IS THERE A GOOD WAY TO USE BIOFUELS?

Biofuels Déjà Vu; Lured by dreams of “green” fuel, could we end up trampling biodiversity in the name of saving the planet?
David Malakoff, April-June 2009 (Conservation Magazine)

SUMMARY
Jason Clay, an anthropologist with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), has long worked to keep AGROfuels from destroying biodiversity.

AGROfuels prominent in Clay’s fight are corn ethanol and palm biodiesel.

He expects the fight over “second generation” or “cellulosic” biofuels to be even more intense.

Clay expects to be fighting a tougher coterie of scientists, executives and political leaders—including President Barak Obama’s energy team.

click to enlarge

They will argue that second-generation fuels deliver more help with less harm.

Cellulosic biofuels are derived from non-crop plants. They are made by breaking down the fibrous cellulose in plants. Other second generation biofuels come from any organic waste.

Some of Clay’s opponents contend the U.S. could get 75+ billion liters of cellulosic ethanol a year by 2022 if tens of billions of dollars are spent now on research and subsidies and tens of millions of hectares of land are put into biomass production.

Clay believes the ultimate fate of the second generation of “green” liquid fuels will be the same as the first generation. Ultimately, it will become apparent the cost is greater than the benefit.

The cost will be in the loss of native grasslands to denatured “energy lawns” and the destruction of forests in the name of harvesting their waste to “manage” them.

click to enlarge

Unintended Environmental Consequences of a Global Biofuels Program, from an MIT team of researchers (Jerry M. Melillo, Angelo C. Gurgel, David W. Kicklighter, John M. Reilly, Timothy W. Cronin, Benjamin S. Felzer, Sergey Paltsev, C. Adam Schlosser, Andrei P. Sokolov and X. Wang), created simulations of 2 cellulosic biofuels production scenarios. Both showed biofuels can contribute “substantially” to future energy needs on a large scale but would have “significant unintended environmental consequences.”

Unintended, unforeseen consequences, the MIT team said, will register either in crop lands or non-crop lands or a combination of both.

Also, clearing land for second generation cellulosic materials releases sequestered carbon, adding to the greenhouse effect at least as much as the use of crops for fuels reduces it.

Second generation cellulosic biofuels, the MIT team concluded, may serve as a part of the global climate change solution but must be cautiously deployed to protect biodiversity, ecosystems and larger climate change factors.

Cellulosic fuel crops might be safely planted on marginal lands already plowed, grazed, or logged. The 90-Billion Gallon Biofuel Deployment Study, from Sandia National Labs and General Motors, suggested 20 million hectares of currently “idle” or “marginal” U.S. farmlands and forests (that’s an area the size of Kansas) could produce the biomass needed for 170 billion liters of cellulosic fuel a year by 2030. It could also inflict serious harm on biodiversity.

click to enlarge

COMMENTARY
The seduction to grow a solution to U.S. dependence on the internal combustion engine (ICE) mirrors the seduction to drill for a solution. Both solutions are unworkable, though for different reasons. In either case, the deep desire to hang on to ICE vehicles is the motive.

The problem with growing liquid fuel: It is difficult to understand the potential unintended consequences of growing liquid fuel on the scale needed to sustain the current dependence on the ICE.

It will be necessary to clear either crop land or non-crop land to grow adequate liquid fuels to feed the ICE habit. Either way, biodiversity will be lost. Loss of croplands also means changes in the food supply chain. Loss of non-crop land means changes in ecosystems.

Excluding land use? Really? And the 21st Century has been great excluding September 11, 2001. (click to enlarge)

The worst impacts of releasing sequestered carbon from unused land and adding to the greenhouse effect would take place in the first half of this century, driving climate change faster just when efforts to retard it are weakest. The effects of the released carbon would not likely be reversed for at least another half century. By that point, other factors may have cascaded to make climate change irreversible.

Precise forecasts are difficult. Ripples from singular decisions can reach far. Examples: (1) A farmer in Europe replaces a soybean crop normally sold to China with an energy crop like switchgrass. This creates an economic incentive for a South American farmer to clear forest or grassland to grow soybeans. (2) Logging a Siberian forest for energy cellulose creates an incentive for rainforest loggers in Asia or Africa to produce more plywood or lumber for housing.

For cellulosic fuels to provide 10% of the world energy supply in 2050, the land used for cellulosic crops would have to grow to ~11% of the earth. Many areas would lose 20-to-70% of natural habitat. Tropical and semitropical ecosystems, capable of the highest levels of biomass production, would be hit hardest.

Maybe. But what about current active rainforest? And current active wetlands? (click to enlarge)

The biodiversity danger list: Mesoamerica, the cerrado of Brazil, Guinea/West Africa, Madagascar, Indo-Burma, and the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia cluster.

New research is being designed to study what people like WWF’s Jason Clay already know beyond a shadow of a doubt: Prairies and other multispecies low maintenance ecosystems (requiring no irrigation or fertilizer) nurture biodiversity and overall environmental health far better than high-maintenance, low-diversity crop lands. Still, the studies must be done to win the academic credibility that can slow the madness.

Studies: (1) Mary Gardiner, post-doc, Michigan State University, studying 30 potential biofuel crop sites across southern Michigan from low-diversity corn fields to switchgrass and remnant prairie. Preliminary results: Corn mono-cultures support less insect diversity. (Same conclusions in studies on birdlife.) (2) Linda Wallace, plant ecologist, University of Oklahoma, studying the replacement of degraded grasslands with switchgrass and other fast-growing plants. Conclusion: Perennial grasses can become highly invasive, taking over enormous swaths of a region and despoiling the pre-existing diversity.

WWF and other environmental advocates have already begun formulating guidelines for sustainable practices and holding AGRObusines exploiters accountable in an effort to bring them to the negotiating table.

Two wrongs don't make a right. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Jason Clay, WWF: “The backlash has been pretty ferocious—ethanol and biodiesel have lost a lot of their green image…”
- From the article: “…a recent MIT study suggests that, despite the hype, the new fuels may not reduce overall greenhouse-gas emissions. Which raises an unsettling question: can the pursuit of clean, “green” fuels lead to a true ecological solution, or is it just a detour from traditional conservation strategies that, although less futuristic, might be far more effective?”
- James Bowyer, forestry industry expert, Dovetail Partners “forests in the tropics could get hit particularly hard by cellulosic ethanol…trees are easy biomass to store when they aren’t needed…You just leave them standing in the forest when the market dips, and wait for ethanol prices to rebound.”
- Doug Landis, ecological entomologist, Michigan State University: “You hear a lot about using ‘marginal lands’ and ‘waste wood,’ but that land and debris is still somebody’s habitat…”

Biomass is best used for electricity, not liquid fuel, if it is used at all. (click to enlarge)

- Mike Palmer, grassland ecologist, Oklahoma State University: “[E]ven a degraded prairie or hayfield can be better for biodiversity than planting a switchgrass monoculture…”
- Clay, WWF: “It seems like the same arguments are coming up, just in a new context…”
From the article, the unavoidable conclusion: “To make biofuels—or any fuels—truly environmentally friendly, we may simply have to use them in smaller quantities. Which means it might be time to further embrace age-old solutions such as developing fuel-efficient vehicles, switching to a diet that substitutes vegetables for meat, building a highly efficient distribution infrastructure. The list goes on—and, like the latest biofuels controversy, it’s all too familiar.”