How climate change will disproportionately affect the world's poor is a message making the rounds of late, after the publication of the second IPCC report earlier this year. How climate change policies, such as carbon taxes, will either help or hurt the poor is also a topic we've been discussing of late.
Now researchers at the University of Minnesota have assessed the impact of an increased dependence on biofuels on the developing world ... and the outlook isn't good.
In short, conflating food and energy lands us in a quagmire in which corn (and ethanol) prices are still tethered to oil:
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest projections, global energy consumption will rise by 71 percent between 2003 and 2030, with demand from developing countries, notably China and India, surpassing that from members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development by 2015. The result will be sustained upward pressure on oil prices, which will allow ethanol and biodiesel producers to pay much higher premiums for corn and oilseeds than was conceivable just a few years ago. The higher oil prices go, the higher ethanol prices can go while remaining competitive -- and the more ethanol producers can pay for corn.
As the price of corn goes up, the costs will ripple outward: higher feed prices will ratchet up costs for chicken, turkey, pork, milk, and eggs. And more land will be devoted corn, meaning less land is available for other crops, sending those prices upwards as well.
And all this effort for paltry environmental benefits.
Thinking of ethanol as a green alternative to fossil fuels reinforces the chimera of energy independence and of decoupling the interests of the United States from an increasingly troubled Middle East.
Climate-news poem: Breath-catching edition
Comments View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 7:08 am
22 May 2007
Not just farmland
Not just farmland
Perhaps even more threatening is water resources.
http://scidev.net/content/opinions/eng/biofuel-crops-coul ...
30% ethanol would require more water than what goes over Niagara Falls each year.
http://greyfalcon.net/ethanol6
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caniscandida Posted 7:58 am
22 May 2007
Edward Hoagland; "tsunamic"
A friend of mine just sent me an essay by Edward Hoagland, in the June 2007 issue of Harper's Magazine, a treasure of modern American civilization which sadly my life is too short to enjoy.
The essay is titled, "Endgame: Meditations on a diminishing world." Hoagland writes this (on p. 35), by way of developing his theme that current environmental problems are indescribably huger than those of the past, such that the MEM is perhaps not going to be able to keep up:
<<
Several big-box stores are being installed on a road paralleling the Canadian border, a couple of dozen miles north of me [in VT]. So that intervening stretch of farm and logging land will gradually fill up, too, and wind turbines perhaps crenellate the ridgelines -- a change I wince at. Yet much more flabbergasting alterations are in store -- the mowing of parts of Amazonia to grow ethanol; the melting of the poles; the desertification of more of Africa (and if you've already seen famine there, as I have, the idea of growing corn in Iowa to drive cars is obscene). Dumbfounded, conservationists are hard put to express the scope of what they feel. John Muir could save Yosemite Valley and Rachel Carson reduce the use of DDT with eloquent polemics -- but those were cap-gun battles compared to the tsunamic changes now under way.
>>
I quote this, because of that powerful, stinging dart about Africa, famine and ethanol.
Rather less stinging, Hoagland's coining of the adjective "tsunamic" is philologically very impressive.
Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!
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paroneanu Posted 1:41 am
24 May 2007
Biofuels -- Choices
Much like any new technology we engage in, biofuels have the potential to either harm or benefit people (or both). Having done some preliminary research on biodiesel development in West Africa, I think we are just getting sidelined by the harms that may come from overdevelopment of ethanol. Poor people, of course, are the first to bear the brunt of large-scale economic decisions of politicians (Bush) and corporations (ADM...etc.) But it's important to focus on how to make our current biofuel situation better. They clearly have a role in the clean energy economy of the future. What we have to do now is make sure to hold those decision-makers and corps. accountable to producers and consumers.
In a Grist piece a few months ago, David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, describes how to foster a just, decentralized biofuel industry. It's not biofuels that's the problem, it's the industry that is:
http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2006/12/08/morris/i ...
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utahn00b Posted 2:17 am
24 May 2007
false choice
A huge issue behind ethanol is that it's another (probably even more inefficient, polluting, and ecologically damaging) way to FUEL CARS. If most trips in this country are short ones--in town, to the store/work/school, etc., why do the supposedly popular options all have to do with cars? Bicycles aren't for everyone, but numerous bike and aftermarket equipment manufacturers are developing products that make them viable commuting and even cargo-hauling options--especially for short trips. And many people have old bikes in their garages/basements, etc., that are probably fine for use. We need more coverage of THAT option, too!
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SustainableGreen Posted 3:40 am
24 May 2007
Charming Naivete
Hey, all:
Oh, you naive impressionable people! Whoever said biofuels were a mechanism to ease poverty? Who even wondered for a moment what the effects of biofuels would be, except on stock prices and other benefits to Mega-Agri-Bidness? The assumption that they care is charming.
Canis candida's offering of the Edward Hoagland quote deserves a spotlight, actually a floodlight, since it covers a big picture of irreversible impacts. Many have already said that the only impacts of biofuels agriculture will be to further raise food costs and further reduce biodiversity--and add to human misery. All other impacts, such as increased water demand, are subsets of the above.
The only biofuel that has any value is bioDiesel made from waste vegetable oil (WVO), which can only replace ~5% of the fossil Diesel use. The WVO would otherwise be dumped or recycled for use in animal feed, neither of which being a positive.
It appears very unlikely that any biofuel development or mechanism can avoid the impacts mentioned above. Until then, the only expenditure should strictly be for research and development. In the meantime, cut out the 'middle person' and use PV and Wind for electricity for transportation. We are much closer to that, with far fewer negative impacts.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:45 am
24 May 2007
WVO, shouldn't be used in a car engine
Actually BioDiesel from WVO requires Methanol.
Virtually all Methanol comes from Natural Gas.
http://www.biodiesel.com/Transesterification.htm
The best way to use WVO is to use it raw, inside a city owned turbine to create electricity.
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/376
http://greyfalcon.net/biodiesel.png
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Solar John Posted 5:25 am
24 May 2007
Grow Some
Illegals in the U.S. should be back in Mexico growing corn to help feed their own population, not complaining about the high cost of tortillias.
John
Solar John
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:32 am
24 May 2007
Doesn't matter
By putting a market scarcity on farmland and water resources, it practically doesn't matter what gets grown.
And frankly, trying to grow ourselves out of this oil crisis isn't going to get us anywhere.
greyfalcon. net/ ethanol.png
US Energy Information Agency says that out of 146 Billion gallons a year we use now, we can't even expect 1 billion gallons of Ethanol per year by 2030.
greyfalcon. net/ ethanol8
All we're doing is wasting our tax dollars on corn states and agri-business cartels like ADM and Cargil.
All while offering up fake solutions that keeps car and oil companies happy, since they don't have to do anything different.
greyfalcon. net/ iowa
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Ron Steenblik Posted 6:44 am
24 May 2007
Yes, we need more coverage on other options
Thanks for the reminder, utahn00b. But just to correct a few misconceptions:
(1) Cane is not being produced in the Amazon. It is being produced mainly in Sao Paulo state, though it is expanding into the Cerrado, Brazil's savannah. That said, there are some folks down there who are saying that by farming one-quarter of its territory (but not the Amazon), Brazil could produce enough ethanol to displace ALL the world's ethanol.
(2) Soybeans are being produced in the Amazon (and elsewhere in Brazil). And one of the reasons for the increase in soybean production in Brazil and Argentina is to make up for declining supplies from the United States, which is planting fewer acres to soybeans and more to corn. Why? To supply the ethanol manufacturing plants.
(3) I'd be curious to know where GreyFlcn comes up with this statistic:
The USA produced almost 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol last year, and is projected by Iowa State University's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Insitute [PDF alert] to produce 7.1 billion gallons in 2007. The only reason I can imagine that the EIA would say something like that is if they are predicting lower petroleum prices, continued high grain prices, and no ethanol subsidies. Perhaps you're refering to cellulosic.
None of my comments should be taken as necessarily an endorsement of biofuels, and certainly not biofuel subsidies. But the debate needs to be based on facts, not heresay.
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Ron Steenblik Posted 7:05 am
24 May 2007
Sorry, it's 23:00 here
That sentence should have read "Brazil could produce enough ethanol to displace ALL the world's gasoline." I should have added also this quote from Professor Luis Cortez (of the State University of Campinas), the man who made that claim:
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:24 am
24 May 2007
Ah, yeah. Cellulosic
Good point there.
"Cellulosic Ethanol"
4.6 billion gallons is still pretty small compared to 146.0 billion gallons of oil consumed.
Especially when those 4.6 billion gallons have the equivalent range of 3.22 billion.
_
However the rainforrest definantly is being deforrested to create pasture.
Sugar Cane isn't just pushing cattle ranchers out into the Cerrado.
There's also the issue of "If all the farmland is used for biofuels, where do people plant their food crops"
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:41 am
24 May 2007
correction
146.0 billion gallons of gasoline consumed per year
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Ron Steenblik Posted 8:19 am
24 May 2007
Yup
"There's also the issue of 'If all the farmland is used for biofuels, where do people plant their food crops'."
Indeed.
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 8:33 am
24 May 2007
U.S. ethanol may drive Amazon deforestation
The biodiversivist noted this Mongabay article yesterday in his "Mongabay highlights for May '07" post:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/5/23/11047/0477
Ethanol production in the United States may be contributing to deforestation in the Brazilian rainforest said a leading expert on the Amazon.
Dr. Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center said the growing demand for corn ethanol means that more corn and less soy is being planted in the United States. Brazil, the world's largest producer of soybeans, is more than making up for shortfall, by clearing new land for soy cultivation. While only a fraction of this cultivation currently occurs in the Amazon rainforest, production in neighboring areas like the cerrado grassland helps drive deforestation by displacing small farmers and cattle producers, who then clear rainforest land for subsistence agriculture and pasture.
"We see soy prices going up partly because less soy is being grown in the U.S. as corn expands to meet the surging demand for the emerging ethanol industry," Nepstad told mongabay.com in an interview appearing next week on the rainforest information site. "Similarly as sugar cane expands in southern Brazil, soy production is heading northward, encroaching on the Amazon."
Soybean cultivation in the Amazon has expanded rapidly in recent years due to improved infrastructure in the region and rising demand for biofuels (soy can be used for biodiesel). Since 1990 the area of land planted with soybeans in Amazonian states has expanded at the rate of 14.1 percent per year (16.8 percent annually since 2000) and now covers more than eight million hectares. Soy is fast becoming a major driver of deforestation in the region, by pushing small-holder farmers into forest areas and providing impetus for infrastructure improvement projects--like the paving of Brazil's Cuiabá-Santarém (BR-163) Highway--that spawn further forest clearing.
"Soybean farms cause some forest clearing directly," said Dr. Philip Fearnside, a researcher at the Brazilian National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) and a highly regarded Amazon scholar. "But they have a much greater impact on deforestation by consuming cleared land, savanna, and transitional forests, thereby pushing ranchers and slash-and-burn farmers ever deeper into the forest frontier. Soybean farming also provides a key economic and political impetus for new highways and infrastructure projects, which accelerate deforestation by other actors."
The rapid expansion of soybean cultivation in the Amazon carriers other risks as well, according to research published last month in Geophysical Research Letters. Using experimental plots in the Amazon, a team of scientists led by Marcos Costa from the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil found that clearing for soybeans increases the reflectivity or albedo of land, reducing rainfall by as much as four times relative to clearing for pasture land.
"This [effect] is related to the surface radiation balance," explained Costa via email to mongabay.com. "Near the equator, rainfall is mainly produced by convective activity, that is, the hotter the surface the more rainfall you get. The soybean cropland, by having a higher albedo (reflectivity of the solar radiation) with respect to the original rainforest land cover, absorbs less energy, causing less convection and reduced rainfall."
Brazil's rapid rise as a producer of soybeans
Thanks to high demand and a new variety of soybean developed by Brazilian scientists to flourish in rainforest climate, soy production has boomed in the region in recent years as agricultural firms have converted extensive areas of rainforest and cerrado into industrial soybean farms. Brazil is expected to see its market share of soybean exports climb from around 31 percent in the 2004-2005 growing season to nearly 60 percent in 2015-2016. Meanwhile the U.S. will likely see its exports fall from 46 percent in 2004-2005 to less than 27 percent in 2015-2016, according to projections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). U.S. corn production and acreage is expected to increase as soybeans diminish.
Demand for corn is being driven by the surging ethanol industry in the U.S. Tuesday the USDA announced ethanol distillers will increase their share of domestic corn use by 58 percent this year, despite a projected record 12.46 billion-bushel corn crop. U.S. ethanol capacity currently stands at 6 billion gallons per year but the government hopes to double this by 2010.
For the complete Mongabay article plus soybean and agriculture charts, click here:
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0516-ethanol_amazon.html
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Karen Lee Orr Posted 9:05 am
24 May 2007
Biofuels and the poor
This is from Professor Tad Patzek's website:
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/index.htm
Q: Is sugarcane agriculture good for the workers?
A: They think not... See http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/ ...
Q: Is sugarcane agriculture good for poor people?
A: Not really, see http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Brazil/bra ...
Q: Where is Lucas' interview with Father Tiago from Brazil?
A: It is here
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/Materials/ ...
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SustainableGreen Posted 2:09 pm
24 May 2007
A consensus?
Hey, all:
So is the consensus that biofuels are not a solution, and that in general it should only be a research and development activity at best? Assuming that R&D can solve the objections at a future time?
And if so, how do we see that position put into place?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:18 pm
24 May 2007
Consensus on BioFuels? Don't do them
No.
The theoretical maximum solar effeciency of photosynthesis itself is 11%.
http://greyfalcon.net/sugarsolar
And as is, we're just about to start printing solar panels that are more effecient than that like they were newspaper.
http://greyfalcon.net/pv
And they are only going to get better.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8.asp
From a thermodynamics perspective,
If you must use biomass for energy, use it for heating, or electricity. Particularly as backup.
Using it to replace oil though is just stupid.
http://greyfalcon.net/biodiesel.png
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/376
Or use it to make fertilizer.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18589/
From an economic "oppourtunity cost" perspective,
We spend about $2.34 billion dollars a year on Ethanol to offset 3% of our gasoline consumption.
(Gasoline: 146B gallons/year, Ethanol 4.6B gallons/year, $0.51 per gallon subsidy)
Thats money that could be far better spent elsewhere.
Biofuels only exist to fool people into a false sense of accomplishment, and to deflect funding and attention away from improving our vehicle effeciency. (Much in the same way that Hydrogen vehicles killed the electric car mandate in California)
_
One caviate being if Algae made some major breakthrough. But so far, that looks about as likely as cold fusion.
http://greyfalcon.net/algae
http://greyfalcon.net/algae2
_
If we had to make liquid fuels in the future,
We could just cut to the chase turn CO2 and Solar Hydrogen directly into a Liquid Fuel.
Even though that is also really ineffecienct too.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2397
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Ron Steenblik Posted 4:48 pm
24 May 2007
Annual ethanol subsidies are much higher than that
GreyFlcn, the $2.34 billion dollars a year number you mention is just the $0.51/gallon cost to the U.S. Treasury of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). There are a multitude of other measures supporting ethanol in addition to that, especially at the local and state levels.
The study we commissioned, "Biofuels--At What Cost?", which was published in October last year, came up with an estimate in the range of $5.1-$6.8 billion for 2006. At the current, higher rates of expected production (7.1 billion gallons in 2007), total support for this year can be expected to be roughly proportionally higher.
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caniscandida Posted 5:33 pm
24 May 2007
"grey falcon"?; "the poor"
Could this nom-de-screen be inspired by the much-admired masterpiece of political-scientific reportage, from the mid-20th-century Balkans, "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon," by the exquisite stylist Rebecca West? Our own Grey Falcon's style is indeed memorable, though in a different way.
Much more important, Sustainable David's call for consensus on biofuels, within the Gristmill community, sounds right at this point.
Thanks, Ron, for your help here.
Also, Maywa's post expressed interest in the world's poor, and we have somehow got away from them and their interests.
You may remember that remarkable piece of TV reporting, right after Hurricane Katrina struck, by a young woman journalist with a cameraman, an interview with an African-American man, 50s-ish, in Biloxi or Gulfport. He said that when the hurricane hit, it was all he could do to cling to a tree, and hold on to his grandchildren. He was trying to hold on to his wife too, but his strength was failing; she understood that, and said, "Just look after the kids." Then she was wrenched away by the force of the hurricane, and was gone; and that was the last time he ever saw her.
And soon afterwards, some commentator, perhaps the good Democratic Catholic reporter Mark Shields, said, "That man is the most precious man in all the United States."
Similarly, the people that Maywa has in mind are like that: the people who are vulnerable, the people who lose, the people who suffer. These are the most precious people in the world.
Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:28 am
25 May 2007
re: Steenblik
Yeah, I just didn't want to oversell it like that previous cellulosic comment.
Unless of course I had a good reference, like the one you just supplied :P
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:29 am
25 May 2007
BioFuels compared
For some comparison, I wonder how much Solar PV is getting from the Fed annually.
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SustainableGreen Posted 7:53 am
25 May 2007
The Poor, PV Funding, and Policy
Hey, all:
I am about the last person on the planet to quote the Bible (actually I do it to throw it in the fat faces of the fat hypocritical Fundies), but here are a just a couple that touch on the issue of the poor and how they are, or are not, cared for:
Luke 9:48
Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all--he is the greatest."
Leviticus 25:35
"If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you."
Of course, anyone can pick any religion to see how that one is doing on behalf of the poor.
The impacts of our actions clearly affect the poor, from directly increasing food prices, or by AGW causing desertification, loss of land from erosion, causing migrations of human populations, and so on. Biofuels have the potential to do both, since they create greater competition for crop production, and they are not even close to being Carbon neutral.
GreyFlcn: I have heard of very little funding of any kind for PV (or any other sustainability products) from the Federal government. Direct subsidies to manufacturers I strongly suspect are zero, R&D to outfits like NREL have been cut annually since 2000, the only big purchases I know of for PV are from DOD, and that would not exist save our disastrous Iraq War. Actually most of the "renewable" subsidies and interest are for biofuels, for switchgrass, cellulosic ethanol, and corn.
I would like to repeat my question from a little earlier--How do we affect a change in policy on biofuels? If the valid consensus is that it has no future (and it seems it is), even with the potential through R&D, how do we get our point across and change the practice?
Ol' Al Gore didn't have to write a book for most of us to know the irrationality of politically-based policy, but how do we redirect it?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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GreyFlcn Posted 11:55 am
25 May 2007
Well more or less
More or less the only way to get our point across is to convince some group like GreenPeace, NRDC, SVLG, or some such that biofuels are actually a threat to creating sustainability.
Maybe Al Gore might listen, who knows. Grist has interviewed him before.
But sadly it looks like the BioFuels issue might become a casuality of the 2008 election, unless someone were able to make a big stink about it in the public media.
Since Corn States weild so much weight inside the electoral college.
greyfalcon.net/iowa
You'd need both a big stink, and a savvy political figure to show corn states that it's in their best interest to not go sustainable.
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ethanol Posted 5:39 pm
05 Jul 2007
Ethanol fuel
I would like to invite all audience to visit a newly lounched site dedicated to biofuels, ethanol and climate issues. Potential writers are wellcome to write to editors@ethanol-news.de
http://www.ethanol-news.de
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Billhook Posted 8:58 pm
05 Jul 2007
Sustainable Biofuel trading began in C17
It seems a common misconception here on Grist to assume that biofuels are ethanol/biodiesel/wvo,
and are sourced from sundry unsustainable agribusiness crops.
In reality, the oldest commercially traded biofuel is methanol,
whose commercial start was in 1684,
being sourced from coppice woodland
and exracted as a bi-product of charcoal production.
The Hindustan Times had a fine editorial on the relevance of this fuel for India,
which is printed in full at
www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4553
Given that no biofuel is going to displace any fossil fuel at all under a lack of binding global usage limits,
what counts now are the comparative production impacts of the ethanol and methanol routes.
If the latter is sourced from sustainable forestry (at very little extra cost)
it can provide serious social and ecological benefits for developing countries,
as well as cutting dependence on oil imports with their ruinous hard currency demands.
Regards,
Blii
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SustainableGreen Posted 11:04 pm
05 Jul 2007
Interesting Comparison of Fuels
Hey, all:
Hey, Bill: While entirely correct, I don't see how what you describe really makes any difference in the headlong ill-considered rush to extend mega-agribidness into yet more marginal land to satisfy their interest in making a buck. And typically, at all cost to others, including subsidies, externalized cost, further loss of habitat and biodiversity, and other environmental destruction.
Meanwhile the poverty impact is increasingly coming to pass. Dairy prices in the U.S. have already started rising, which will certainly be followed by increases in all other foods, beyond those containing the crop plants that have been diverted into agrofuels. The poor typically use less of their budgets for fuel, but this trend will impact a larger more critical portion of their budgets.
What you say is an interesting reminder on an earlier, better considered, established farming practice, but what we face now is far more threatening on many levels. I wonder how coppiced sustainable methanol can be made more competitive with row cropped ethanol, without repeating the latter's impacts. Ideas?
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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