[SustainableTompkins] Fw: Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat

[Jon Bosak]

The New York Times
February 8, 2008
Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

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 National Energy 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."