Chief
05-03-2008, 06:19 AM
Great article out of the PI...
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/361634_biodiesel03.html
Amid a global food crisis, some wonder: Is the production of biofuels robbing from dinner plates?
By LISA STIFFLER
P-I REPORTER
The number of Northwest cars and trucks bumper stickered with "Biodiesel: Mother Nature Approved" or "I love the smell of biodiesel in the morning" and even "Ethanol: No war required" has blossomed in recent years.
But with growing fears over biofuels stealing from dinner plates to fill gas tanks, people are starting to wonder: How green are biofuels?
The concerns are not only about traditional food crops such as corn being diverted to ethanol. Critics say the use of foreign-grown palm oil and soybeans as a biofuel source leads to the destruction of precious rain forests. And the very act of producing certain biofuels generates greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change -- although generally in lesser amounts than fossil fuels.
This week, the food concern reached such a frenzy that top international food scientists called for a halt to biofuel production in order to bring prices down, and Europeans are talking about scrapping, at least temporarily, goals for biofuel use. The competition between food and fuel now will likely intensify -- hitting developing countries hardest. Global experts predict that to feed the world's growing population, some 500 million new acres of cropland will be needed by 2030, a 20 percent increase.
At Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks in Ballard, owner Dan Freeman is feeling wrongly maligned.
He said that critics are confusing the biodiesel that he sells with the gasoline-additive ethanol, which in the United States is made almost exclusively from corn, mostly grown in the Midwest.
People come to him and say "you're driving up the price of corn and killing Mexicans," Freeman said on a recent afternoon, taking a break from greasy repairs to a jacked-up older diesel Mercedes.
Freeman, who was among the earliest biodiesel retailers when he opened in 2001, is choosy about his fuel sources. He regrets buying his biodiesel from out of state, but it's the only way to get 100 percent U.S.-grown, soy-based fuel. He likes the crop because the fuel oil is extracted from the bean, then the remainder of the legume is used to feed livestock, reducing the impact on food production.
"Our big goal is to have locally grown and consumed (biodiesel)," Freeman said. "That really hasn't happened yet."
Other current biodiesel sources include canola, rapeseed and cooking oil. Ethanol comes from sugar cane as well as corn. The only way to know what your biofuel is made from is to ask the producer.
While biofuels do compete for food and cropland, experts said they're not the primary problem when it comes to soaring food prices and global food shortages. A spate of weather-related disasters -- droughts in Australia and Russia, frost in the Midwest, torrential summer rains in Europe -- made a mess of crops over the past year. Rising incomes in China and India mean many more people are eating higher on the food chain, sending more crops to feedlots to grow beef and pork. High prices for fuel and fertilizer also contribute to the food woes.
But biofuels have other problems.
Researchers from the University of Washington and the Seattle office of The Nature Conservancy examined the most popular plants used to make biodiesel and ethanol.
They looked at the amount of greenhouse gases generated in the growing, harvesting, producing and burning of fuel made from different crops. Their study, published in February in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Biology, tallied the amount of water, fertilizer, pesticide and land needed to grow the plants. It looked at biofuels' impacts on biological diversity as land was shifted from various crops and fields and forests to fuel production.
All of the biofuel plants consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, helping reduce the effects of climate change. Different crops, however, burn fuel in the form of fertilizer, machines used for harvesting, in the refining process and so on, meaning some produce more greenhouse gases than they remove.
Tracking corn from seed to ethanol, it creates greenhouse gas emissions on par with diesel and only slightly less than gasoline. But harvesting native prairie grasses for ethanol leads to a net reduction in the planet-warming pollutants.
On the biodiesel side, palm oil, soybeans and canola decrease carbon dioxide emissions to about half that of diesel.
Algae -- which some see as the promising green light at the end of the biodiesel tunnel -- consumes large amounts of carbon dioxide levels, greatly outweighing the energy spent to turn it into fuel.
"We're advocating biodiversity-friendly and climate-friendly biofuels and how do you achieve that," said Elizabeth Gray, a Nature Conservancy scientist and one of the study's authors.
"We need to move as quickly as possible beyond corn as a biofuels stock," she said. "We really need to start investigating alternatives more vigorously."
**SCHNIPP**
I urge you to read the rest and study the charts that are provided at that link. Some eye opening numbers...
8)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/361634_biodiesel03.html
Amid a global food crisis, some wonder: Is the production of biofuels robbing from dinner plates?
By LISA STIFFLER
P-I REPORTER
The number of Northwest cars and trucks bumper stickered with "Biodiesel: Mother Nature Approved" or "I love the smell of biodiesel in the morning" and even "Ethanol: No war required" has blossomed in recent years.
But with growing fears over biofuels stealing from dinner plates to fill gas tanks, people are starting to wonder: How green are biofuels?
The concerns are not only about traditional food crops such as corn being diverted to ethanol. Critics say the use of foreign-grown palm oil and soybeans as a biofuel source leads to the destruction of precious rain forests. And the very act of producing certain biofuels generates greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change -- although generally in lesser amounts than fossil fuels.
This week, the food concern reached such a frenzy that top international food scientists called for a halt to biofuel production in order to bring prices down, and Europeans are talking about scrapping, at least temporarily, goals for biofuel use. The competition between food and fuel now will likely intensify -- hitting developing countries hardest. Global experts predict that to feed the world's growing population, some 500 million new acres of cropland will be needed by 2030, a 20 percent increase.
At Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks in Ballard, owner Dan Freeman is feeling wrongly maligned.
He said that critics are confusing the biodiesel that he sells with the gasoline-additive ethanol, which in the United States is made almost exclusively from corn, mostly grown in the Midwest.
People come to him and say "you're driving up the price of corn and killing Mexicans," Freeman said on a recent afternoon, taking a break from greasy repairs to a jacked-up older diesel Mercedes.
Freeman, who was among the earliest biodiesel retailers when he opened in 2001, is choosy about his fuel sources. He regrets buying his biodiesel from out of state, but it's the only way to get 100 percent U.S.-grown, soy-based fuel. He likes the crop because the fuel oil is extracted from the bean, then the remainder of the legume is used to feed livestock, reducing the impact on food production.
"Our big goal is to have locally grown and consumed (biodiesel)," Freeman said. "That really hasn't happened yet."
Other current biodiesel sources include canola, rapeseed and cooking oil. Ethanol comes from sugar cane as well as corn. The only way to know what your biofuel is made from is to ask the producer.
While biofuels do compete for food and cropland, experts said they're not the primary problem when it comes to soaring food prices and global food shortages. A spate of weather-related disasters -- droughts in Australia and Russia, frost in the Midwest, torrential summer rains in Europe -- made a mess of crops over the past year. Rising incomes in China and India mean many more people are eating higher on the food chain, sending more crops to feedlots to grow beef and pork. High prices for fuel and fertilizer also contribute to the food woes.
But biofuels have other problems.
Researchers from the University of Washington and the Seattle office of The Nature Conservancy examined the most popular plants used to make biodiesel and ethanol.
They looked at the amount of greenhouse gases generated in the growing, harvesting, producing and burning of fuel made from different crops. Their study, published in February in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Biology, tallied the amount of water, fertilizer, pesticide and land needed to grow the plants. It looked at biofuels' impacts on biological diversity as land was shifted from various crops and fields and forests to fuel production.
All of the biofuel plants consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, helping reduce the effects of climate change. Different crops, however, burn fuel in the form of fertilizer, machines used for harvesting, in the refining process and so on, meaning some produce more greenhouse gases than they remove.
Tracking corn from seed to ethanol, it creates greenhouse gas emissions on par with diesel and only slightly less than gasoline. But harvesting native prairie grasses for ethanol leads to a net reduction in the planet-warming pollutants.
On the biodiesel side, palm oil, soybeans and canola decrease carbon dioxide emissions to about half that of diesel.
Algae -- which some see as the promising green light at the end of the biodiesel tunnel -- consumes large amounts of carbon dioxide levels, greatly outweighing the energy spent to turn it into fuel.
"We're advocating biodiversity-friendly and climate-friendly biofuels and how do you achieve that," said Elizabeth Gray, a Nature Conservancy scientist and one of the study's authors.
"We need to move as quickly as possible beyond corn as a biofuels stock," she said. "We really need to start investigating alternatives more vigorously."
**SCHNIPP**
I urge you to read the rest and study the charts that are provided at that link. Some eye opening numbers...
8)