Recently there has been a rising tide of lies about biofuels. Ones that shock me in how contrary they are to the facts. Basic facts of biology and physics that were well established decades ago are somehow being superceded by beliefs that should be as obviously false as the smile of a gameshow host.
But I don't want to talk about what's false. I would rather talk about what's true.
Let's start with a simple thought experiment. Let's say that next March we go to an abandoned lot. And we plant hundreds of grass seeds there. Maybe switchgrass. Then we walk away and come back in September. We take the grass we find growing there and bale it, leaving the bales right there where the grass was. Again we walk away and don't come back until the next March. If we used switchgrass, almost all of the minerals and nutrients will have been washed back into the soil by the rains and what is left will be almost pure carbon. Like charcoal. So we grind it up and press it into pellets and burn it in a standard four hundred dollar pellet stove of the kind you can buy at Sears.
So, explain to me, please, how did this process use energy?
How did it use fertilizer or water?
How did doing this decrease our food supply?
Because, as botanists and farmers and landscapers and all sorts of other people have known for generations, switchgrass is a weed. It will grow anywhere. In fact, it enriches the soil and is used to prepare fallow fields. And since you're not processing it in any way other than chopping it up and making it into pellets, you're not using water, or much fuel, there is no need to transport it any serious distance, no new equipment is needed since you can buy pellet makers and grinders cheap all over the place.
Take waste land.
Plant the crop.
Harvest the crop.
Bale the crop.
Pelletize the crop.
Burn the crop.
Put the ash in the soil and start over.
That is all you need to make one particular biofuel. And it can be done in the parking lot of every abandoned minimall, in the median strips of every highway, on brownfields, on any place that gets some sun and some water and has any nutrients at all. Like, say, your yard.
Let's move on.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about cellulosic ethanol. Well, we could talk about ethanol versus other fuels but since ethanol is in the news, we'll stick with that. Somehow people have gotten the idea that scientists and environmentalists are suggesting that this be made with crops like corn. I find this odd. My father, who was a former farmboy, had his biology doctorate, and worked as an environmental scientist for many years, used to take me to the beach with his biologist and environmental scientist friends in the seventies. And they would talk, among other things, about making ethanol. Not, let's face it, mostly to make fuel but for ethanol's other useful purposes.
And they would joke that ethanol can be made from doggone near anything. Cellulosic ethanol just means that it's being made from cellulose. You know, like grass cuttings. Or chopped up dirty underwear. Or used McDonald's food wrappers. Or Exxon and ConAgra press releases.
Again, no need to use up food. No need to use up food-growing land. No need for additional fertilizer usage or massive new factories or technologies.
Let's move on again. Out here in Oregon, folks are big into biodiesel. Some people have said that us hippies will be out of luck once the supply of used french fry grease dries up. Well, there is some logic to that, but not much. There are many other ways to get oils for biodiesel.
A few years back some folks at MIT said, let's take the exhaust coming out of factory chimneys and bubble it through water. And the water will sit in big transparent columns where they get plenty of sunlight. Algae loves heat and CO2. The air that finally bubbles out the top will be much cleaner. And the water-filled column will soon be positively overflowing with happy, fat, energy-rich algae. And as long as you keep feeding exhaust and a little bit of algae food (like, say, the dried out remains of the last batch), you'll keep getting oil-filled algae.
So if we take that algae, crush it for the oil, and turn the oil into biodiesel, why do we need french fry grease?
This process is already in use. Already commercialized. And fwiw, researchers have already bred algae that are half oil by weight. Given how quickly algae reproduce, it shouldn't take any too long to breed ones that are even more efficient.
I could keep going but I really don't see why I should have to. There is no biological or technological or economic reason that making plenty of biofuels should prevent our growing plenty of food. We do have a food supply crisis. The greenhouse effect and increasing demand for meat and the swiftly accelerating rate of grain diseases (many brought about by modern, "efficient" growing techniques), not mention agribusiness profiteering, are certainly causing that.
But biofuels? To blame them, let alone to think that making them is inherently and unavoidably energy negative is naive at best. It's a misunderstanding that we simply can't afford.
-Rustin
For those of you who haven't been watching the tide of biofuels-related misinformation, much of which I sincerely consider disinformation, here are sample excerpts from a press briefing from the United Nations. You can find the complete text here:
http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2007/071026_Ziegler.doc.htm
Here are the excerpts. (Emphases and bracketed comments are mine.)
----quote begins----
The creation of “pure fuels” or biofuels to protect the environment and reduce oil dependence was not a bad idea, but its negative impact on hunger would be catastrophic, Mr. Ziegler said. [Not "could be", but "would be".] When tons of maize, wheat, beans and other food staples were converted to fuel, food prices rose and arable land was lost to food production. Last year, the price of wheat doubled and of maize quadrupled. [No mention of worldwide droughts, massive grain blights, vastly increased demand for meat in the developing world, or any of the other far larger factors.]
He said that, currently, 31 of 53 African States had to import food. [Of course they did; their crops failed on a massive scale.] As prices rose, the poorest countries could not pay, and the poorest people, generally living without access to subsistence farming, could not purchase more expensive foodstuffs. The amount of corn that needed to be burned to make enough ethanol to fill a single car’s fuel tank could fill a child for an entire year.
Warning that converting arable land to pure fuel production was a crime against humanity, he called for a 5-year moratorium on such activity. He offered the use of non-food agricultural products that could grow in soil unfit for food production as an alternative source of biofuels, citing a project in Rajasthan, India, where the Mercedes company was growing jatropha for biodiesel in arid land. {so we KNOW that he knows about other approaches.] Following a moratorium, such projects could be evaluated and new fuels produced.
In countries where people did not face a daily battle against hunger, the public was only aware of the environmental benefits of biofuels, he said. In order for every human being on the planet to enjoy the right to food, however, it was essential to raise public awareness of the devastating effects conversion to biofuels would have on large segments of the global population, so that they might put pressure on their Governments to support the right to food.
----quote ends----
Note that even having conceded that biofuels can be made in ways that don't threaten crops, he then returns to talking as if they necessarily did.
Now, afaict, either the spokeman is changing his tune two or three times in the same statement or the writeup is fundamentally misrepresenting what he said. I think that it's the spokeman's fault, not the anonymous writer of the press release, given what I've seen coming out of the NGO world in general and the U.N. in specific recently.
Google the phrase "wheat blight" and see what you find. Ug99, Sunn insects, FSB, and on and on. Not to mention the bee die off or the many other ways that our flora are in crisis, especially the parts set up to agribusiness specs, where mile after mile of fertilizer and irrigation-maintained monoculture crops are the most vulnerable of all.
No, instead we are told that the food crisis is the fault of the use of biofuels. Who is paying for this disinformation campaign? I don't know. But it's mighty slick and brutally effective. And, to state the obvious, sabotaging the implementation of biofuels will do quite a bit to ensure that more people die in the coming years from things like crop failures.
Don't believe the hype.
-Rustin
Posted by: Rustin Wright | May 02, 2008 at 02:18 AM