The rural route to a more energy-secure Europe

Rob Vierhout in EurActiv: In 2014, Europe is remembering the tragic consequences of two World Wars.  The under-rated miracle of the European Community, then Union, not only helped to deliver Western Europe from a state of self-destruction to peace, but also provided the framework for almost 50 years of steady economic growth and the creation of a European social model that is the envy of the world.

However, a mixture of globalisation, technology and sometimes-misguided policies is now combining to threaten this stability. As Europe struggles to recover fro
m its worst economic crisis for nearly 100 years, we face a huge challenge to remain competitive, provide good jobs for our youth, and regain our leadership position.

Energy is at the heart of this struggle. As the first continent to industrialise, Europe has already used up much of its indigenous fossil fuel resources. Even if it has become a world leader in solar and wind technology, Europe currently relies extensively on energy imports. Last year, more than half of all the continent’s energy came from outside its borders. In the transport sector, this is even worse with 94% of its energy coming from oil, of which 84% is imported from politically unstable regions.

...In this context, renewable energy sources should rightly take centre-stage. We can use the sun, the wind, even the tides to make power, which will not be influenced by global politics. But, what about Europe’s plentiful land?

Using agricultural products, including increasingly agricultural and forest residues as well as municipal waste to make ethanol, represents a huge opportunity for Europe to reduce its reliance on imports in the transport fuel sector.

This is just the beginning. There are at least 1.7 million hectares of unused farmland in Europe.  The FAO stats tell us that the EU 28 is abandoning 0.5m hectares of additional farmland every year.  Only 0.7% of Europe’s agricultural land is currently being used to produce crops for ethanol – less than the total area of unused land in Romania alone. If we put this abandoned farmland to work, and take advantage of increased agricultural yields, the production of European renewable ethanol using European feedstock could easily double production of ethanol in no time. ...

A combine harvesting a field in the Czech Republic, shot by Podzemnik, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Study casts doubt on climate benefit of biofuels from corn residue

A press release from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Using corn crop residue to make ethanol and other biofuels reduces soil carbon and can generate more greenhouse gases than gasoline, according to a study published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The findings by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln team of researchers cast doubt on whether corn residue can be used to meet federal mandates to ramp up ethanol production and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Corn stover – the stalks, leaves and cobs in cornfields after harvest – has been considered a ready resource for cellulosic ethanol production. The U.S. Department of Energy has provided more than $1 billion in federal funds to support research to develop cellulosic biofuels, including ethanol made from corn stover. While the cellulosic biofuel production process has yet to be extensively commercialized, several private companies are developing specialized biorefineries capable of converting tough corn fibers into fuel.

The researchers, led by assistant professor Adam Liska, used a supercomputer model at UNL’s Holland Computing Center to estimate the effect of residue removal on 128 million acres across 12 Corn Belt states. The team found that removing crop residue from cornfields generates an additional 50 to 70 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of biofuel energy
produced. Total annual production emissions, averaged over five years, would equal about 100 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule – which is 7 percent greater than gasoline emissions and 62 grams above the 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

Importantly, they found the rate of carbon emissions is constant whether a small amount of stover is removed or nearly all of it is stripped, the study found. “If less residue is removed, there is less decrease in soil carbon, but it results in a smaller biofuel energy yield,” Liska said.

To mitigate increased carbon dioxide emissions and reduced soil carbon, the study suggests planting cover crops to fix more carbon in the soil. Cellulosic ethanol producers also could turn to alternative feedstocks, such as perennial grasses or wood residue, or export electricity from biofuel production facilities to offset emissions from coal-fueled power plants. Another possible alternative is to develop more fuel-efficient automobiles and significantly reduce the nation’s demand for fuel, as required by the 2012 CAFE standards....

Corn stover in Calumet County, Wisconsin, shot by Royalbroil, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Time to rethink misguided policies that promote biofuels to protect climate

University of Michigan News Service: Policymakers need to rethink the idea of promoting biofuels to protect the climate because the methods used to justify such policies are inherently flawed, according to a University of Michigan energy researcher.

In a new paper published online in the journal Climatic Change, John DeCicco takes on the widespread but scientifically simplistic perception that biofuels such as ethanol are inherently "carbon neutral," meaning that the heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas emitted when the fuels are burned is fully balanced by the carbon dioxide uptake that occurs as the plants grow.

That view is misguided because the plants used to make biofuels—including corn, soybeans and sugarcane—are already pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere through photosynthesis, said DeCicco, a research professor at the U-M Energy Institute and a professor of practice at the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

DeCicco's paper is unique because it methodically deconstructs the life-cycle-analysis approach that forms a basis for current environmental policies promoting biofuels. Instead, he presents a rigorous carbon cycle analysis based on biogeochemical fundamentals to identify conditions under which biofuels might have a climatic benefit. These conditions are much more limited than has been presumed.

"Plants used to make biofuels do not remove any additional carbon dioxide just because they are used to make fuel as opposed to, say, corn flakes," DeCicco said...

Photo by Steve Jurvetson, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Bioenergy and food security need linked policy, says UN

Rachel Mundy in SciDev.net: Biofuels' impact on global food security can be lessened by linked food and energy policies, says a panel of independent experts that is also calling for more research and development. Biofuels, and bioenergy more generally, are plant-derived agricultural sources of transport fuel, or of energy for electricity generation, cooking and heating.

'First generation' biofuels rely on food crops, and their markets can help or hinder in terms of whether people have access to sufficient food — for example by increasing job opportunities and income, or by increasing food prices and land losses. To assess these impacts, the UN Committee on World Food Security asked the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on Food Security and Nutrition to draft a report, which was launched last week (26 June).

The report, 'Biofuels and Food Security', calls for coordinated food, biofuel and bioenergy policies that prevent biofuels from compromising international food security. "It is artificial to divide food and energy policies," says Vincent Gitz, HLPE coordinator.

For example, sugar cane can be used for food or for ethanol fuel. Similarly, molasses can become food or can produce heat and energy for rural homes without access to grid electricity. The report argues that national biofuel policies should sit within a broader combined food security and energy security strategy that uses ratified certification schemes to ensure sustainable production....

Corn stover tar from pyrolysis by microwave heating. This shot is by Alf Inge Myhre Tunheim

Biofuel boom could accelerate warming in tropics

Wagdy Sawahel in SciDev.net: The large-scale conversion of land for biofuel farming could make some tropical regions even warmer, according to a study. Researchers from the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), assessed the impact on the climate of increased biofuel production by modelling two scenarios: one where trees are chopped down to plant biofuel crops and one where forests are maintained and fertilisers and irrigation are used to intensify the production of biofuel crops.

They found that both scenarios have a negligible impact on global warming. For example, in the first scenario the additional cropland reflects more sunlight, counterbalancing the warming associated with fewer trees and higher greenhouse gas concentrations. Also, in both scenarios, increasing the proportion of biofuels used would reduce warming by using fewer fossil fuel-based energy sources. But their findings also point to significant regional differences.

Willow Hallgren, a researcher at MIT's Center for Global Change Science, tells SciDev.Net that the real significance of the study is that it reveals that energy policies promoting large-scale biofuel plantations as a way of cutting carbon emissions will exacerbate existing warming trends in the tropics. Hallgren says that the study differs from others looking at the climate impacts of biofuels because it incorporates "numerous 'real world' determinants of where and how much biofuel crops are grown".

The areas where this regional warming would occur are located in the Amazon basin and in central and western Africa, she says.  The policy in which the biofuel expansion is embedded determines how much the local climate will warm, says Hallgren. "If you protect tropical forests, you greatly lessen this regional warming, which would likely have significant ecological, economic and social impact on people living in those regions," she says...

African grasslands, plus baobab, shot by Harvey Barrison, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

US equipped to grow serious amounts of pond scum for fuel

Environmental Research Web: A new analysis shows that the nation's land and water resources could likely support the growth of enough algae to produce up to 25 billion gallons of algae-based fuel a year in the United States, one-twelfth of the country's yearly needs.

The findings come from an in-depth look at the water resources that would be needed to grow significant amounts of algae in large, specially built shallow ponds. The results were published in the May 7 issue of Environmental Science and Technology, published by the American Chemical Society.

"While there are many details still to be worked out, we don't see water issues as a deal breaker for the development of an algae biofuels industry in many areas of the country," said first author Erik Venteris of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

For the best places to produce algae for fuel, think hot, humid and wet. Especially promising are the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern seaboard. "The Gulf Coast offers a good combination of warm temperatures, low evaporation, access to an abundance of water, and plenty of fuel-processing facilities," said hydrologist Mark Wigmosta, the leader of the team that did the analysis.

Algae, it turns out, are plump with oil, and several research teams and companies are pursuing ways to improve the creation of biofuels based on algae — growing algae composed of more oil, creating algae that live longer and thrive in cooler temperatures, or devising new ways to separate out the useful oil from the rest of the algae....

Spirogyra shot by Bob Blaylock, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Lower nitrogen losses with perennial biofuel crops

Debra Levey Larson in the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences News: Perennial biofuel crops such as miscanthus, whose high yields have led them to be considered an eventual alternative to corn in producing ethanol, are now shown to have another beneficial characteristic–the ability to reduce the escape of nitrogen in the environment. In a 4-year University of Illinois study that compared miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed prairie species to typical corn-corn-soybean rotations, each of the perennial crops were highly efficient at reducing nitrogen losses, with miscanthus having the greatest yield.

“Our results clearly demonstrate that environmental nitrogen fluxes from row-crop agriculture can be greatly reduced after the establishment of perennial biofuel crops,” said U of I postdoctoral research associate Candice Smith.  “Because of the establishment variability, we were able to compare annual row crops with perennial crops. Although in the first two years, nitrate leaching remained high in the non-established miscanthus crop, once a dense, productive crop was established in the second year of growth, nitrate leaching in tile drainage quickly decreased.”

Smith said that this ability to reduce the loss of nitrogen into the environment will prove to be greatly beneficial.

 “Intensive corn production with large fertilizer inputs leads to large losses of nitrogen into the environment, both through gas emissions of nitrous oxide and leaching of nitrate to surface waters through tile drainage systems,” added Mark David, U of I biogeochemist. “Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas, and nitrate can contaminate drinking water supplies and leads to coastal ocean problems. The hypoxic zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico is a result of nitrate leaching from the tile-drained Corn Belt of the midwestern United States – a likely location for biofuel production,” he said....

An aerial view of the bioenergy farm near South First Street in Champaign, Illinois, photo from the university's website

Environmental benefit of biofuels is overestimated, new study reveals

Science Daily: Two scientists are challenging the currently accepted norms of biofuel production. A recent commentary published in GCB Bioenergy reveals that calculations of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions from bioenergy production are neglecting crucial information that has led to the overestimation of the benefits of biofuels compared to fossil fuels.

The critique extends to the Life Cycle Analysis models of bioenergy production. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a technique used to measure and compile all factors relating to the production, usage, and disposal of a fuel or product. The authors conclude that LCAs are overestimating the positive aspects of biofuel use versus fossil fuel use by omitting the emission of CO2 by vehicles that use ethanol and biodiesel even when there is no valid justification.

Proponents of bioenergy argue that analyses should always ignore this CO2 because plants grown for biofuel absorb and therefore offset the same amount of carbon that is emitted by refining and combusting the fuel. The commentary critiques this method by arguing that doing so double counts the carbon absorbed by plants when the bioenergy crops are grown on land already used for crop production or already growing other plants because the bioenergy does not necessarily result in additional carbon absorption. Biofuels can only reduce greenhouse gases if they result in additional plant growth, or if they in effect generate additional useable biomass by capturing waste material that would otherwise decompose anyway.

The overestimation of bioenergy LCAs becomes increasingly magnified when the omission of CO2 is combined with the underestimation of nitrogen emissions from fertilizer application. According to lead author Dr. Keith Smith, from the University of Edinburgh, "Emissions of N2O from the soil make a large contribution to the global warming associated with crop production because each kilogram of N2O emitted to the atmosphere has about the same effect as 300kg of CO2."...

This Miscanthus crop is growing (for biofuel) on a strip of land between the Ancholme and East Drain near Horkstow Bridge, North Lincolnshire, England. Shot by David Wright, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Is bioenergy expansion harmful to wildlife?

AlphaGalileo via Wiley-Blackwell: Despite the predicted environmental benefits of biofuels, converting land to grow bioenergy crops may harm native wildlife. Researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig have developed a way to study the effects of increased energy crop cultivation on farmland bird populations.

“The Skylark is an indicator species for agricultural areas because it occupies many habitats of the wider countryside around the globe, breeds on the ground within fields and feeds mostly on insects” notes lead researcher, Jan Engel. “Improving the habitat suitability for Skylark, accordingly, would improve conservation of natural vegetation, insects, and other ground breeding farmland bird species.”

Mr. Engel and his colleagues developed a computer model that evaluated the habitat requirements of Skylark in a variety of bioenergy cultivation scenarios. The study, published in Global Change Biology Bioenergy, found that bioenergy crop expansion will not harm Skylark populations if field sizes are low, many crop types are present, and small natural areas, known as Integrated Biodiversity Areas, are included within the landscape.

“In ecology it is a widely accepted idea that abundance and occurrence of particular species can broadly indicate the condition of the respective ecosystem” says Engel. The recent Skylark population decline illustrates the endangerment of farmland ecosystems. “However, we could show that bioenergy cultivation can get harmonized with Skylark conservation by application of regionally adapted actions.”

Walter Heubach's rendering of a skylark

Carbon imperialism devastating Africa

Tony Iltis in Green Left Weekly (Australia): For five centuries, Africa has suffered at the hands of the West. Starting with the slave trade, through the colonial era, to today’s neoliberal global economy, the development of industrial capitalism in the West has come at a terrible price paid by Africans.

Food riots in Mozambique early this month and looming mass starvation in Niger after floods that were preceded by years of drought both reflect the ongoing economic exploitation. However, they also reflect another creation of the industrialised West adversely affecting Africa: climate change.

Parallels can be made between the drought and floods in Niger and those that are taking place in the Australian state of Victoria. Both are in historically drought-prone areas that experience occasional flooding. However, in both instances, the weather events are more extreme than in the past, in line with climate scientist predictions about the effects of climate change. On June 22, Niger’s hottest ever temperature was recorded in Bilma — 47.1ºC.

There are differences, however. Niger has been responsible for only a tiny proportion of the carbon dioxide and methane emissions that cause climate change.Another difference is in the human cost. The Victorian floods have caused hardship, and drought has created ongoing economic and social distress in much of rural Australia (including high levels of suicide).

However, the suffering in Niger is on a different scale. Reuters said on January 28 that the Nigerien government was already reporting that 7.8 million people (half the population) were facing malnutrition. By August, 12 million Nigeriens were facing food insecurity and 400,000 children were in danger of starvation, the August 1 Guardian said.

…A report released by Friends of the Earth International (FoEI ) on August 30 revealed that, despite the food insecurity caused by dependence on imported food, 183,000 hectares of agricultural land in Mozambique has become foreign-owned commercial plantations growing jatropha, a toxic plant used to make biodiesel….

Aggressive geoengineering won't halt sea level rise

Science Daily: New findings by international research group of scientists from England, China and Denmark just published suggest that sea level will likely be 30-70 centimetres higher by 2100 than at the start of the century even if all but the most aggressive geo-engineering schemes are undertaken to mitigate the effects of global warming and greenhouse gas emissions are stringently controlled.

"Rising sea levels caused by global warming are likely to affect around 150 million people living in low-lying coastal areas, including some of the world's largest cities," explained Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva of the National Oceanography Centre.

Most scientists agree that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions contribute greatly to global warming, and that these emissions need to be controlled if damaging future impacts such as sea-level rise are to be averted. But if we fail to do so, is there a 'Plan B'?

Scientists have proposed ways of 'geo-engineering' the Earth system to tackle global warming, thereby reducing its impact on both the main contributors of sea level rise: thermal expansion of ocean water and melting of glaciers and ice sheets. Jevrejeva and her colleagues have modelled sea level over the 21st century under various geo-engineering schemes and carbon dioxide emission scenarios.

… The researchers argue that perhaps the least risky and most desirable way of limiting sea-level rise is bioenergy with carbon storage (BECS). Biofuel crops could be grown on a large-scale, and carbon dioxide released during their combustion or fermentation could be captured, and the carbon stored as biochar in the soil or in geological storage sites.

…."Substituting geo-engineering for greenhouse emission control would be to burden future generations with enormous risk," said Jevrejeva.

Waves crashing on the shore. Athor: Fir0002, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Drought drives decade-long decline in plant growth

PR Newswire: Global plant productivity that once was on the rise with warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline because of regional drought according to a new study of NASA satellite data.

Plant productivity is a measure of the rate of the photosynthesis process that green plants use to convert solar energy, carbon dioxide and water to sugar, oxygen and eventually plant tissue. Compared with a 6 percent increase in plant productivity during the 1980s and 1990s, the decline observed over the last decade is only 1 percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels and the global carbon cycle.

Researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running of the University of Montana in Missoula discovered the global shift from an analysis of NASA satellite data. The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite, combined with other growing season climate data, including temperature, solar radiation and water. "We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested global warming might actually help plant growth around the world," Running said.

Previous research found land plant productivity was on the rise. A 2003 paper in the journal Science led by scientist Ramakrishna Nemani, now a researcher at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., showed the 6 percent increase in global terrestrial plant productivity between 1982 and 1999. The increase was traced to nearly two decades of temperature, solar radiation and water availability conditions, influenced by climate change, that were favorable for plant growth.

Setting out to update that analysis, Zhao and Running expected to see similar results as global average temperatures continued to climb. Instead, they found the negative impact of regional drought overwhelmed the positive influence of a longer growing season, driving down global plant productivity between 2000 and 2009. The team published its findings Thursday in Science….

A bamboo maze, shot by junichiro AOYAMA, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Biofuels could increase food production, says report

Busani Bafana in SciDev.net: Planting biofuel crops in Africa need not damage capacity to grow food and could even enhance food security, according to a controversial review prepared for the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). The report, with case studies on six countries in East, West and southern Africa, concludes that bioenergy production can expand across the continent and provide income and energy to farmers without displacing food crops.

Potential conflicts between bioenergy and food needs can be addressed with the right approaches, said Rocio Diaz-Chavez, a researcher at Imperial College, London, and lead author of 'Mapping Food and Bioenergy in Africa', launched at the 5th African Agricultural Science Week in Burkina Faso last week (23 July).

"If approached with the proper policies and processes and with the inclusion of all the various stakeholders, bioenergy is not only compatible with food production but can greatly benefit agriculture in Africa," said Diaz-Chavez, citing the benefits of investment in land, infrastructure and human resources.

The report's conclusions were drawn from a review of existing research and case studies of biofuel production and policies in Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Zambia. It found there is enough land to allow a significant increase in the cultivation of sugar cane, sorghum and jatropha for biofuels without decreasing food production.

But the report has triggered mixed responses from farmer groups and research institutions. Monty Jones, executive director of FARA, cautioned that Africa should not trade food security for biofuel production….

Corn field in South Africa, shot by Lotus Head , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Saving the soil and maintaining corn yields

Seed Daily: Two years into a study looking at methods of combining a living cover crop between corn rows shows that yield can be maintained at high levels using environmentally friendly practices. Researchers are testing between-row cover grasses as part of research looking at ways to reduce soil runoff and keep vital nutrients in the soils while crop residue, called stover, is removed from farm fields to produce biofuels.

With U.S. government targets requiring a 30 percent displacement of petroleum consumption with fuels made from biomass by the year 2030, agronomy researchers are studying methods of harvesting more and more stover, which previously was left on the field.

Targets will require removing 75 percent of stover to use as biomass in the production of biofuels. Removing stover can cause more water runoff and deplete soil of the organic material needed to remain productive.

One method of keeping the soil in place and replenished with organic matter is to plant grasses between the corn rows that would stay on the field year round. "We are looking at trying to grow corn in a perennial sod, so that we can protect the soil and provide these other environmental services at the same time," said Ken Moore, professor of agronomy…

Corn stover in the foreground, Calumet County, Wisconsin, shot by Royalbroil, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Seed companies eye profit in drought-tolerant crops

Jack Kaskey and Antonio Ligi in Business Day (South Africa): Lance Russell’s neighbours are not used to seeing maize growing in the fields around Hays, Kansas, where the plants tend to die in the hot, dry summers. Russell is planting DuPont’ s drought-tolerant maize, one of the seeds heading to market next year that’s designed to thrive where water is scarce. An experimental plot last year improved on the economics of the sorghum crop “by a landslide”, Russell says.

Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta are vying for a similar windfall. After battling for a decade to corner the $11bn market for insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant technologies, the world’s biggest seed companies are vying to develop crops that can survive drought. At stake is a new global market that may top $2,7bn for the maize version alone. “It’s a race at the moment,” says Juergen Reck, a Frankfurt- based analyst at Macquarie Group. “They must see market potential.”

The technology will have wide-ranging effects, from helping farmers draw less irrigation water to lowering insurance premiums and boosting land values in drought-prone regions, agricultural economists say.

…The seeds will be a “big market” for Syngenta, CEO Michael Mack says. “Farmers around the world are going to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to technology providers in order to have this feature.”

Monsanto is moving directly to a biotech version that it says will increase maize yields 6% to 10%. The company’s seed, developed with BASF , may be put on sale in 2012 and become the first product genetically engineered to tolerate drought. The Monsanto-BASF partnership, created in 2007, aims to have its drought genetics in 22,2- million hectares of US maize by 2020. In comparison, Monsanto had at least one biotech trait in 82% of the nation’s 35-million hectares of maize last year….

A corn field in Ohio, shot by graylight, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

EU drafts warn of biofuels' link to hunger

Charlie Dunmore in Reuters: The European Union's promotion of plant-based biofuels will raise EU farm incomes and agricultural commodity prices, but could create food shortages for the world's poorest consumers, draft EU reports show. The EU has a legal target to get a tenth of its road transport fuels from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020. For EU farmers hit by falling incomes, Europe's 5 billion euros-per-year ($6.84 billion) biofuels market is coveted as a source of new revenues.

Impact studies drafted for EU policymakers -- included in 116 documents released to Reuters under freedom of information laws -- predict that current biofuel policies will boost EU farm incomes by 3.5 percent in 2020. But the studies also reveal concerns about the unintended impact of Europe's thirst for biofuels.

"A new and strongly growing non-food demand for agricultural output will undoubtedly boost farm prices and hence farmers' incomes," one report says. "However, the desired effect may come at a potentially high cost: a human cost paid by the world's poorest consumers who may face higher food prices or food shortages."

High food prices in 2008 led to food riots in some developing countries and were partly blamed on biofuels such as ethanol consuming part of the U.S. corn crop. "The simulated effects of EU biofuels policies imply a considerable shock to agricultural commodity markets," the report reads....

A biofuel-powered Mercedes with California plates, shot by Beatrice Murch, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Biofuel production could undercut efforts to shrink Gulf 'dead zone'

Science Daily: Scientists in Pennsylvania report that boosting production of crops used to make biofuels could make a difficult task to shrink a vast, oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico more difficult. The zone, which reached the size of Massachusetts in 2008, forms in summer and threatens marine life and jobs in the region.

…Christine Costello and W. Michael Griffin and colleagues explain that the zone forms when fertilizers wash off farm fields throughout the Mississippi River basin and into the Gulf of Mexico. The fertilizers cause the growth of algae, which eventually depletes oxygen in the water and kills marine life. Government officials hope to reduce fertilizer runoff and shrink the zone to the size of Delaware by 2015. But that goal could be more difficult to reach due to federally-mandated efforts to increase annual biofuel production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, the study says.

The scientists studied the potential effects of increased biofuel production on the "dead zone," with a life-cycle analysis of nitrate fertilizer use on biofuel crops such as corn, soy, switch grass and stover (corn stems and leaves). They conclude that meeting the biofuel production goals will likely increase the depletion of oxygen compared to current levels in the Gulf due to more nutrient runoff….

Picture of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone from NASA/NOAA

Biofuel production 'is harming the poor'

Emily Beament in the Independent (UK): The production of biofuels is fuelling poverty, human rights abuses and damage to the environment, Christian Aid warned today. The charity said huge subsidies and targets in developed countries for boosting the production of fuels from plants such as maize and oil palm are exacerbating environmental and social problems in poor nations.

And rather than being a "silver bullet" to tackle climate change, the carbon emissions of some of the fuels are higher than fossil fuels because of deforestation driven by the need for land for them to grow.

According to a report, Growing Pains, by Christian Aid, industrial scale production of biofuels is worsening problems such as food price hikes in central America, forced displacement of small farmers for plantations and pollution of local water sources.

…The report argues that talking about "good" or "bad" biofuels is oversimplifying the situation, and the problem is not with the crop or fuel - but the policies surrounding them. Developed countries have poured subsidies into biofuel production - for example in the US where between 9.2 billion dollars and 11 billion dollars went to supporting maize-based ethanol in 2008 - when there are cheaper and more effective ways to cut emissions from transport, the report said.

…."Christian Aid believes that the best approach to biofuels is to grow them on a small scale and process them locally to provide energy for people in the surrounding countryside….

Jatropha production in Paraguay, shot by Helmut von Brandenstein, Wikimedia Commons: The copyright holder of this file allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that the copyright holder is properly attributed. Redistribution, derivative work, commercial use, and all other use is permitted.

Biomass to electricity is better energy than ethanol

Scientific Blogging: Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing forests to expand farmland will aggravate the climate change problem. How can we maximize our "miles per acre" from biomass?

Researchers writing in Science magazine say the best bet is to convert the biomass to electricity, rather than ethanol. They calculate that, compared to ethanol used for internal combustion engines, bioelectricity used for battery-powered vehicles would deliver an average of 80% more miles of transportation per acre of crops, while also providing double the greenhouse gas offsets to mitigate climate change.

"It's a relatively obvious question once you ask it, but nobody had really asked it before," says study co-author Chris Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution. "The kinds of motivations that have driven people to think about developing ethanol as a vehicle fuel have been somewhat different from those that have been motivating people to think about battery electric vehicles, but the overlap is in the area of maximizing efficiency and minimizing adverse impacts on climate."

…Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. … "The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles," says Campbell. "Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."

The researchers found that bioelectricity and ethanol also differed in their potential impact on climate change. "Some approaches to bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches can help fight climate change," says Campbell. "For these beneficial approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making electricity than making ethanol." …

Lou Gruber shot this image of a biomass power plant in Zolling, Bavaria

Tropical rain forests can fight climate change better than biofuel plantations

That forbidding scientific journal, Entertainment and Showbiz: A new study has determined that keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations. It was undertaken by an international research team of botanists, ecologists and engineers from seven nations.

The study revealed that it would take at least 75 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost through forest conversion. If the original habitat was carbon-rich peatland, the carbon balance would take more than 600 years.

On the other hand, planting biofuels on degraded Imperata grasslands instead of tropical rain forests would lead to a net removal of carbon in 10 years, the researchers found. “Our analysis found that it would take 75 to 93 years to see any benefits to the climate from biofuel plantations on converted tropical forestlands,” said lead author Finn Danielsen of Denmark’s Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology (NORDECO).

“Until then, we will be releasing carbon into the atmosphere by cutting tropical rain forests, in addition to losing valuable plant and animal species. It’s even worse on peatlands, which contain so much carbon that it would be 600 years before we see any benefits whatsoever,” he added….

The river Gambia, Niokolokoba National Park. US Geological Survey photo