[Sustain] Fwd: NY Times: Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

This article is even better than the last one.

Important Note: Near the end of the article where one of the scientists 
actually speaks positively about sugar cane for fuel, he is totally 
failing to account for the realities that most cane farming involves 
regular -burning- of the fields, and that increased cane fuel production 
would still cause other land to be cleared increasing global warming and 
food insecurity. Likewise his statement about 'waste' from crops being 
used for fuel production is short sighted. Such waste needs to be 
returned to the -soil- to retain and increase its nutrient value and 
promote better carbon storage in more secure soil.

Here's the article -

New York Times

Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat


By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 8, 2008
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions
than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing
these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being
published Thursday have concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent
months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental
cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the
prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look
at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is
being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the
tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed,
but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon
emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain
forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not
matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the
greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they
discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all
biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in
new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people
are using or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse
gasses substantially,” said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one
of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at
Princeton University. “Previously there’s been an accounting
error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil
fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced
by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation
proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into
fuels causes its own emissions — for refining and transport, for
example.

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse
gas that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said
Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at
the Nature Conservancy. “So for the next 93 years you’re making
climate change worse, just at the time when we need to be bringing
down carbon emissions.”

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world
has to reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to
avert disastrous environment consequences.

In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United States’s
most eminent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a
letter to President Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi,
urging a reform of biofuels policies. “We write to call your
attention to recent research indicating that many anticipated
biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming,” the letter said.

The European Union and a number of European countries have recently
tried to address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that
imported biofuels cannot come from land that was previously rain forest.

But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study
shows, the purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads
indirectly to the destruction of natural habitats far afield.

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have
because of increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is
inevitably cleared as farmers in developing countries try to get in
on the profits. So crops from old plantations go to Europe for
biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland
in the United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused
indirect land use changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers
had alternated corn with soy in their fields, one year to the next.
Now many grow only corn, meaning that soy has to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land
that was previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are
planting more of the world’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting
the Amazon to do it,” he said.

International environmental groups, including the United Nations,
responded cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still
be useful. “We don’t want a total public backlash that would
prevent us from getting the potential benefits,” said Nicholas
Nuttall, spokesman for the United Nations Environment Program, who
said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to study the
evidence.

“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver
bullet of climate change,” he said. “We fully believe that if
biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the
problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.”

The European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent
biofuel for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United
States energy package would require that 15 percent of all transport
fuels be made from biofuel by 2022. To reach these goals, biofuels
production is heavily subsidized at many levels on both continents,
supporting a burgeoning global industry.

Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its
annual profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because
of rising demand for biofuels.

Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately
attacked the new studies as “simplistic,” failing “to put the
issue into context.”

“While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences of
differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today,
how world demand for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic
alternatives are to meet those growing demands,” said Bob Dineen,
the group’s director, in a statement following the Science
reports’ release.

“Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can
begin to address the challenges of energy security and environmental
protection,” he said.

The European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse
gasses by 50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel, and has
other advantages as well, like providing new income for farmers and
energy security for Europe in the face of rising global oil prices
and shrinking supply.

But the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is
taken into account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once
anticipated.

Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now
was sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy
to grow and is readily refined into fuel. He added that governments
should quickly turn their attention to developing biofuels that did
not require cropping, such as those from agricultural waste products.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it was
often just a footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The
comparison with fossil fuels is going to be adverse for virtually all
biofuels on cropland.