Biofuels Coming With a High Environmental Price?

DurandalTree writes "With the spectre of global warming on the horizon, biofuels have been touted as the solution to motor vehicles' greenhouse gas emissions. But with biodiesel use on the increase, it appears a distinctively environmentally unfriendly footprint is being left behind by some of its prime sources; affected food prices are surging out of reach of the poor and rainforests are being destroyed to create larger plantations."

Comments

Indeed...

[RyanFenton]

Indeed - there's another resource we need to care about here. Viable soil is a renewable resource - but like fresh water, it has its limits, and is geographically quite limited in terms of cheap availability. By forcing the land to both feed everyone, and fuel all their vehicles, we place a much lower maximum on the population that can be supported by that land. More than that, by potentially stretching the demands on the land too far, we risk that farmers and companies may deplete or despoil the soil they use for short term gain before they decide to leave the market, making it difficult for anyone else to economically recover that same area.

That said, we could make better use of the oceans - but I trust our current free market much less there - the oceans have much more of a "tragedy of the commons" dynamic than elsewhere, with fragile ecosystems and high difficulty sectioning off properties. Algae on land-based ponds in otherwise nonviable landscapes would offer the most promise for producing biomass in a way that would not negatively affect prices for the poor. Algae can produce its own food, doesn't need to use much fresh water, can produce various kinds of oils, and could even be used as a part of foods if we are interested in exploring that. The only question is, will it be able to scale and pay for itself in terms of needing to control its environment to mass produce it? Given the history of livestock, I can't imagine algae can't be made efficient or be properly bred en mass.

That's just my idea though - and I'm fairly uninformed about the whole field of energy crops. Why are we currently pursuing the whole turn-food-to-fuel path anyway, given how wide open the algae field is?

Ryan Fenton

Non-food biofuel.

[Jaywalk]

This isn't a new observation. If food is used to power vehicles, the increased demand is going to force up the price of food. On top of that, food products generally require arable land, which is in limited supply. In addition to making the morally indefensible decision to starve the poor to feed an energy habit, even committing all arable land to the project will still not answer the energy problem. To make biofuel in the amounts required means that you need to tap a source which can cheaply be grown in quantity without cutting into the food supply.

Which might not be as hard as it sounds. The University of New Hampshire did a study in 2004 where they concluded that biodiesel from algae could -- at least theoritically -- supply all the nation's fuel supply without require food oil (like soy or palm) to be used at all. On the ethanol front, cellulosic ethanol can be produced from high-cellulose plant products, like sawgrass or wood chips, without cutting into the corn crop. Some of cellulosic plants are beginning to approach commercial volumes of production.

It's not that biofuels are a bad idea, but not all implementations of those ideas are equally valid.

Diesel now has much less sulphur and particulates

[SydShamino]

Diesel engines are pollutin' machines.

Diesel engines are much cleaner now, if the proper technology is used to clean the exhaust. Unfortunately all that technology got clogged up by the sulphur in US diesel through last year, so none of it was used.

US diesel switched to a low-sulphur blend at the start of the year, and all 2007 model year diesel cars require it. It exchange, they now have the particulate filters that make diesels run cleaner. This does little to clean up the millions of diesel cars and trucks built before 2007, unfortunately, but it shows that the problem hasn't been forgotton.

Please don't attack diesel based on a complete lack of information and one anecdote. For more information, see the National Clean Diesel Campaign.

Re:Well, we have to try our best?

[drinkypoo]

For any problem, first solutions prove to be questionable. First, and many existing nuclear power plants are obviously very dangerous - just consider Chernobyl. Yet, now we can build very safe nuclear plants

Chernobyl would probably still be running and providing power if they had not shut off all kinds of safety mechanisms at the same time like a bunch of fucking idiots.

Yet, now we can build very safe nuclear plants that produce less radioactive waste than comparable coal plants.

The saying more accurately says that we can build very safe nuclear plants that consume less fuel than coal plants spew into the atmosphere as a result of burning coal. Many people (correctly) point out that it is possible to scrub all of that from the air, but most coal-burning plants do not do this. Also it is not a matter of "now". We have known for decades how to build breeder reactors that will process the "spent" fuel back into usable fuel, and which are not capable of making weapons-grade material (the usual purpose for a breeder reactor.) This would reduce our fuel needs by something like three orders of magnitude and the fuel waste would be (IIRC) two orders of magnitude less long-lived. If you do the math you will see that if this does not actually solve the nuclear waste problem, it at least comes very close to it.

We do not do this because of a flawed interpretation of a nuclear treaty. Bush (ObDisclaimer: I hate the guy, his family, and all for which they stand, which has nothing to do with America except the part about greed) has spoken in favor of the use of breeder reactors for processing nuclear fuel.

In principal at least, plants get all their combustible content by capturing greenhouse gases from the air. If dry grass or agricultural byproducts can be burned, at least for home heating purposes, without much processing, we are reducing our output of CO2.

Very true, but it is a horrible mistake to base anything you don't have to on topsoil. We are destroying soil at an alarming rate. Modern farming processes create monocultures in soil; all these people in the midwest who talk about how great their dirt is havefor the most part never seen real soil. Modern tilling techniques and the use of heavy equipment create hardpan under the soil, damaging drainage. The use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides kills off some of the biota in the soil (soil is sixty to eighty percent organic material, and up to 40% living material) but not others, creating monocultures which do little to protect plants and may even harm them. The result is a soil that does not drain properly, that requires the use of more and more chemicals, and which is additionally blown and washed away during winds and rains.

But wait, there's more! Any kind of hard soil will run off water too quickly, contributing to floods. Any kind of soft, uncovered soil will be blown away - some of the soil lands back on your ground, some of it on your neighbor's ground, and some of it goes into the water once again. Both this source of soil in the water and simply washing it away with irrigation clogs streams and rivers, creating anaerobic conditions which kill both flora and fauna. This process continues all the way to the ocean, where ocean life near the land is often killed off by changes in salinity, lack of light due to suspended soil fines, and other issues.

This last effect kills not only small, submerged plants and animals, but also plant life on the coast lines. The coast line in the Southern part of the US is especially damaged - a fact which has been blamed for much of the fury of the storm which tore New Orleans into small, floating pieces.

Topsoil-based fuels are simply completely wrongheaded, a fact which Brazil will discover sooner or later...