[SustainableTompkins] Frankenstein fuels

[Tony Del Plato]

TCSustainers:
The article below quotes Cornell's David Pimentel on the problems with
biofuels. Good clear analysis that I hope Willie Nelson will hear.
Tony Del Plato

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: craig at thecampaign.org <craig at thecampaign.org>
Date: Aug 3, 2006 6:54 AM
Subject: [Geactivists] Frankenstein fuels
To: Geactivists at geaction.org

Dear GEAN Folks,

This is a very interesting article about biofuels. Here is an excerpt:

"The GM industry now plans to reinvent itself, following the example of the
nuclear industry, on the back of climate change. "Producing genetically
modified crops for non-food purposes, as a renewable source of alternative
fuels, may provide the basis for a more rational and balanced consideration
of the technology and its potential benefits, away from the disproportionate
hysteria which has so often accompanied the debate over GM foods," suggests
the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, an umbrella organisation for the
biggest biotech companies."

Warm regards,

Craig Winters
President
The Campaign
Tel: 425-771-4049
E-mail: mailto:craig at thecampaign.org
Web Site: http://www.thecampaign.org

************************************************************

Frankenstein fuels

Mark Lynas
New Statesman, 7th August  2006
http://www.newstatesman.com/200608070031

Pioneered by bearded hippies running clapped-out vans on recycled chip fat,
biofuels now mean big business, sold to us as a solution to global warming.
We must not be fooled, argues Mark Lynas

Late every summer, large areas of central Borneo become invisible. There's
no magic involved - most of the densely forested island simply gets covered
with a pall of thick smoke. Huge areas of forest burn, while beneath the
ground peat many metres thick smoulders on for months. These trees are
burning in a good cause, however. They are burning to help save the world
from global warming.

Here is how the logic goes. As the natural forest is cleared, land opens up
for lucrative palm-oil plantations.  Palm oil is a feedstock for biodiesel,
the "carbon-neutral" fuel that the European Union is trying to encourage by
converting its vehicle fleet. By reducing use of fossil fuels for its cars
and trucks, the EU believes it can  reduce its carbon emissions and thereby
help mitigate global warming. Everyone is happy. (Except the orangutan. It
gets to go extinct.)

It's a con, of course. In 1997, the single worst year of Indonesian
forest-and peat-burning, 2.67 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide were released
by the fires, equivalent to 40 per cent of the year's entire emissions from
burning fossil fuels. That was a particularly bad year: most summers, the
emissions are only a billion or so  tonnes, or about 15 per cent of total
human emissions. The biggest Indonesian fires, in 1997 and 1998, took place
on plantation company land, while in neighbouring Malaysia 87 per cent of
recent deforestation has occurred to make way for palm-oil plantations. It
is stretching credulity to argue that biofuels produced through this
destructive process are helping combat climate change.

The EU is undaunted (though it has undertaken a public consultation), and
persists with a target that 5.75 per cent of its vehicle fuels should be
"renewable" by the year 2010. Not all of this will come from tropical
sources such as palm oil - but nor can their importation be restricted on
environmental grounds. The campaigning journalist George Monbiot has
discovered that world trade rules would prevent the EU taking any measures
to restrict imports of palm oil produced on deforested lands. Free trade
comes first.

Some of this "deforestation diesel" will be processed and refined in the UK.
A company called Biofuels Corporation has just finished building a biodiesel
plant at Seal Sands, near Middlesbrough, and supplies fuel throughout the
UK. With an annual production capacity of 284 million litres of biodiesel,
it is strategically located next to a deep-water port to ease its access to
imports of palm and other vegetable oils. A spokesman confirmed that
imported palm oil from Malaysia is being used as feedstock, and that the
source cannot at present be guaranteed  as "rainforest-free". A second
company, Greenergy Biofuels, is putting up a  GBP13.5m plant at Immingham on
Humberside, and plans another. Palm oil is again expected to be one of the
main feedstocks imported.

As the promise of profits increases, the big players are beginning to get
involved. The two largest external stakes in Greenergy Biofuels are held by
Tesco and Cargill.  Tesco will shift the product on its petrol forecourts,
while Cargill - one of  two giants that dominate the world food market -
will supply the feedstock. Gone are the days when biofuels meant bearded
hippies running their clapped-out vans on recycled chip fat.

Even the oil majors are sniffing around this new market. BP has teamed up
with DuPont to develop a liquid fuel called biobutanol, derived from sugar
cane or corn starch, which they aim to launch in the UK next year as an
additive to petrol. In the meantime, the oil giant is ploughing half a
billion dollars into biofuels research at a new academic laboratory called
the Energy Biosciences Institute. Indeed, "biosciences" are what it's all
about.  Speak to anyone in the corporate energy or agricultural sectors and
they will probably go dewy-eyed about the technological "convergence" of
energy, food, genetics - in fact, just about everything. In the
biotechnology industry the atmosphere is reminiscent of the heady days of
genetic modification, before the  companies realised that consumers didn't
want to eat "Frankenstein foods". Frankenstein fuels, however, might prove
an easier sell.

The GM industry now plans to reinvent itself, following the example of the
nuclear industry, on the back of climate change. "Producing genetically
modified crops for non-food purposes, as a renewable source of alternative
fuels, may provide the basis for a more rational and balanced consideration
of the technology and its potential benefits, away from the disproportionate
hysteria which has so often accompanied the debate over GM foods," suggests
the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, an umbrella organisation for the
biggest biotech companies.

The Swiss corporation Syngenta is already marketing a variety of GM corn -
one not approved for human consumption or animal feed - specifically
intended for ethanol biofuels. It has just applied, with support from the
UK, for an EU  import licence - even though it admits it "cannot exclude"
the possibility that some of this corn will find its way into the normal
supply chain. The European biotech association EuropaBio is delighted with
the EU's biofuels initiative. "Biotechnology will help to meet Europe's
carbon-dioxide emission reduction targets, reduce our dependence on oil
imports and provide another useful income stream for our farmers," enthuses
its secretary general, Johan Vanhemelrijck.

In the United States, biofuels are welcomed as a way to help wean the
country off its dependence on oil produced by shady, Allah-obsessed Arabs.
"Every gallon of renewable, domestically produced fuel we use is a gallon we
don't have to get from other countries," beams Congressman Kenny Hulshof, a
Republican sponsor of the Renewable Fuels and Energy Independence Promotion
Act being considered by Congress. Not surprisingly, the American Soybean
Association  is also a supporter. "ASA is urging all soybean growers to
contact their members of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor this
legislation," says its president, Bob Metz, in a press release. "The
toll-free number for the Congress operator is 1-888-355-3588."

In America, biofuels combine patriotism with economic self-interest in a
seamless match. Farmers love it because biodiesel and ethanol are brewed
from agricultural commodities, helping drive up farm-gate prices. Red-state
senators love it because federal tax subsidies keep Republican-voting
farmers happy. Even George W Bush loves it: "I like the idea of a policy
that combines agriculture and modern science with the energy needs of the
American  people," the president told the Renewable Fuels Association in
April.

Democrats and Republicans are united in touting ethanol. "All incumbents and
challengers in Midwestern farm country are by definition ethanolics," the
agricultural policy adviser Ken Cook told the New York Times. There are 40
ethanol plants under construction, and the US is poised to overtake Brazil
(which uses sugar cane on a large scale to make the fuel) as the world's
largest producer within a year. Cargill's CEO compares the transformation to
"a gold rush".

But not everybody loves biofuels. David Pimentel, professor of  insect
ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, hates them. "There is just no
energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," he complains.
Pimentel's own studies have concluded that making ethanol from corn uses 30
per cent more energy than the finished fuel produces, because fossil fuels
are used at every stage in the production process, from cultivation (in
fertilisers) to transportation. "Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn
for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel
amounts to unsustainable, subsidised food burning," he fumes.

Pimentel is not alone in thinking that burning food in cars while global
harvests decline is not necessarily a good idea. China, with its enormous
population, is already having second thoughts about going down the biofuels
path. "Basically this country has such a large population that the top
priority for land use is food crops," says  Dr Sergio Trindade, an expert on
biofuels. The same problem will doubtless hamper the biofuels revolution in
Europe. According to one study, meeting the EU's 5.75 per cent target for
its vehicles will require about a quarter of  Europe's agricultural land.
For the even more car-dependent US, it would take 1.8 billion acres of
farmland - four times the country's total arable area - to produce enough
soya biodiesel to cover annual petrol consumption.

So which gets priority: cars or people? A very simple answer to this
land/fuel conundrum would be for people to use their cars less, and to cycle
and walk more. But discouraging car use is not at the top of any
politician's agenda,  either in Europe or the US. Meanwhile, our leaders
must be seen to be doing something about the rising greenhouse-gas emissions
from road tran sport, so biofuels are the perfect technofix.

The dilemma might bring to mind Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, where the alien Ford Prefect took the name of a car because -
looking down from above at all the busy roads and motorways - he had
mistaken them for the dominant life form. If cars chug happily around
between massed ranks of starving people in our biofuelled future, then
perhaps Ford Prefect won't have got it so wrong after all.

For more about biofuels, log on to [http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk]

The basics of  biofuels

The term biofuels covers a wide range of products, some of  which are
already commercially available, some of which are still in the  research and
development stage.

A biofuel is made from biomass - organic  material with stored chemical
energy. Agricultural products specifically grown for use as biofuels include
corn and soybeans, flaxseed and rapeseed, and hemp.

Biofuels are renewable, and can be stored indefinitely and safely, though
their "feedstocks" can require vast areas of land and their generation
produces pollution.

The two main types of biofuel currently in use are  biodiesel, made from new
or used vegetable oils and animal fats, and ethanol, produced by fermenting
grain, sugar cane, grass, straw and wood.



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rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for."
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