the best option is conservation, plus nuclear short-term and large-scale solar long-term.
The other half (or so) of petroleum consumption is in the nation's millions of cars. None of the previous options deal with those.
So besides encouraging conservation, mileage standards should be increased continually. The most viable option for powering cars appears to be electricity, because electricity is easily transportable, it requires no new infrastructure (everybody has household outlets), and it can theoretically be made with little carbon footprint. Batteries are the most mature storage medium, but compressed air or other methods are possible.
None of this is to say HOW these changes should be brought about. A carbon tax and a market for carbon shares may bring these changes about through the power of the market, but things like the a large-scale solar plant will require years of subsidies (much like those going to the petroleum industry right now.) And market interventions that would change consumer behavior are not likely to be popular (e.g., to use market forces to get people to buy cheaper cars, gasoline and large car prices should increase.) So some wise, careful direct government intervention seems required.
Make sense? Comments? Criticism?
i am all against biofuels,i live in ALASKA,they're basically taking away our 1,000 dollars we get every year!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will never understand why an obvious solution is constantly overlooked in the biofuel debate. While biofuels might be the final solution they are at least a viable stop gap measure that would reduce our dependency on foreign oil, reduce the price and consumption of oil, and at least replace some net gain from burning fossil fuels, to at least oxygen producing plants.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy doesn't hemp ever get discussed as a solution? Its 10 times more productive than corn and can be grown on less than prime agriculture land.
Okay, okay, I think we can all agree that corn is a HORRIBLE way to produce ethanol and that we only use it because of the US corn subsidies. For the love of God, stop talking about corn. Corn is dead. Algae produces 12 times as much biofuel per acre, it requires no land clearing (you can put algae factories in the desert), and no one eats (well, almost no one.) Here, read this: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5391 We'll have to wait 5 years or so for them to work out the kinks; but we could eventually replace ALL oil in the US with algae using 1/7th of the space we currently use for all corn crops. And in the meantime, we can use sugar cane (which is merely 5 times better than corn but is available now.) So stop whining about corn. Corn was never the answer; researchers have always known this. We just have to get rid of that stupid corn subsidy (at least for ethanol production), and then the market will correct itself automatically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are first or second generation biofuels. First generation biofuels are ethanol or biodiesels formed from edible crops. Second generation biofuels are pyrolysed biomass that produce charcoal and hydrogen. This biomass can come from pollarded forests which liberate no CO2 into the atmosphere. The process requires no energy input and the resulting charcoal can be used to form 'Terra Preta' soils which sequester carbon in soil, therby fertilising it. And moreover the technique is economical for third world farmers! Look up 'Terra Preta' on your search engine...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisddanania: I've been researching this for a school paper, and it checks out with a lot of different sources. Biofuels could definitely help reduce global warming, but you'd have to wait 100 years during which time the emission of greenhouse gases would go up. But Stellare's right- there are good options like algae and prairie grass.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBalls to all of you:)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBalls to all Of you
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYAY!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisstill waiting on the zombie apokolypse
Hello . I was wondering if anyone of you who knows alot about Biofuels . Would gladly to give me some information on it about how it's bad in use . This is for a Science Project and I'm not sure who to ask because everyone have their own Opinion . Feel Free to Email me @ ThatKidPkay@hotmail.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank You !