A trio of fine letters in The NYT today, taking Richard Cohen to task for his reflexive praise of sugar-cane ethanol.
I read a letter to the editor, the other day, I opened, and read it, it said they was suckas 22
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Posted 4:20 PM on 4 May 2008
by David Roberts -
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:18 am
04 May 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/opinion/lweb03cohen.htm ...
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Jonas Posted 9:28 am
04 May 2008
I urge all people to read the most authoritative study and model on the explicitly sustainable potential of bioenergy ever produced - namely by the Copernicus Institute for the IEA's Bioenergy Task 40, and now used by the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN as a starting point for debates about bioenergy.
According to this study and the QUICKSCAN model, which is the only one taking a 'bottom-up' approach, there is a sustainable potential of around 1500Ej by 2050 (we currently use 400Ej of energy, globally, from all sources: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear).
This model starts from an explicit non-deforestation scenario and looks at how much low-carbon land is available for biomass after all food, fiber, fodder and forest product needs of a growing population (different scenarios) have been met.
The result is: approximately 1500Ej.
This is the technical sustainable potential.
Edward M.W. Smeets, André P.C. Faaij, Iris M. Lewandowski and Wim C. Turkenburg (2006) A bottom-up assessment and review of global bio-energy potentials to 2050. Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Volume 33, Issue 1, February 2007, Pages 56-106
Or the complete report here (opens as a pdf file).
The real question is one of implementation: how to ensure that this technical potential is actualized? If we regulate things well, 1500 Ej of bioenergy can be produced without cutting a tree and without deforestation (the basis of the model).
In fact, most future biofuels will come from planting trees and perennial grass species on degraded lands. So instead of depleting carbon from soils, the energy crops will restore the health low-carbon lands.
(If you think reforestation and afforestation efforts are good, then you must like reforestation and afforestation efforts with energy crops, because they are even stronger contributors to lowering the excess of carbon.
A standing reforested or afforested tree does not reduce emissions any longer once it is mature. The sensible thing to do is to chop it down to turn it into fuels which replace fossil fuels, and then to plant a new one, which, when young, sucks up CO2 again.)
Alternatively, but Lester Brown is not very much up to date on things, biomass can be sequestered in soils as biochar - Biochar Fund
In short, biofuels can slow deforestation, renew and replenish destroyed and depleted soils, become carbon-negative (it's the only technology capable of doing this), and provide jobs to millions (unlike the other renewables, which do not contribute much socially and have baseload problems, thus contributing to the perpetuated use of fossil fuels).
Now the social aspects of production apply to all modes of production.
The metals mined for wind turbines come from Congo, and have contributed to the death of 5 million people.
Social sustainability must be ensured for all production processes, including biofuels. There is no reason to single out biofuels.
The good thing about biofuels however is that they can also lift the world's poorest out of poverty. Let's not forget that 75% of them are farmers who need new markets.
Some, including the FAO and the WorldWatch Institute, have even gone so far as to say that smart biofuel production systems can solve world hunger once and for all.
Is there a reason to glorify Brazilian ethanol? Certainly not, but it is a very good production system that is being replicated in Africa, to the great benefit of the societies there, who are facing collapse each time oil prices rise above $60 a barrel. If its social sustainability can be improved, then all the better.
To conclude: in this debate I would never rely on the views of conservationists, pop-eco-theologists like Brown, or governments. I would only stick to scientists and non-aligned, multilateral and or independent research organisations (like the FAO, the IEA or the WorldWatch Institute).
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David Roberts Posted 9:32 am
04 May 2008
grist.org
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Danothebaldyheid Posted 9:42 am
04 May 2008
Picture me giving a damn - I said never.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:11 pm
04 May 2008
You've been presented with links to the six articles found in the following science journals multiple times: Science, The Journal of Conservation Biology, and The Journal of Atmospheric chemistry and physics, which all demonstrate the damage being done to the environment by various biofuels.
To conclude: in this debate I would never rely on the views of conservationists, pop-eco-theologists like Brown, or governments. I would only stick to scientists and non-aligned, multilateral and or independent research organisations (like the FAO, the IEA or the WorldWatch Institute).
Brown founded the Worldwatch Institute. Their book on biofuels is not to be confused with a scientific study. Neither the FAO nor the IEA have published any studies that attempt to refute the six found in the above mentioned science journals.
The papers you refer to here by the IEA, as you have done before, and as I responded to before, are thought ("what if") exercises. You have misinterpreted their intent. They are only calculating theoretical potentials, all based on assumptions with unknown probabilities.
A standing reforested or afforested tree does not reduce emissions any longer once it is mature. The sensible thing to do is to chop it down to turn it into fuels which replace fossil fuels, and then to plant a new one, which, when young, sucks up CO2 again.)
You mean biodiverse rainforest carbon sinks. One small problem, among many: we don't know how to turn trees in to liquid biofuels in a commercially viable way. You overlooked that minor fact, as you are wont to do.
The chart below shows that it would take a cane ethanol crop about 90 years to make up for the carbon sinks burned to create cropland for that cane crop or to create cropland to replace the cropland that cane crop usurped from a food crop.
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/biodiesel/img2.gif
...biochar - Biochar Fund In short, biofuels can slow deforestation, renew and replenish destroyed and depleted soils, become carbon-negative...
Exactly what biofuels you are defending? Biochar may bear fruit, as may cellulosic, but neither have produced any commercially viable quantities, making them nothing more than experiments. I'm all for experimentation. The problem lies with the biofuels being mass-produced today.
Social sustainability must be ensured for all production processes, including biofuels. There is no reason to single out biofuels.
There is a need to single them out because they are a new and terrible burden on the face of an already overburdened planet. They pour gas on the fire consuming the planet's carbon sinks and biodiversity.
The good thing about biofuels however is that they can also lift the world's poorest out of poverty. Let's not forget that 75% of them are farmers who need new markets.
There is no evidence that they are doing that or that they will do that. Your own sources say that "large scale bioenergy crop production" would be needed. Large agricultural interests are already crushing the poor, as the one letter in the Times attests.
...it is a very good production system that is being replicated in Africa, to the great benefit of the societies there,...
No benefits have come to societies there as a result of the Brazilian production system. One company is setting up an ethanol facility. How or if it will help the local poor is yet to be seen.
From another pop-eco-theologist, Richard Hoffman, Brazil country representative, Catholic Relief Services:
When discussing biofuels and the production of sugar cane in Brazil, there is a human cost to consider.
While most Brazilian employers respect workers' rights, Brazil is a very large country. In some of the more distant corners, pressure to maximize profits has sometimes led to situations of degrading and slave labor.
Sugar cane has not been immune: of the 5,877 workers freed in 2007 from conditions analogous to slave labor in Brazil, 2,947 had been sugar-cane cutters.
The connection between slave or degrading labor and increased ethanol-linked demand for sugar cane has not gone unnoticed by Brazilian watchdog agencies. The Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo reported in 2007 that São Paulo sugar-cane cutters had slightly longer productive work lives in the decade before Brazil's 1888 abolition of slavery than do modern sugar-cane cutters.
Sugar cane has a long and often cruel history in Brazil.
Of course, this couldn't possibly happen in Africa.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 10:27 pm
04 May 2008
They forgot starvation and food riots. And diversion from real solutions, like the following.
There are other sources for biogas (than the municipal waste mentioned in the letter to the editor), that actually reduce GHG dramatically. Manure, organic garbage, and farm biomass waste.
Since methane is 21 times worse a GHG than CO2, by converting these sources to biogas (before returning the resulting organic fertilizer byproduct to the soil), huge amounts of methane release are prevented. The biogas can then be converted to electricity to backup a renewable power grid, it is easily stored for that purpose.
For every kwh worth of CO2 emitted (from using the biogas to generate power) 20 times that effective amount of GHG, in the form of methane is cancelled.
Manure otherwise runs off into the ecosystem, combining with carbon stored as cellulose in dead plant matter in wetlands, for instance, to release methane. One part of nitrogen (manure) to 30 parts carbon (in the cellulosic biomass in the wetlands) makes the perfect GHG generator. Turning millenia of stored carbon into methane in the atmosphere.
If 5% of our energy came from biogas generated from these waste sources, 20 time that effective amount of GHG would be offset. 100% of our GHG emissions. Methane as a backup for a renewable grid and as a backup fuel for plugin hybrid hypecar (ultralight, ultra-efficient) vehicles could replace fossil fuel use, oil, gas, and coal. Climate disaster and dependence on foreign oil and soaring energy prices, all problems solved.
Ethanol keeps gas guzzling going, diverting the political and financial capital to get this biogas backed up, renewable energy revolution going.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jonas Posted 11:59 pm
04 May 2008
-helping to prevent deforestation and restore the health of more than 1 billion hectares of degraded land
-help the poor farmers of this planet survive
-protect the least developed societies from being destroyed by ultra-high oil prices
-prevent the introduction of highly dangerous and anti-social mobility concepts like battery-electric vehicles based on wind power (which has killed 5 million people in Congo)
We thus take Lula's words to heart:
Discarding biofuels would be a crime against humanity.
Would it be the countries of the South who have succeeded recently in ousting Jean Ziegler as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food? After all, Ziegler was their enemy. Ziegler is gone.
He has been replaced by a more moderate Stalinist, Olivier de Schutter, who I know well, because he teaches at our university.
De Schutter has distanced himself from Ziegler's harsh, irrational rage against biofuels. But since he remains a Stalinist, he too refuses to stand on the side of the poor countries in the South, who say discarding biofuels would be a crime against humanity.
PS: where do you get the strange idea that there is only 1 ethanol factory being built in Africa? I know of at least 10 projects, all based on sugarcane.
Reason will rule.
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gzuckier Posted 12:30 am
05 May 2008
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:14 am
05 May 2008
-helping to prevent deforestation and restore the health of more than 1 billion hectares of degraded land
-help the poor farmers of this planet survive
-protect the least developed societies from being destroyed by ultra-high oil prices
-prevent the introduction of highly dangerous and anti-social mobility concepts like battery-electric vehicles based on wind power (which has killed 5 million people in Congo)
Debating you reminds me of debates I've had with creationists. They would repeat over and over and over again the exact same debunked sentences as if chanting could make wishes come true. When they got desperate enough they would also throw up posts, like you just did, trying to dupe viewers into thinking we actually agree.
We thus take Lula's words to heart:
Discarding biofuels would be a crime against humanity.
This must be the fifth time you have said that. Taking to heart anything that comes out of the mouth of a politician, particularly one that has everything in the world to gain from promoting biofuels, would be a very naive thing to do.
Would it be the countries of the South who have succeeded recently in ousting Jean Ziegler as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food? After all, Ziegler was their enemy. Ziegler is gone.
Courage can be hard to define but you know it when you see it. Speaking truth to power for the sake of others takes courage because it entails risk. Ziegler is a brave man.
PS: where do you get the strange idea that there is only 1 ethanol factory being built in Africa? I know of at least 10 projects, all based on sugarcane.
I was referring to the one project you had mentioned. I'm sure there are dozens of projects, like this one and this one. Note in the latter link that it took riots and a death to stop the the razing of a Uganda forest for cane by power brokers.
Our discussions have degenerated into repetition of previous discussions. Finding a place to grow cane that does not usurp food crops or biodiverstity or carbon sinks is the hard part.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jonas Posted 2:22 am
05 May 2008
Lula says: those who discard biofuels commit crimes against humanity.
And now Abdoulaye Wade, another huge symbol of developing country politics, speaks the to us unthinkable words:
UN food body 'should be scrapped'
An African leader has dismissed the UN's food agency as a "waste of money" and called for it to be scrapped.
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal spoke out days after the UN announced an emergency plan to bring soaring world food prices under control.
Mr Wade said the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was itself largely to blame for the price rises.
His comments came as bakers in Nigeria began a week-long national strike in protest at the cost of flour and sugar.
Some global food prices have nearly doubled in the past three years, provoking riots and other protests in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Mr Wade said on Senegalese radio and television on Sunday that the FAO's work was duplicated by other bodies that operated more efficiently, like the UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development.
That agency has unveiled a $200m (£100m) package to support farmers and boost production in the countries worst affected by the food crisis.
Mr Wade said that despite the qualities of the FAO's leader - his compatriot Jacques Diouf - the agency was a "waste of money largely spent on doing very little".
"The current situation is largely its failure and the cries of alarm will not help at all," he added.
Mr Wade said he had campaigned in the past for the agency to be relocated from Rome to a country in Africa - the continent most affected by food shortages.
"This time, I'm going further, we must scrap it," he said.
Source: BBC
Likewise, Malawi's leader, who succeeded in turning his country from a begging bowl into a maize-exporter, has dismissed the World Food Program as a complicit organisation that causes food crises instead of solving them.
He has said never to listen to these organisations (IMF, World Bank, WFP, Western NGOs) ever again.
We should closely monitor what the South says. Even if we don't like what it says. After all, they largely determine our (planet's) future.
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Jonas Posted 2:26 am
05 May 2008
Just to make sure we don't remain too autistic. Climate change, agriculture, biofuels, social development - they're all global issues, aren't they?
Seldom do we hear the contrarian voices coming from the South.
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Jonas Posted 2:28 am
05 May 2008
Thus tens of millions of poor people are continuing to die. Decades of development are being destroyed.
And very few people seem to worry about this 'loud tsunami'.
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Jonas Posted 3:04 am
05 May 2008
Agreed, according to the Copernicus Institute and the IEA, there are hundreds of millions of hectares available for energy crops such as grasses, trees and sugarcane, while meeting all food, fiber, fodder and forest product needs for growing populations, and in an explicit no-deforestation scenario (and without encroaching on protected land, such as the vast nature reserves of Africa.)
Hundreds of millions of hectares, enough to grow a potential of 1500 Exajoules of energy by 2050 (that is: 3.5 times as much energy as we consume today on a planetary scale from all sources: oil, coal, gas, nuclear.)
In short, finding the land is the easy part. Sticking to it, is the difficult part.
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:09 am
05 May 2008
and...
His comments came as bakers in Nigeria began a week-long national strike in protest at the cost of flour and sugar.
Hmmm, what could possibly be affecting the price of sugar?
However, the relative price of sugar and ethanol will be paramount for millers when they decide where to concentrate their production.
Currently the respective returns are very similar, but this can change. A one percent shift towards sugar equates to an additional 0.7 million tonnes of production and 0.4 million cubic metres less ethanol [and vice versa].
ED&F Man said that with competition for land expected to curb sugar production in many countries, Brazil looks set to be one of the few countries that will increase its sugar output across 2008 and 2009.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:16 am
05 May 2008
and...
Hundreds of millions of hectares, enough to grow a potential of 1500 Exajoules of energy by 2050 (that is: 3.5 times as much energy as we consume today on a planetary scale from all sources: oil, coal, gas, nuclear.)
The papers you refer to here by the IEA, as you have done before, and as I responded to before, are thought ("what if") exercises. You have misinterpreted their intent. They are only calculating theoretical potentials, all based on assumptions with unknown probabilities.
Cutting and pasting previous responses makes this so easy! Round and round we go!
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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PJD Posted 3:17 am
05 May 2008
It seems like the common ground could be in recognizing that a food crisis is becoming a reality and that there are ample opportunities to support sustainable agriculture that would help alleviate this problem, particularly in Africa. Investment and education could go a long way to increasing productivity of farmland without deforestation.
Supporting family farmers in the developing world would seem to be both entrepreneurial and socially responsible enough to satisfy both ends of the debate spectrum. Providing education, seeds and farm equipment to those needing it would seem an obvious first step.
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Jonas Posted 5:12 am
05 May 2008
After all, you have been referring to the same "studies" over and over again, not six times but hundreds of times.
The longer you refer to them, the higher the chances that they become irrelevant. Like the famous Pimentel studies, to which you kept referring for years, until they were totally debunked. Then you dug up another story. Which is being debunked as we speak.
Ping.
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Biodiversivist Posted 5:40 am
05 May 2008
Like the famous Pimentel studies, to which you kept referring for years, until they were totally debunked.
Heads up! I believe your pants are on fire...
I just used the Grist advanced search feature and found that in all the years I've been contributing here I have mentioned Pimentel only twice, both times in the same paragraph.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Jonas Posted 9:21 am
05 May 2008
But let's not become sophists.
I agree with some of the things you keep repeating, like the fact that biofuels can never replace all oil (technically they can, but at what cost?), or that it might take several years before fourth-generation biofuels become available.
However, I disagree with you on the sustainability front. I think that the poor and the countries of the South have the right to develop, in as clean a way as practically possible. You think that others do not have that right, as long as its not according to an immaculate development concept that not even the most wealthy nations can afford.
Biofuels can have some drawbacks when badly organised, but they are the only realistic option for the planet to bridge the opposite demands of development proper and sustainability.
I've asked this repeatedly, but you've always failed to answer: do you have an alternative to biofuels, for the 130+ countries whose per capita income is below $10,000 and who want to develop into a (post-)industrial society?
I'm very curious for your wise answer, old biodiversionist.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:39 pm
05 May 2008
Old biodiversionist, you post over at GreenCarCongress too (and probably at many other blogs), where you have pimped Pimentel ad nauseam.
Ding! Not so:
I just did a Google search and found nothing but one comment where I was criticizing him, and it wasn't even on greencarcongress.
I agree with some of the things you keep repeating, like the fact that biofuels can never replace all oil (technically they can, but at what cost?), or that it might take several years before fourth-generation biofuels become available.
Ding! Not so:
I did not say any of those things.
I've asked this repeatedly, but you've always failed to answer: do you have an alternative to biofuels, for the 130+ countries whose per capita income is below $10,000 and who want to develop into a (post-)industrial society?
Ding! Not so:
I have answered that question at least three times. I'll not repeat it a fourth, or fifth or sixth. Go back to previous posts for the answer (Hint, search for China and India).
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 2:33 pm
05 May 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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PJD Posted 7:07 am
08 May 2008
Wish you had repeated for a fourth time. Now you've left me guessing.
Perhaps electrified public transportation? Maybe... yes?
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