There was a great letter about biofuels in this week’s issue of Science (Since it’s subscription only, I’m reproducing some of the letter at the bottom of this post). Additionally, a nifty paper pointing out that planting trees for reducing carbon emissions was more efficient than switching to biofuels, was in the same issue.
I am so, so annoyed with Michigan’s haste to hop on the biofuels bandwagon. (I’ve ranted about this in the past.) I also saw some new evidence that beer production is at risk from biofuels (as are gummy bears) today:
“A spike in the price of corn tortillas last January drove thousands of poor Mexicans to protest in the streets, and observers said the increase was caused by a huge demand for corn as a biofuel in the United States. Now German brewers have announced that a surge in the price of barley — in part, they say, because of biofuel crops — will push up the traditionally low price of German beer.”
Biofuels do seem like a good idea, but this a great example of a quick fix with consequences that weren’t thought through. I’m glad that some of my field crop neighbors are finally making a profit on their corn, but I’m concerned that my dairy neighbors and beef farmers are really hurting under the feed prices that have been driven up by competition from ethanol plants. We can all expect higher prices as more of these ethanol plants come online.
I’m wondering why no one in the press mentions that ethanol is not an efficient source of fuel–it actually decreases your mileage.
Humpf. I will continue driving my car that gets over 60 mpg, one of the first hybrid cars on the market, and wondering why such a simple solution is so difficult to accept. We can’t get new milage requirements passed, and my Honda is discontinued because not enough people bought it. (It actually runs on flashlight batteries. Really.)
We’ve got solutions to use right now to give us time to develop new and better fuel cells. It’s just that no one in the govt. has the cojones to do anything.
Damn it.
The Science Letter:
the suggested use of corn stover as a source for ethanol fuel has serious environmental implications. U.S. agriculture is currently losing topsoil 10 times faster than sustainability (1). Removing corn stover and/or leaving the soil unprotected will intensify soil erosion 10-fold or more (2). Without the protection of crop residues, soil loss may increase as much as 100-fold (3). Increasing soil erosion also intensifies the global warming problem and other problems (4, 5).
Another concern is the fact that green plants collect little solar energy, an average of only 0.1% per year (6). Photovoltaics, in contrast, collect 10 to 20% of the solar energy or 100 to 200 times the rate of green plants (6).
Crops, forestry, and other green plants collect a total of 53 exajoules of solar energy per year from sunlight (7). However, Americans consume more than twice this amount of fossil fuel energy each year (8). Some suggest that ethanol produced from corn and cellulosic biomass could replace 30% of the oil used in the United States (9). Yet the 20% of the U.S. corn crop now converted into 5 billion gallons of ethanol replaces 1% of U.S. petroleum consumption (6). Ethanol yield from sugar is better, as documented in Brazil (Kennedy points this out), but the environmental, economic, and social costs are enormous. Soil erosion associated with sugarcane is greater than any other crop grown in Brazil (10).
David Pimentel
Cornell University
Rattan Lal
President
Soil Science Society of America, and
Ohio State University
References
- NAS, Frontiers in Agricultural Research: Food, Health, Environment, and Communities (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2003).
- M. Rasnake, Tillage and Crop Residue Management; see www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/agr/agr99/agr99.htm (1999).
- D. W. Fryrear, J. D. Bilbro, in Managing Agricultural Residues, P. W. Unger, Ed. (Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL, 1994), pp. 7-18.
- R. Lal, Geoderma 123, 1 (2004).
- R. Lal, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. 52 (no. 50), 12 (2007).
- D. Pimentel, Geotimes 50, 18 (2005).
- D. Pimentel, T. Patzek, Bioscience 56, 875 (2006).
- USBC, Statistical Abstracts of the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington, DC, 2007).
- R. D. Perlack et al., Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Biomass Program, and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oak Ridge, TN, April 2005).
- G. Sparovek, E. Schung, Soil Sci. Soc. Am. 65, 1479 (2001).
11 Comments
It is entirely because I am drinking that I couldn’t read all of that text (so many words) and that I saw all I needed to see early on.
Biofuels threaten beer?!? KIll them! Kill them all!
Beer is what keeps me sane. Take that away and I can’t be held accountable for what happens. And I already drink expensive beer (I AM being snobbish), raise the price, and I’ll rob a hippie for the money.
Don’t mess with my beer.
As an addendum to my early post (written, as I noted, in a drunken stupor) it occurs to me that only cheap, nasty beer is made with corn.
So maybe yay for biofuels? Don’t know. Maybe I should do all this thinking sober…
Yeah, I included that link because I knew if it affected BEER, that would get people excited.
(and the BBC article was about *barley* shortages, not corn
You are correct about the barley. I read those words exactly as I hit “enter” on my keyboard.
In the end, it can only be concluded that I am an idiot.
Don’t be too alarmed about the corn and beer price connection. The increased cost is only a penny, if at that. The Denver Post ran an in-depth story on the real facts concerning beer and corn prices. Learn more at:
http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com/2007/07/why-beer-prices-are-higher-tale-of-two.html
Ezekiel: nah. maybe just a little buzzed
Food and Fuel, my experience is that the prices have gone up quite a bit on both corn products, and dairy. (I don’t buy beer, so don’t care.)
Also, the story I linked to is in Europe, where the pricing situation is quite different.
Certainly the price of corn is all my friends who are farmers are talking about. A major issue for them. And I’ll take their word over a site that on their “about page” has…no actual information about who is writing, or what their motivation is.
And another thing…
Your article addresses none of the issues raised in the two articles I cited here that were published in the *leading science journal in the world*.
If there is no net carbon benefit, and there is a substantial cost in terms of loss of land arability, what, exactly, is the reason to adopt ethanol as a fuel?
I look forward to your answer.
“If there is no net carbon benefit, and there is a substantial cost in terms of loss of land arability, what, exactly, is the reason to adopt ethanol as a fuel?”
Because, as public choice theory tells us, it’s a great idea (for politicians) to throw subsidies at politically powerful minorities, such as corn farmers.
If you want to reduce CO2 emissions, all you need to do is institute a carbon tax (cap-and-trade systems are also a good option). Unlike having the state throw money at specific solutions to global warming, a carbon tax would be simple, fair, effective… and completely, utterly politically infeasible. I have very little hope that political means will be able to do anything to stop global warming.
“Biofuels do seem like a good idea, but this a great example of a quick fix with consequences that weren’t thought through.”
I agree absolutely.
The appalling thing is that with a little bit more ingenuity we can have both energy and renewable fuel.
Why isn’t anyone proposing Anaerobic Digestion? AD using agricultural waste materials is a far better option, especially as these materials are causing environmental damage in many cases alerady as for example agricultural waste slurries and sludges which are being applied to the land undigested, and then get washed off in heavy rain into the rivers and streams.
Also, anaerobic digestion produces methane which can be used to produce things like bioethanol. So, please do lobby for Anaerobic Digestion! See our site for more information.
I agree, and I’m also clearly getting the feeling that my post showed up on an index somewhere, since this is the second person who’s showed up to promote their website
Methane has a higher heating capacity in the atmosphere than CO2, so it’s important that the methane be captured and *used*, not just released.
I’ve seen dairy farms that basically run on their cow shit. It’s very cool
I looked it up, because vaguely remembering that sort of thing bugs me–methane has 25 times greater capacity to retain heat in the atmosphere than CO2.
So, it’s really important to keep it from being released from landfills and waste lagoons.
Running your car on it…probably not feasible though. (and would smell pretty funky)
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