Biofuels
Page last updated:
18th Aug 2008
In September 2006, Richard Branson announced that he was committing £1.6bn to tackle climate change with the emphasis on bio-fuels.
In the same week the New Scientist (23rd Sept 2006) discussed the issues of environmental impact of bio-fuel production from fertilisers through to the conversion process. It also showed that to replace even 10% of our current fossil fuel usage would require vast tracts of land.
We don't have that much spare land on this planet, it is currently growing food or supporting a rapidly diminishing rain forest.
In February 2007, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) produced the report that set the world talking. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," it said and, what was more, the most likely cause was "anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations."
In other words, the social lifestyle adopted by Western civilisation has polluted the planet to the point of unsustainability. So much so that many scientists have heralded this as a new geological era: the Anthropocene.
In April 2007, Science Daily reported on a new study by Stanford University atmospheric scientist, Mark Z. Jacobson: Ethanol is widely touted as an eco-friendly, clean-burning fuel. But if every vehicle in the United States ran on fuel made primarily from ethanol instead of pure gasoline, the number of respiratory-related deaths and hospitalizations likely would increase.
By this time, however, vast tracts of land had already been given over to the bio-fuel agribusiness.
This gave rise to more worries about the knock on effect on food prices. Corn is an important food crop. Besides going 'pop' in the microwave, its use as animal feed meant that meat prices were set to rise.
Then there is the ethical problem of whether it is morally right to grow corn to keep our cars on the road when we still have a planetary problem of starvation that has yet to be dealt with.
Besides finding renewable resources for energy production, fuel and travel are high on the list of unsustainable human activities. Most of the planet now has a society where travelling from A to B is essential just to educate our children and get to work to earn a living.
Here are some of the IPCC's actual recommendations under 'mitigation for the tansport sector':
- More fuel efficient vehicles; hybrid vehicles; cleaner diesel vehicles;biofuels; modal shifts from road transport to rail and public transportsystems; non-motorised transport (cycling, walking); land-use and transport planning.
- Second generation biofuels; higher efficiency aircraft; advanced electric and hybrid vehicles with more powerful and reliable batteries.
- Transport Demand Management, which includes urban planning (that can reduce thedemand for travel) and provision of information and educational techniques (that can reduce car usage and lead to an efficient driving style) can support GHG mitigation.
- Investment in attractive public transport facilities and non-motorised forms of transport.
- Mandatory fuel economy, biofuel blending and CO2 standards for road transport.
So, are we supposed to look to bio-fuels as an alternative or should we look to technology? In December, the New Scientist looked at attempts to creat electric cars whereby the batteries could be plugged into the national grid as a means of spreading the energy load.
Other suggestions are coming in almost daily as the big names and entrepreneurs alike are looking for alternatives.
Science Daily reports: Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a new method for producing next-generation biofuels by genetically modifying E. coli bacteria to be an efficient biofuel synthesizer. The method could lead to mass production of these biofuels.
New Scientist reports that Shell is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae. This concept has been known for a long time but was shelved as crude oil was so cheap. Now they are setting up a pilot plan in Hawaii which is expected to produce 15 times as much oil for the same area as biofuel crops.
Much of what we are trying to do pales into insignificance when you read what a NASA scientist named James Hansen has offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For the background to this story, the Washington Post carries a good article. To cut to the chase, we are already at 383.
Despite all the evidence, China is still building coal fired power stations which are ruining their own eco-system; the US are about to sell off vast chunks of virgin Alaskan shoreline in the hope of extracting more oil; Malaysia is still cutting down rain forest to produce palm oil for our cosmetic and food industries.
Bio-fuels, it seems, are a very costly and extremely short term measure. The real money needs to be spent on our transportation infrastructure and on reducing our dependence upon oil per se.
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Above images:
Corn: Naturespath.com
Guardian: Richard Branson, Bill Clinton and Al Gore at the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York. Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty