The original natural family living magazine, founded in 1976. Reader-supported
and trusted by thinking people around the world who want positive alternatives
to high cost, high consumption lifestyles for themselves and their families.
|
|
from Natural Life Magazine, September/October
2006 Q: My father-in-law says that ethanol (which he seems to use interchangeably with “biofuel”) is the way of the future. Can you tell me what it is exactly and if it really is an environmentally friendly and sustainable alternative to regular gasoline? A: Biofuel is the term given to any fuel produced from organic plant matter, rather than from fossil fuels. It can be produced from specially grown crops, from agricultural waste, by using waste vegetable oil or even with animal manure. There are a number of different biofuels, but the ones we hear about the most these days are ethanol and biodiesel. Ethanol Ethanol is a high octane fuel that is commercially produced by the fermentation of plant sugars. In the United States and Canada, it is typically made from corn, while Latin American countries use sugar cane. It can also be produced from cellulose materials such as agricultural and wood waste (including cornstalks), fast-growing trees and grasses and crops like barley, wheat, rice, sorghum, sunflower and potatoes. In North America, ethanol is often blended with gasoline at concentrations of seven to ten percent by volume. All cars built since the 1970s can burn up to ten percent ethanol (E-10) in the fuel mixture with no modification, no loss of performance and no threat to vehicle warranties. In fact, ethanol’s high octane level reduces the need for toxic anti-knock additives. Ethanol can also be used in much higher proportions - up to 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (E-85) - but only in what are called flexible fuel vehicles. These vehicles can operate on straight gasoline or on any proportion of ethanol mixed with gasoline, up to the 85 percent limit. A limited but growing number of flexible fuel vehicles are now being produced by auto manufacturers. The environmental benefits like reduced greenhouse gas emissions are controversial, with conflicting opinions about just how eco-friendly ethanol really is. It appears that the combination of ethanol and gasoline actually results in overall increase in smog-producing volatile organic compounds. Blending ethanol with a gasoline that has been manufactured to have low volatility overcomes that problem. Natural Resources Canada says that on a full cycle basis, the use of a liter of E-10 fuel instead of straight gasoline can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three to four percent if ethanol is produced from grain, or six to eight percent if it is produced from cellulose. Using E-85 fuel instead of straight gasoline can reduce net emissions by as much as 75 percent, according to the government. U.S. government research indicates that ethanol yields lower emissions of carbon monoxide than regular gasoline but higher emissions of nitrogen oxide. Some sources also claim that E-85 produces higher levels of formaldehyde and other toxic aldehydes. But ethanol boosters claim that the concentrations are small and removed by catalytic converters in recent-model cars. Biodiesel Unmodified diesel engines can burn biodiesel fuel, which is commonly made from soybean oil or other vegetable oils or animal fats. The concept of using vegetable oil as a fuel dates back to 1895 when Dr. Rudolf Diesel developed the first diesel engine to run on vegetable oil. Diesel demonstrated his engine at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900 using peanut oil as fuel. Biodiesel produces approximately 80 percent less carbon dioxide emissions, significantly fewer particulates and carbon monoxide than regular diesel and fewer of the sulfur emissions that lead to acid rain. Whichever plant is used to manufacture biofuel, the byproducts are clean, unlike oil refinery waste. The alcohol production process concentrates and makes more digestible the crop’s protein and non-starch nutrients, making the residue recyclable as animal feed. The Downside However, the production and use of biofuels is also controversial. Without doubt, the high cost of gasoline and the desire in the United States to reduce its dependency on foreign oil for security reasons are fueling increased demand for biofuels. In addition, biofuels are said to create sustainable jobs in rural areas, a fact not lost on the farm lobby, which has succeeded in getting the U.S. government to provide billions in tax subsidies to help the ethanol industry. In the past, critics of ethanol have said that the cost of producing it is higher than that of regular gasoline. But today's oil prices have changed that picture significantly. In 2005, the industry-funded Canadian Renewable Fuels Association said that at a crude oil price of $54 per barrel, ethanol would become significantly cheaper to produce than crude. Once the price of oil moved beyond $100 a barrel, there was no argument in terms of the cost effectiveness. The process of producing biofuel is another issue altogether. Corn and soybeans, as currently grown in a chemical monoculture, are environmentally destructive and susceptible to crippling disease. Corn-based ethanol production is also energy intensive. Some studies claim that there is actually a net energy loss in the production of ethanol from corn (including the energy needed for farming and making fertilizers). In 2003, well-known agricultural researcher David Pimentel at Cornell published a paper showing that corn ethanol is an energy loser that will make global warming (and dependence on foreign oil) worse, not better. The following year, Tad Patzek, an engineer at the University of California at Berkeley, published a paper showing that growing ethanol from corn was even worse than Pimentel had said it was. Patzek found that because there is so much petroleum hidden in crops (in the fertilizer, the pesticides, the energy to make and run the tractors, and so on), more fossil energy is used than is saved in the ethanol itself. And then in 2005, Patzek and Pimentel argued in a joint paper that it didn’t matter whether the ethanol was made from corn, wood, soybeans, sunflowers or switchgrass. Subsequent studies by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other researchers have swung this argument back and forth, depending upon the dozens of variables involved. For instance, a study out of the University of Minnesota, released in 2006 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, claimed that corn-based ethanol produces 23 percent more energy than is required to create it. In the end, the researchers favored biodiesel made from soy over ethanol, with soy-based biodiesel netting 93 percent more energy than the amount required to produce it in the first place. Soybean biodiesel not only yields more energy, it has lower environmental impacts than corn ethanol, according to the study, leaching 99 percent less nitrogen, 93 percent less phosphorus, and 87 percent less pesticide into drinking water supplies during crop production. Greenhouse gas emissions from soybean biodiesel are more than three-times lower than those from corn ethanol. However, as we first warned in Natural Life magazine in 2006, in spite of these benefits, neither soybeans nor corn should be the foundation of an alternative fuel industry because their wide-spread use for fuel has an environmental and social downside. One of the problems is that clearing land to produce biofuels releases large quantities of carbon dioxide from the soil. Although palm oil is a highly productive crop and there are supposedly sustainable palm oil plantations being developed, the use of palm oil for diesel has led to increased planting in clear-cut areas, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia, and destruction of peatlands. This reduces the amount of carbon tied up in biomass, which means a net increase in atmospheric carbon. Additionally, these clear cut plantations have a short life span due to nutrient leaching and erosion, leading to additional clear cutting. Large-scale biofuel production also uses large amounts of water, a serious concern as the world's fresh water supplies are increasingly under threat. In addition, biofuel plants need to be powered. In North America, that is done with natural gas or less expensive coal. By contrast, Brazil's widely consumed sugar cane-based ethanol is almost eight times more fossil energy efficient to produce than the North American corn-based product because its ethanol manufacturing is powered not by fossil fuels, but by cane-stalk residue. But more serious in the short-term is the impact on food supplies created by industrial production. The Toronto-based investment firm Sprott Asset Management produced a rather bleak study in 2006 stating that governments pushing ethanol may create a situation where acreage currently used to grow food is used instead to grow crops for fuel. "When we take into consideration the potential shortages of food crops that may result from an abrupt climate change, it is likely that governments will soon be facing a choice between feeding people and feeding SUVs," they wrote. Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute concurs. Also in 2006, he wrote in The New York Times: "We're putting the supermarket in competition with the corner filling station for the output of the farm; the result is that more people will go hungry.” By 2008, those warnings had proven to be true. In fact, according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. in July of 2008, biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75 percent, leading to what has become an unprecedented global food crisis. By mid-2008, rising food prices had pushed millions of people worldwide below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, and had sparked riots in many countries. The damning assessment was based on a very detailed analysis of the food crisis, carried out by internationally-respected World Bank economist Don Mitchell. It contradicted U.S. government claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than three percent to food price increases. “Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate,” says the report. “The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140 percent between 2002 and February [of 2008].” The report estimates that the growing of crops for biofuels was responsible for a 75 percent increase in food prices over that time period. It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of American corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher. The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, in which Brazil specializes, have not had such a dramatic impact. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development also sees problems with biofuels, along with the benefits of energy independence and reduced carbon emissions. While acknowledging that biofuels are more carbon neutral than fossil fuels, the UN warns that land use, food supply and water supply issues need to be taken into account when planning for biofuels production. Meanwhile, a new group calling itself the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy in Washington D.C. is spending multimillions of dollars to promote ethanol production. It was created in 2008 by Archer Daniels Midland Co, DuPont Co, Deere & Co , Monsanto Co and the Renewable Fuels Association (www.foodandenergy.org). The group believes that agricultural innovation such as genetically modified crops is the best way to address global hunger, not reducing biofuel production. Decatur, Illinois-based ADM is one of the world’s largest producers of biofuels, and Monsanto is a leading producer of genetically modified seeds. Second Generation Biofuels The impact on food crops looks quite different when biofuels are made from agricultural waste or fast-growing crops grown on land that is unsuited to food crops. David Tilman, co-author of the University of Minnesota study that favored soybean-based biodiesel over corn-based ethanol, feels that there is a positive future for ethanol made from fast-growing grass crops, agricultural waste and wood fiber, since their use wouldn’t impact on food production. Since the early 1990s, the Ecological Agriculture Project (EAP, now Resource Efficient Agricultural Production or REAP-Canada) out of McGill University in Montreal has been working on bioenergy development systems that use prairie grasses as densified biofuels and for bioethanol production. Executive Director Roger Samson believes perennial grasses are poised to become the largest new renewable energy source for the industrial and developing world. In late 2008, Samson was lead author on a study by Canadian and Dutch scientists that demonstrated the efficiency of switchgrass as an efficient biofuel source. According to the study, published in a book edited by Cornell researcher David Pimentel called Biofuels, Solar and Wind as Renewable Energy Systems, the solid biofuel technology using biomass from energy crops for heat energy developed by REAP-Canada reduces greenhouse gases by as much as eight times that of soybean biodiesel and corn ethanol. “Solid biofuels produced from 2nd generation energy crops, such as switchgrass, effectively blow away liquid biofuels like corn ethanol as a serious greenhouse gas mitigation option,” says Samson. Others suggest that growing enough crops for large-scale ethanol production could be the ideal industry for the world’s poorest countries, especially those with plenty of land already lost to desertification. Another argument is that there are worse things than cutting back on sugar and meat consumption in order to make land available for fuel crops! Ultimately, Henry Ford may have had the solution. In 1925, he told a reporter for The New York Times that ethyl alcohol was the fuel of the future. Except that he saw it being produce from “fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust – almost anything.” In fact, Ford's first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline, since hemp produces a large amount of cellulose. The Issue of Scale David Blume, an organic farmer and permaculturalist who authored the book Alcohol Can Be A Gas!, has 30 years of hands-on experience with ethanol production. And he believes in small and medium-scale biofuel production, demonstrating that it can be produced sustainably and integrated with food production on organic farms. He says, “Most of the widely publicized potential problems with ethanol are a function of scale. Once production plants get beyond a certain size and are too far away from the crops that supply them, closing the ecological loop becomes problematic. Smaller-scale operations can more efficiently use a wide variety of crops than huge specialized one-crop plants, and diversification of crops would largely eliminate the problems of monoculture.” Blume cites recent studies showing that in a permaculturally designed mixed-crop alcohol fuel production system, the amount of greenhouse gases removed from the atmosphere by plants and then exuded by plant roots into the soil as sugar can be 13 times what is emitted by processing the crops and burning the alcohol in our cars. Just our lawn clippings could replace a third of the automobile fuel we get from the Mideast, he claims. Post-consumer food waste is another potential source of biofuels. In Japan, Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. has launched a pilot project to recover bioethanol from food waste generated by schools. In the test area in Tokyo, about 200 kilograms of food waste from school lunches is generated daily by elementary and junior high schools. This food waste is delivered to a local processing plant, where it is broken into pieces and enzymes added to break down the carbohydrates. The waste is then squeezed to separate liquids and solids. Ethanol is extracted from the liquid through fermentation, and biogas is recovered from a mixture of the solid portion and the liquid left over after ethanol is distilled. The ethanol is used by the schools for transportation and the biogas powers a 9.9 kW generator and a boiler used to operate the distillation equipment. Since there is so much doubt on one hand and enthusiasm from other parties about biofuels, an international task force has been working on a global sustainability standard for biofuels. In mid-2008, the Steering Board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB), hosted by the Energy Centre at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, produced the first draft of a global sustainability standard for biofuels. The standard is intended to be used by investors, governments, corporations and civil society groups. “With all of the mixed messages we hear about biofuels, there is a clear need for a standard that can differentiate the good from the bad,” says Claude Martin, chair of the Roundtable and former Director-General of the environment group WWF International. Over 300 experts from corporations, civil society groups, academic institutions and government agencies from nearly 40 countries helped draft the initial version of the standard. It addresses the major issues of concern regarding the production of biofuels, including their potential contribution to climate change mitigation and rural development; the protection of land and labor rights; and their impacts on biodiversity, soil pollution, water availability and food security. While all this experimenting is going on, we also need to get serious about energy conservation, vehicle efficiency improvements, viable sustainable energy sources, a reorganization of our economies and finding a way to drive less. Learn more: The Alcohol Fuel Handbook Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy [BIODIESEL 2/E] Biodiesel Power: The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel SVO: Powering Your Vehicle With Straight Vegetable Oil From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank: The Complete Guide to Using Vegetable Oil as an Alternative Fuel Alcohol Can Be a Gas!: Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition Canadian Renewable Fuels Association This is an expanded version of an article that first appeared in Natural Life magazine. It was researched and written by Natural Life editor Wendy Priesnitz. To read more articles like this, subscribe to Natural Life's online or print edition. |
|
|
|
|
by Lynn Ellen Doxon (Infinity
Publishers, 2001) 
by Greg Pahl
(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2005) 
by Lyle Estill (New Society Publishers, 2005)
by Forest Gregg (New Society Publishers, 2008)
by Joshua Tickell (Tickell Energy
Consultants, 2000)
by David Blume (International Institute for Ecological
Agriculture, California, 2007)
