One of the new studies, however, found that due to the impact of plowing up new fields, corn-based ethanol nearly doubles greenhouse-gas emissions compared to gasoline and that fuels made from switchgrass increase emissions by about 50 percent.

Oh snap.

-David Ahlport

... due to the impact of plowing up new fields

This is why subsidies for development of cellulosic feedstocks should be in the form of soil rehabilitation payments, and focused on perennial crops replacing an annual rotation.

Given that we do not have a sustainable agriculture, it is basically automatic that simply converting the output of American agriculture into any biomass energy source will also be unsustainable.

And, further, the tariff on ethanol should be increased in line with increases in ethanol subsidies at the pump ... large, high income countries are not pursuing sustainable renewable power if they are importing it "from elsewhere". A sustainable technological base is one that can be replicated sustainably, and if a technology is to be a candidate for spreading sustainably across the globe, there is no "elsewhere" for imports to come from.


Virtually Yours, BruceMcF Energize America 2020

In addition to famously weak land laws in Brazil.

-David Ahlport

Clearly, if the authors of the study claim that sugarcane is not quite so damaging as corn and soy.  Then what about switch-grass for ethanol and algae for bio-diesel???  These are MANY MANY times more efficient, less CO2 emitting, and energy-returning than sugarcane.

WTF?

Here National Geographic compares global warming pollution and energy return on different types of bio-fuels.  The differences in plants are AMAZING.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2007-10/biofuels/bi ...

As for Algae, thats fine. Assuming you're okay with paying $30 a gallon for fuel.
http://greyfalcon.net/algae4
http://greyfalcon.net/algae

-David Ahlport

*    Any US farmland not growing food crops is creating a carbon debt by increasing demand for international food production--What are the "secondary land use impacts" of US grass seed farmers? Or tobacco farmers?  Or nursery owners? Or cotton, tomatoes grapes and a myriad of other non-food related agricultural acreage in the US?
*    Every new subdivision and greenfield commercial, industrial or residential development creates a carbon debt by taking potential food-producing land out of production and shifting that demand to sensitive, international native ecosystems; and
*    Any effort in the US to protect ancient forests or native ecosystems creates a carbon debt by increasing demand for international sources of wood products.

Any analysis that shifts away from a life cycle analysis of the carbon potential for a single product or fuel and attempts to distribute carbon potential to "secondary" or "tertiary" impacts will create a dead-end, through-the-looking-glass scenario that is inaccurate and unworkable.

The real implication of accepting "secondary land use impacts" is an on-going dependence on CO2 intensive, polluting, imported fossil fuels.  Inclusion of secondary impacts is the wrong approach--each product should stand on its own.

It's Not Acre for Acre - Productivity Gains Means We Get More From Less

The analyses of land use impacts assume that for every acre of land dedicated to renewable energy feedstocks, another acre of land must be put into production elsewhere in the world.  This assumption is flawed for several reasons:

*    It fails to account for advances in seed and processing technology that are providing greater yields for each acre of feedstock.
o    Corn acreage in the US peaked in 1917 with 116 million acres planted, compared to 93 million acres in 2007.  During that period yields have increased by more than 1 bushel/acre/year, from 29 bushels/acre to 200 bushels/acre.  This year the US will harvest more than 10 billion bushels of corn, and exports are rising, so certainly US corn ethanol production is not causing a need for increased grain production in the world.

*    It ignores the value of the feed co-products that are produced at today's biorefineries.
o    The food value of corn is not lost in ethanol production--distillers grain is a high protein, high nutrient co-product that is sold back into the food market.

*    It inappropriately assigns all of the impact to growth in renewable fuels, ignoring the effects of a growing world economy, increased demand for food, and urban sprawl.

The Environmental Impacts of Fossil Fuels are Increasing
The reports fail to account for the fact that every gallon of biofuel produced today requires less land, requires less water and is less energy intensive than a decade ago, while the opposite is true for oil production.  Every new gallon of oil produced is more energy intensive and requires much more water than before.  

The "easy" sources of oil have been found and are being depleted.  What is left are more remote, costlier and more environmentally damaging nontraditional sources like Canadian tar sands or Rocky Mountain oil shale.  By failing to capitalize on the opportunity renewable fuels offer to begin breaking our adherence to the oil standard, the world would be forced to develop these nontraditional sources of oil that carry significant environmental price tags.

Even traditional sources of oil have steep environmental costs that are not accounted for in the land use reports.  Where is the accounting for oil drilling in the Amazon?  Oil spills in San Francisco Bay?  Or asthma deaths from air pollution?

I'm sure that cost would go down if production ramped up and new tech was introduced.

In the meantime, high gas prices=increased hybrids, carpools, and mass transit.

And why did only one of the two studies come to this conclusion?

According to the numbers in National Geographic, which credits DOE, U.S. EPA, and World Watch Institute, switchgrass:

• returns up to 36 times the amount of energy that went into making it

• produces 91% less greenhouse emissions than gasoline PRODUCTION AND USE)

Did they count the gasoline and coal that would be DISPLACED by using cellulosic ethanol????  Did they count that we wouldnt be cutting down forest but rather using large areas of harsh prarie in the Dakotas and such?  And the lack of need for petro fertlizers with switchgrass?  

Are they really being fair?  I'd love to know.  

Enviros should stop wasting time and effort on technological geek stuff.  What we need to do is show that we can live happy, healthy AND not harm the rest of the planet by reducing consumption and living more simply.  Greatly reducing or eliminating driving is a good place to start.

• accelerated deforestation (esp. of rainforests)
  
• accelerated extinction rates
  
• increased nutrient loads in water bodies (from fertilizers used to grow biofuels)
  
• increased soil erosion
  
• accelerated loss of coral reefs (due to sedimentation and excessive nitrogen )
  
• increased spread of toxins: pesticides, heavy metals and acids from batteries, CFL light bulbs etc.
  
• reduced clean groundwater/surface water supplies (irrigation for biofuels, contamination from toxins, etc.)

There's a good article on this at Matter Network:
http://www.matternetwork.com/2008/2/a-greener-biofuel.cfm ...

Turning it into liquid fuel to guzzle in 6% efficient internal combustion vehicles is not going to do that, it puts it all into the atmosphere, where it worsens GHG climate change.

Better to use this waste stream to produce biogas for clean energy in 70% efficient solid oxide fuel cell/turbine distributed power plants. The cellulosic material left over after digestion soaked in organic fertilizer is a great soil builder.  And waste water is cleaned and recycled in the process.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

www.gravel2008.us - visit that website for a real candidate.

The election is merely a soap box.

That said, between our real choices, Obama, Hillary, and McCain support Ethanol production in a huge way.

This may change however as more of these types of reports come out, and pierce into the public consciousness.

-David Ahlport

Barack is a strong supporter of Illinois corn ethanol, Illinois clean coal (futuregen), and nuclear power (Exelon is a large contributor and operates leaking plants in Illinois).  He ignores wonky details like this in favor of lobbyist opinion.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Dr. Searchinger  fails to acknowledge or factor in  the human energy
put forth by  200,000 sugar cane workers who migrate to the Brazilian
plantations to work and live like slaves. Without their sacrifice and
government subsidies, the ethanol industry would not survive.

I saw first hand how horrid the living and working conditions
were  for  the sugar cane "slaves"  when I worked in migrant
camps in Florida. Most Jamaican migrants were never paid
and after harvest they were put into cargo planes and flown
back to Jamaica to be forgotten. Many migrant cane cutters
died of heat exhaustion and acute pesticide poisoning,
especially children.

Searchinger  says governments should  quickly turn their
attention to developing biofuels that do not require cropping.

Sugar cane is grownby cropping;  it is replanted every 2 years.
Stalks of seed cane are hand-cut with machetes, loaded onto
wagons, transported to the fields and dropped horizontally
into furrows.

Sugar cane requires more energy and labor than most crops.
Cane is an extremely intense feeder of nitrogen fertilizer as
well as, phosphate that comes from high energy, polluting
strip mine operations. Nitrogen prices have doubled in 3 years.

Sugar cane is dependent on massive use of irrigation water,
herbicides and pesticides.

In the US, sugar cane is highly subsidized with price supports
and  irrigation subsidies. The US government spends $2 billion
dollars a year to pump water into and out of cane fields in the
Everglades of south Florida.

Sugar cane farming in Florida has depleted 10 feet of topsoil
in 30 years. Very little topsoil is left to grow crops much longer.

Sugar cane farming will also deplete topsoil in Brazil.

Brazilian labor will not sustain brutal conditions for very long.

Just as Europe is boycotting ethanol from prior rainforests,
we should boycott sugar ethanol that comes from Brazil and  
the Everglades, the largest subtropical wetland in the world,
an International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site

The Everglades was designated as a Wetland of International
Importance in 1987 and we support restoration, not further
destruction.

December McSherry

See ~

The Hidden Story of Big Sugar

Other than gold, no single substance has had a bigger hand in shaping the history of the western hemisphere than sugar. These videos explore the dark history and modern power of the world's reigning sugar cartels.

Using dramatic reenactments, they reveal how sugar was at the heart of slavery in the West Indies in the 18th century, and continues to be at the heart of a present-day epidemic: consumers who are slaves to a sugar based diet and car culture.

The Fanjuls, the Fanjul sugarcane operations in Florida and the Dominican Republic, Bill Clinton and Carl Hiaasen are featured ~

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:RQWEm6A6_dsJ:article ...
sites/articles/archive/2007/10/02/the-hidden-story-of-big-sugar.aspx+hidden+
story+of+big+sugar&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PRICE OF SUGAR narrated by Paul Newman
http://www.thepriceofsugar.com/press.shtml
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen Orr

I'm all for using more corn ethanol and moving our infrastructure to that rather then petrochemicals. The dangers and pollution from distilling corn are far less then that from conventional crudes, particularly now that we are refining dirtier crudes higher in sulfur.

Ethanol distilling produces lots of volatile organic compounds and toxins. But so does crude oil -- oil refineries are still much bigger polluters then ethanol plants.

Climate change is something to be concerned with, but it should not be viewed isolation. There are many pollutants we also should be concerned with besides carbon dioxide, which we all breathe out.

Not to mention, higher land prices, make agriculture more profitable, and competitive against suburban sprawl. This study apparently does not discuss this.

Nor does it discuss the impact of higher corn prices on cattle farmers. The now look more towards management intensive grazing and increasing the percentage of feed rations to more competitive hay bailage rather then corn and silage.

Cows which eat more bailage in their feed ration produce less methane, and their manure is less acidic and drier, which discourages methane. Not to mention it's a lot healthier to both the stock and the people who eating food from the stock or crops manured with it (as there are less pathogens).

Where is the list of celebrites who for the past five years have been browbeating us about "using biofuels"?

Haven't they been doing more "damage" than Sen. Inhofe, George Bush, "the oil companies", "the corporations", coal lobbyists, nuclear power spokesmen and the whole coterie of bogey men that populate the nightmares of dreaming Greens?

Why not condemn the biofuel people?

Carbon's Number

one simple number, the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere, is the sum of all human actions and the signpost of our fate

I hope this is not bad form. I dont know blog rules very well.

It can't be done.  A pound of biomass burned as fuel is a pound not recycled to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere.  In the soil ecosystem.

Furthermore, new information about nitrous oxide (296 times worse as a GHG than cO2) release from chemical fertilizer application, suggests that all chemical ag is actually even  more dangerous to the GHG balance than previously considered.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

But, a lot of people have become emotionally (and some finacially) invested in the concept of biofuels. For years the media was awash with reports of how great it was. And let's face it, we are emotional creatures capable of rational thought, not the other way around.

1. We are in the middle of the sixth great extinction event. The destruction of the planet's biodiversity is directly correlated to the destruction of ecosystems, now commonly referred to as carbon sinks.

2. The second leading cause of global warming is from the destruction of carbon sinks, with Brazil and Indonesia being the number two and three emitters behind the United States and China.

3. All crop-based biofuels being produced today are exacerbating the destruction of those carbon sinks. The concept isn't simplistic. The concept is simple as the following graphic demonstrates:

To put the destructive potential of biofuels into perspective, click on biofuel Bob.

There was an earlier article in Science that said the same thing:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/317/5840/902.pdf

You can read it here.

Followed by one in the Journal of Atmospheric chemistry and physics:

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/8/389/2008/acp-8-389-2008. ...

The two most recent articles in Science can be found below:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1151861v1.pdf
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1152747v1.pdf

And then there was this study demonstrating that all biofuels being produced in significant quantities are worse overall for the environment than oil:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2976 from oil drum

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

The big key to remember, I think, is the benefits of using waste materials and residues to create biofuels which eliminates the whole debate on using rainforests. Our partnership with Coskata will produce these benefits because their process uses any carbon-based materials to create ethanol.

These two studies make some good points and yesterday, I drafted a blog on gmnext.com that examines these issues. Hope you can check it out.

Candace Wheeler
GM Technical Fellow, Research & Development

Our partnership with Coskata will produce these benefits because their process uses any carbon-based materials to create ethanol.

"Any carbon based materials", indeed.
http://greyfalcon.net/coskata

The big key to remember, I think, is the benefits of using waste materials and residues to create biofuels which eliminates the whole debate on using rainforests.

Actually the concept of making it so that you can process whole trees into liquid fuels does raise quite a few gigantic red flags for deforestation.
_

But more specifically, saying that "waste" is going to be enough to do the job is a bit of a crass assumption, or rather an irresponsibly broad definition of "waste".
http://greyfalcon.net/biolimits.png
http://greyfalcon.net/perlack
http://greyfalcon.net/peaksoil

Certainly though, Coal is plenty to do the job, but of course that has it's own obvious issues.
http://greyfalcon.net/fossilenergy.png

-David Ahlport