A fifth of the Amazon rainforest -- the world's biggest carbon sponge -- has disappeared since the 1970s. The Brazilian government has succeeded in recent years in slowing the deforestation rate, but its efforts have recently been faltering.
In the last four months, 2300 square miles of rainforest got leveled, Reuters reports. In the year before that, the forest surrendered 3700 square miles. If the current rate holds over a full year, that would mean a 9200-square-mile loss -- an alarming acceleration and the first rise in four years.
What's driving the trend? Traditional factors like demand for timber and land for cattle grazing remain in place, but the real culprit appears to desire for cropland. Rising prices of crops, fueled by the biofuel boom, is inspiring people to clear trees.
And the trend could intensify.
[A government scientist] also warned that continued high world oil prices were likely to result in a surge in demand for Amazon land to produce ethanol, the alternative transport fuel for which global demand is already booming.
"If oil prices keep increasing there will be an explosion of biofuel production in the Amazon, contrary to Brazilian government policy," Nobre said.
There's a bitter irony here. Many governments -- including our own -- have mandated steep rises in biofuel use as a green alternative to crude oil. But if meeting those mandates means amputating the "world's lungs," the cure could prove worse than the disease.
As Reuters puts it:
Destruction of forests produces about 20 percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions, making conservation of the Amazon crucial to limiting rises in global temperatures.
What is Obama’s international climate strategy?
Ask Umbra on green moving companies
Et tu, Al? Franken gulps the ethanol-spiked Kool-Aid
Comments
View as Flat
sindark Posted 4:12 am
18 Jan 2008
Some figures
According to a study from 2000, tropical rainforest is heavily laden with carbon: between 155 and 187 tonnes for wet forest and between 27 and 63 tonnes for dry. That means that each square kilometre of rainforest is holding between 2,700 and 18,700 tonnes of carbon: with about 70% of that in trees, 20% in the soil, and the rest in roots, understory, and litter.
As a result of both land use change and forest burning, the World Resource Institute estimates that deforestation represents about 18.3% of all human greenhouse gas emissions. As such, tackling it is a priority.
Sources:
a sibilant intake of breath
Permalink
sindark Posted 4:13 am
18 Jan 2008
clarification
"[B]etween 155 and 187 tonnes for wet forest and between 27 and 63 tonnes for dry" refers to a patch of forest 100 metres to a side.
a sibilant intake of breath
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:19 am
18 Jan 2008
Heh
I wonder how that compares to man-made transportation emissions.
Permalink
spaceshaper Posted 4:30 am
18 Jan 2008
It gets worse.
Devastation of carbon sinks worldwide for biofuel crops is not the only distasteful aspect of the biodiesel boom. Our local biodiesel coop has been pretty coy about its feedstock: nary a definitive word on its website http://biofuels.coop/
Seems the reason may be that much of their source material is "waste" fats from CAFO chicken operations. Your biodiesel truck may be running on the trashed body parts of tortured and abused birds.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Permalink
lamarguerite Posted 4:42 am
18 Jan 2008
standards for biofuels
Where are the international standards for biofuels?
http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com
marguerite manteau-rao http://lamarguerite.wordpress.com 'It's All About Green Psychology'
Permalink
Patrick Mazza Posted 4:57 am
18 Jan 2008
Stopping this will take policy changes
As the quote above notes, high oil prices are in the driver's seat here. Even if all enviros concluded that biofuels are a bad idea - shouldn't do it - biofuels would still be pushed by high oil prices, the apparent emergence of an oil peak or at least plateau, security concerns over the location of two-thirds of conventional oil reserves around the Persian Gulf, and rural economic development demands. So rainforests and grasslands such as the Brazilian cerrado, also of huge global carbon budget concern, would remain in danger.
Thus, biofuels critics need to move beyond simplistic positions such as "biofuels kill," and start to make distinctions. Moving beyond volume-based policy standards to metrics such as low-carbon fuel standards with full lifecycle accounting is central. And yes, the trickiest and most difficult part of making such standards meaningful is land use changes - How do you measure effects on the whole global agricultural system? Not easy, but much modeling work going on.
Another step of even greater importance is to create a global market for biological carbon sequestration that offers competitive returns with other agricultural products. Otherwise we will lose all kinds of ecosystems to growing demand for all kinds of products, food, fiber, feed and fuels.
Patrick Mazza
Permalink
Erik Hoffner Posted 5:18 am
18 Jan 2008
re: standards for biofuels
lamarguerite:
The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels is the main effort:
http://cgse.epfl.ch/page65660-en.html
The Bioenergy Wiki has a roundup of all the efforts here:
http://www.bioenergywiki.net/index.php/Sustainability_sta ...
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
Permalink
ngreene Posted 5:47 am
18 Jan 2008
LCFS is the path forward
Patrick is exactly right--no surprise what with him working with Climate Solutions and all. The low-carbon fuel standard is a technology-neutral and performance-based policy. To get a sense of why being technology neutral is so important take a look at the map of possible biofuels pathways developed by Jeremy Martin from UCS. With his permission I posted it here on my blog. I also address the importance and scale of GHG emissions from land-use change and the regulatory accounting and certification tools being developed by CARB and EPA in my latest post.
Permalink
sindark Posted 5:47 am
18 Jan 2008
Compared to transport
I wonder how that compares to man-made transportation emissions.
Road - 9.9%
Air - 1.6%
Other - 2.3%
Total - 13.5%
Source: World Resources Institute.
a sibilant intake of breath
Permalink
btbrown Posted 7:38 am
18 Jan 2008
biofuel: the green irony
Although sometimes difficult to measure, I think it is also important to note the human consequences that result from a growing biofuel industry in S. America. In Paraguay, using the lowest estimate there are 250,000 displaced/landless people in a country of 6 million, which according to a Paraguayan social research institute BASE-IS is primarily attributed to the soy industry. This is an article which talks about a woman from Paraguay that has been severely affected by soy.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070305/weisberg
As the global marketplace for carbon sequestration grows, it will be necessary to ensure that these carbon credits are not only offering competitive returns, but are accessible to small family farms.
Take a look at Brazil's Social Fuel Stamp. This seems like a useful legal approach to encourage a more equitable biodiesel industry.
http://www.biodiesel.gov.br/docs/Folder_biodiesel_ingles_ ...
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 8:52 am
18 Jan 2008
The Standard Will Save Us!
Which most likely means that the Europeans will do it first, and then the Americans will copy it later, starting with California.
Just like with Electronics Recycling, and Toxics.
_
Since as it is now, the US Government Corn, Soy and Palm Oil are wonderful!
Where as the EU Government is considering banning them. (Which largely might not even be a serious effort, but more of a trade barrier to protect domestic production)
http://nytimes.com/2008/01/15/business/worldbusiness/15bi ...
http://royalsociety.org/document.asp?latest=1&id=7366 ...
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0103-biofuels.html
http://atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/11191/2007/acpd-7-11 ...
_
The real hitch to all that is if California can get their EPA head guy to sign off on the damn waiver form.
Permalink
kimberleywoelich Posted 12:45 pm
18 Jan 2008
cutting rain forrest!
Agriculture has been cutting down the forest for years! Mainly McDonalds. Cut the rain forest to raise cows to kill cows to eat more meat, to get fat, then drive all the time because we are too fat to walk! Then cut more rain forrest to provide fuel for the car to drive to go to the fastfood chain to buy more meat, which cuts down more rain forrest!
Permalink
Ron Steenblik Posted 5:56 pm
18 Jan 2008
Petroleum prices not driving market for biodiesel
I disagree with Patrick Mazza's assertion that the high price of crude petroleum is driving the demand for biofuels, at least as regards biodiesel made from virgin vegetable oils. The price of petroleum is indeed high, but so are the prices of vegetable oils. It is not absolute prices but relative prices that matter.
According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization's (FAO) international commodity price reporter, the international price of crude palm oil (CPO) has more than doubled since January 2006, and now stands at $950 per metric ton. The latest prices for soya oil and rapeseed (canola) oil are, respectively, $1,164 and $1,386. Translating these prices into volumetric terms (at a specific density of around 0.88), we have the following:
Feedstock $/litre $/gallon
Palm oil ... 0.84 3.16
Soya oil ... 1.02 3.88
Rape oil ... 1.22 4.62
That is the price of feedstocks before processing into biodiesel, which step adds around 20% to costs.
Lets compare those prices with the latest spot price for crude petroleum (Brent): around $90 per barrel, or $2.14 per gallon ($0.57 per litre). That crude has to be processed also to turn it into diesel. Heating oil (which is similar to diesel fuel) futures are currently trading at $2.50, which is a 17% mark-up on the price of crude. So let's round that up to 20% so that we can make it simple and compare one feedstock (vegetable oil) with another (crude petroleum).*
At current international prices, the main feedstocks for biodiesel are 48% to 115% higher ($1.73/gallon higher in the case of soya oil, the main feedstock in the United States) on a volumetric basis than crude petroleum. But biodiesel has only about 92% of the energy density of petroleum diesel, so on an energy-equivalent basis they are around 60% to 135% higher than petroleum diesel ($2.07/gallon of diesel equivalent higher in the case of soya oil). Assuming a petroleum price of $100/barrel would only drop those numbers to 44% to 111% higher ($1.83/gallon of diesel equivalent higher in the case of soya oil).
So, if producing biodiesel from pure virgin vegetable oils is so expensive, why is it being produced at all?
The answer, in two words: subsidies and mandates.
From Brazil to the EU, from Indonesia to several states in the United States, governments have mandated minimum blending ratios (typically 2% to 5%) for biodiesel. Some (like Indonesia) enlist state-owned petroleum companies to sell it (in Indonesia at a substantial loss in revenues), and many others provide substantial subsidies.
In the United States, the federal excise tax credit for biodiesel made from virgin agricultural products is $1.00 per gallon. Many states top that up with producer payments, blenders' credits, reduced fuel taxes, and even reduced sales taxes. Kentucky, for example, adds their own $1.00 per gallon subsidy to the federal subsidy, bringing the total subsidy for a producer in that state to $2.00 per gallon ($2.17 per gallon of diesel equivalent). Nowadays, that just barely covers the difference between the cost of the feedstock and the (before tax) market price for diesel-like fuels.
So please, people, when you make an assertion that oil prices are driving this market, look at the other factors (feedstock prices, subsidies, mandates) as well.
There is no way, at current feedstock prices and crude petroleum prices, that biodiesel production would be viable were it not for the mandates and subsidies.
Eliminate those, and all the hand-wringing about how to make biodiesel production sustainable would become moot.
-------------------
*Industry experts will no doubt point out that biodiesel manufacturing yields a byproduct, glycerin, the sale of which can help offset some of the high cost of producing biodiesel. But the global rise in biodiesel production has created a glut of crude glycerin, sending the price of that commodity into free fall. For the purposes of this exercise we can ignore it.
Permalink
JMG Posted 6:23 pm
18 Jan 2008
Alas
Mazza is right in that agrofuels are the totem that the pols and uninformed enviros have waved so much that, in the public mind, they are a response to high gas prices. So, in a very real sense, agrofuels ARE a response to high gas prices.
About as useful (and quite similar in effect, in fact) as bleeding the patient to cure ailments, but Americans are not known for rational responses to any sort of warning sign that ecological limits exist and cannot be evaded.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
Permalink
trock Posted 11:20 pm
18 Jan 2008
it's all melting
It's sure is some kind of synergy when the artic ice is melting and the rain forests are melting at about the same rates.
Permalink
stopgreenpath Posted 2:19 am
19 Jan 2008
what about the desert?
there is more to the planet than carbon emissions. part of the value of the rainforest is it's function in a balanced ecosystem, just like coral reefs, old-growth forest, watersheds, mangrove wetlands, and yes, the desert. we don't even understand 10% of the functions of various elements of the various ecosystems, so how on earth can we feel comfortable obliterating them while there are much better options available to us, even if they cost a bit more, or don't centralize profits in big corporations???
desert is not "failed" forest. it is uniquely important to the global ecosytem and cannot be sacrificed at the altar of utility company profits, like so may coal-rich mountains before it. this is why we all need to STRENUOUSLY OBJECT to any so-called "renewable" energy programs which destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of desert wilderness.
bulldozing, dynamiting, poisoning and dehydrating wilderness is NOT "green," any more than biofuel grown at the expense of rainforest, yet many environmentalists are greenwashing these killing fields because they think it's "better than coal." well, it's not, and we need to SUPPORT massive programs to bring PV/wind and thermal only to PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED areas.
I cannot name one person who would not be delighted to have a program that really, truly, made a home system affordable, and a LOT of folks in construction need work right now, so the economy will also benefit from a GREEN COLLAR boost.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 2:44 am
19 Jan 2008
Well
Well, good for you.
One thing we will most likely see a lot more of with Global Warming is Deserts.
Permalink
Patrick Mazza Posted 11:46 am
19 Jan 2008
Responding to Ron
For the relatively new biodiesel market, no dispute with Ron. For the more mature ethanol market - the fuel which Tom's original post referred - BP estimates corn ethanol is competitive with petroleum at $48/barrel, and Brazil sugarcane ethanol at $22. Ethanol actually has been selling lower than petroleum some times lately.
Patrick Mazza
Permalink
JMG Posted 4:13 pm
19 Jan 2008
Responding to Responding to Ron
Yes, and where ethanol is cheaper than gasoline, it's because it's made with coal and insanely subsidized corn. Given the way we run this circus, anything can be made to appear to be cheaper than anything else.
Bottom line--is Climate Solutions jumping on the biofuels bandwagon?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
Permalink
Ron Steenblik Posted 5:22 pm
19 Jan 2008
Responding to Responding to Responding to Ron
Thank you Patrick and JMG. Sorry for being a nitpicker, but Patrick did refer in his original post to "biofuels" generally (not "ethanol"), so I thought it worthwhile to point out how rising feedstock prices can squeeze any profits that might be presumed simply because petroleum prices are rising.
I agree with him that the situation for ethanol is different, but only in a matter of degree. Brazil can produce ethanol from sugar cane rather cheaply, at current international sugar prices (around 10 U.S. cents per pound). But if petroleum prices slump, and sugar prices rise to what they were at the beginning of 2006 (around 18.5 U.S. cents per pound), Brazilian producers may once again (rationally) decide it makes more sense to turn more of their production to sugar and less to ethanol. Of course, that does not refute the main point of this string: either way, an incentive is created to expand production of sugar cane.
As regards ethanol made from temperate crops, however, subsidies and mandates do matter, especially given the volatility -- and generally upward trend -- we have witnessed over the last two years in feedstock-crop prices. Since December, corn has been trading at a price 10% higher than its previous price peak, in January 2007. Wheat (an ethanol feedstock in western Canada and some countries of the EU), having traded at under $210 per tonne until May 2007, has been trading at above $300 per tonne since August 2007 and now stands at about $340 per tonne.
DTN Ethanol Center, a (free) on-line newsletter, publishes a frequent assessment of a hypothetical (but representative) ethanol plant located in the South Dakota. Its latest assessment begins thus:
Note: In determining its profits and losses, Neeley Biofuels takes into account the $0.51/gallon federal volumetric ethanol excise tax credit (VEETC). That is to say, even with the VEETC, the plant moves frequently between profit and loss. Without the subsidy, it would be operating in the red a lot more often.
These are only my personal opinions.
Permalink
Pompey Road Posted 9:02 am
20 Jan 2008
Plowing up Appalachia:
Saving the rain forest may seem more chic or PC but I have to tell you we have the same or worse being done up here in the good ol USA. At least when you plow up the Amazon you get a few crops off the land. When you remove the trees in a MTR and then blast and use a bulldozer to push the debris into a pristine valley you have destroyed the eco system forever. I do not believe there is anything anymore destructive going on anywhere on the planet. You have to go no farther than your own back yard to see devastation on a horrendous scale.
The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.
Permalink
WWAGD?! Posted 10:25 am
20 Jan 2008
Guardian: Biofuels 'do more harm than good'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/20/biofuel ...
John A. Bailo
Inhofe 400 Wannabe
My Log
Permalink
Tom Philpott Posted 5:29 am
23 Jan 2008
Right on, Pompey Road
Absolutely agreed. In a sense, plowing up the Amazon and plowing up the Appalachians are part of the same insane logic.
And biofuels and "clean coal" coat that brutal logic with a shiny "green" tint.
Victual Reality
Permalink
cmello Posted 3:05 am
29 Jan 2008
Responding to Pompey Road
Point taken about the plowed Amazon yielding crops now whereas the leveled Appalachias are just plain devastated.
But concern about the Amazon rain forest is more than just chic-ness or PC.
I think that plowing up the Amazon rain forest will eventually lead to another devastated area much bigger than the Appalachias and with greater permanent loss of species of flora and fauna that exist only there. Look where it is located...once deforested, it is ripe for becoming a desert when the rain stops falling there. Then there will not even be a few crops to offset the loss of the rain forest.
E.g.: The Sahara desert in Africa extends farther south each year due to farming and removal of trees, etc on its southern margins.
I think that something could be done to reclaim devastated Appalachian areas. I doubt if anything will be doable to reclaim the Amazon rain forest once it is gone and turns into a desert.
cmello
Permalink