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February 08, 2008

Biofuels take a bashing

The ethanol industry is in full damage-control mode today after the journal Science published a pair of studies concluding that most of the currently available biofuels generate more greenhouse gases than conventional fuels, including gasoline.

Prior to these studies, the conventional wisdom was that biofuels might help in the fight against global warming because the crops grown to produce them remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Petroleum, by contrast, takes ancient carbon out of the earth and sends it into the atmosphere.

But a pair of scientific teams, one lead by Tim Searchinger, an environmental economist at Princeton University, reached a different conclusion after modeling the land- use changes resulting from biofuel production. Here's what Searchinger had to say in a podcast that you can find at Science's web site.

"Unfortunately, when you dedicate land to produce biofuel, which is how most biofuels are produced, you are using the land to produce the biofuel but you are not using that land to produce something else. So if that something else was a forest or grassland, and you end up plowing up that forest or grass, you get a huge release of carbon. And that huge release of carbon is carbon that has been stored over the decades, and according to our calculations greatly exceeds the carbon benefit you get per year of using biofuels...

If you are using existing farmland, farmers around the world have to respond by making new food to make the food that is no longer grown on the cropland. Again you have a huge carbon release, and to some extent, if you have growing forests you don’t get the benefit of the carbon they would absorb year after year."

Searchinger and his collaborators used a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from these land use changes. They found that corn-based ethanol, instead of reducing GHG emissions by 20 percent, nearly doubled emissions over 30 years and increased those emissions for 167 years.

The Renewable Fuels Association immediately attacked the studies' findings, noting that the rise in crop prices -- and resulting clearing of land worldwide to plant crops in response -- are the result of several factors, including higher oil prices.

Pacific Ethanol, a California-based company that imports corn from the Midwest to serve the growing West Coast market or ethanol, stated that secondary land-use impacts is "flawed concept." You can read the company's response after the jump.

Here in California, it will be interesting to see how these new studies affect the state's low carbon fuel standard, which seeks to reduce the carbon intensity of motor fuels in the state by measuring their full life-cycle impact on greenhouse emissions.

One of the crafters of this low-carbon fuel standard is Alex Farrell, a researcher at University of California, Berkeley. Farrell concluded in a 2006 study that biofuels produce a net environmental benefit. But in a story today in the Washington Post, Farrell says the paper by Searchinger and his colleagues changed his mind.

"The qualitative result that biofuel produced on fertile land has higher greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels is almost certainly true, even if it's only by a certain amount," Farrell told the Post. "But we can make better biofuels. The right thing to do is to give the biofuel industry the incentives and support to move to a more sustainable production method."

The implications are enormous. If California can't reduce greenhouse gases by transitioning more to biofuels, it will have to reduce them by some other means -- such as examining our own land-use patterns and lack of public transit.

Sacramento Bee Photo/Bryan Patrick

Response by Pacific Ethanol to studies published in Science

“Secondary Land Use Impacts” – A Flawed Concept

Recent reports have attempted to determine the environmental consequences of land use changes around the world. In doing so, several have chosen to single out biofuels as contributors to a “carbon debt.” These analyses are fundamentally flawed because:

The reports attribute “secondary land use impacts” to biofuels that are not supportable;
The reports fail to account for ongoing improvements in agricultural yields and technology improvements in biofuel production; and
The reports fail to account for upstream environmental impacts of oil extraction.
The current first-generation biofuels (corn-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel) are not perfect and alone will not solve all of our problems, but what is clear is that current and future use of renewable fuels reduce carbon compared to conventional gasoline. In addition, the environmental performance of biofuels continues to improve and the next generation of biofuels based on agriculture and other wastes will provide even further CO2 reductions. Pacific Ethanol is the leading producer and marketer of low carbon fuel in the Western United States and a leader in the development of cellulosic ethanol and other next generation fuels.

“Secondary Land Use Impacts” – A Flawed Concept
The reports assert that increasing production of biofuels in the US is driving destruction of ecosystems in South America and Asia for food production and attributes a carbon debt to biofuels from the clearcutting of rainforests and cultivation of native ecosystems. This assertion is based on assumptions and models that are not and cannot be verified. This “Secondary Land Use Impacts” assumption counters all current, verified analyses showing substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions for biofuels.

Why should US-based corn ethanol, other crop-based biofuels, or advanced cellulosic fuels take a carbon hit for international land use changes for food or housing or other non-fuel related production? By that logic:

Any US farmland not growing food crops is creating a carbon debt by increasing demand for international food production—What are the “secondary land use impacts” of US grass seed farmers? Or tobacco farmers? Or nursery owners? Or cotton, tomatoes grapes and a myriad of other non-food related agricultural acreage in the US?
Every new subdivision and greenfield commercial, industrial or residential development creates a carbon debt by taking potential food-producing land out of production and shifting that demand to sensitive, international native ecosystems; and
Any effort in the US to protect ancient forests or native ecosystems creates a carbon debt by increasing demand for international sources of wood products.
Any analysis that shifts away from a life cycle analysis of the carbon potential for a single product or fuel and attempts to distribute carbon potential to “secondary” or “tertiary” impacts will create a dead-end, through-the-looking-glass scenario that is inaccurate and unworkable.

The real implication of accepting “secondary land use impacts” is an on-going dependence on CO2 intensive, polluting, imported fossil fuels. Inclusion of secondary impacts is the wrong approach—each product should stand on its own.

It’s Not Acre for Acre – Productivity Gains Means We Get More From Less The analyses of land use impacts assume that for every acre of land dedicated to renewable energy feedstocks, another acre of land must be put into production elsewhere in the world. This assumption is flawed for several reasons:

It fails to account for advances in seed and processing technology that are providing greater yields for each acre of feedstock.
Corn acreage in the US peaked in 1917 with 116 million acres planted, compared to 93 million acres in 2007. During that period yields have increased by more than 1 bushel/acre/year, from 29 bushels/acre to 200 bushels/acre. This year the US will harvest more than 10 billion bushels of corn, and exports are rising, so certainly US corn ethanol production is not causing a need for increased grain production in the world.
It ignores the value of the feed co-products that are produced at today’s biorefineries.
The food value of corn is not lost in ethanol production—distillers grain is a high protein, high nutrient co-product that is sold back into the food market.
It inappropriately assigns all of the impact to growth in renewable fuels, ignoring the effects of a growing world economy, increased demand for food, and urban sprawl.

The Environmental Impacts of Fossil Fuels are Increasing
The reports fail to account for the fact that every gallon of biofuel produced today requires less land, requires less water and is less energy intensive than a decade ago, while the opposite is true for oil production. Every new gallon of oil produced is more energy intensive and requires much more water than before.

The “easy” sources of oil have been found and are being depleted. What is left are more remote, costlier and more environmentally damaging nontraditional sources like Canadian tar sands or Rocky Mountain oil shale. By failing to capitalize on the opportunity renewable fuels offer to begin breaking our adherence to the oil standard, the world would be forced to develop these nontraditional sources of oil that carry significant environmental price tags.

Even traditional sources of oil have steep environmental costs that are not accounted for in the land use reports. Where is the accounting for oil drilling in the Amazon? Oil spills in San Francisco Bay? Or asthma deaths from air pollution?