How to be Fuel and Food Rich During Climate Change

by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho		print version
		print version (graphics)

The end of cheap fossil fuels and the rapidly widening gap between supply and demand have sent our governments into a tailspin for the next big solution.

Tony Blair wants to give Britain nuclear power, and you�ve heard Peter Saunders on why not (�Nuclear power: A leap into the dark energy chasm�, this series).

George W. Bush is offering the United States biofuels: ethanol from corn, sugarcane and hopefully, wood biomass; and biodiesel from soybeans, sunflower and other oil seeds (�Biofuels for oil addicts�, SiS 29).

A �billion ton vision� was unveiled [1] to make available 1.3 billion tons of dry biomass for the biofuels industry by the middle of this century, to provide 30 percent of the country�s fuel use. It comes with all kinds of optimistic assumptions, such as a fifty percent increase in crop yield.

Europe, too, has set a target of 5.75 percent of EU�s transport fuel as biofuels by 2010, increasing to 8 percent by 2015.

Biofuels Corporation plc is here in Britain. The first 250 000 Mt biodiesel processing plant is nearing completion at Seal Sands Middlebrough on the northeast coast of England, and it will be using vegetable oil crops [2].

Biofuels from energy crops are bad news

Biofuels from energy crops are bad news, as our Energy Review makes clear (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ISIS_energy_review_exec_sum.pdf). To sum up: there isn�t enough land to grow energy crops and food crops. The pressure on land will accelerate deforestation, and cause huge increases in carbon emissions, so biofuels won�t be carbon neutral as claimed.

Bioenergy crops will destroy biodiversity, and accelerate global warming and species extinction. Above all, they will threaten the food security of the poorest nations, and raise food prices for all countries as food and energy compete for the same �feedstock�.

Bioenergy crops are also unsustainable, as they deplete soil minerals and reduce soil fertility especially in the long term. They generally give small to negative energy returns when you do the life-cycle analysis properly. The processing wastes have substantial negative impacts on the environment. And although biodiesel is cleaner than diesel, ethanol is not; it generates mutagens and carcinogens and increases ozone levels in the atmosphere.

There is no spare land for bioenergy crops

Calculations based on the best-case scenario of unrealistically high crop yields and high recovery of biofuels from processing still end up requiring 121 percent of all the farmland in the United States to grow enough biomass to substitute for the fossil fuels consumed each year [3].

The EU target of 5.75 percent biofuel substitution for fossil fuels will require at least 14 to 19 percent of farmland to grow bioenergy crops [4]. There will be no set-aside left to protect natural biodiversity, as that�s only 12 percent of farmland in the EU. So, what will that do to our butterflies, birds and bees?

The latest satellite data reveal that 40 percent of the earth�s land is already used up for agriculture [5], either growing crops or for pasture. There is no spare land for growing food, let alone bioenergy crops.

Biofuels and deforestation

Greenpeace has photographed a horrific aerial view of the vast swathes of the Amazonian forest in Brazil cleared for soybean cultivation. A sample of press reports indicates things are getting worse.

Fred Pearce wrote in the New Scientist November 2005 [6]: �From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices [of fossil fuels] are likely to accelerate the destruction.�

�The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia,� said Simon Counsell, direction of UK-based Rainforest Foundation.

George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian December 2005, quoted from Friends of the Earth Report that between 1985 and 2000 the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 percent of deforestation in Malaysia. In Sumatra and Borneo, 4 million hectares of forests were lost to palm farms; and now a further 6 m ha are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia and 16.5 m ha in Indonesia [7]. These forests are home to the orang-utan, the Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species, all of which could become extinct. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted and 500 tortured when they tried to resist. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Biofuels and food price hike

The confederation of the food and drink industries of the EU has already expressed concern over the price increases for food ingredients, especially rapeseed [8]. The rapeseed oil prices were recently up 45 percent and demand within the EU is forecast to increase by 25 percent. Cereals prices are also predicted to go up.

In the United States, huge amounts of corn go to produce ethanol, and corn and ethanol are heavily subsidized at both the state and federal levels. The total cost to the consumer is estimated at $8.4 billion a year because producing the required corn feedstock increases corn prices. One estimate is that ethanol production adds more than $1 billion to the cost of beef production [3].

Last year, a $1 per gallon government rebate on biodiesel went into effect. The US livestock producers are likely to see even higher prices for smaller available supplies of grain for feed [9]. Currently 11 percent of the US corn crop goes to produce ethanol, and 15 percent is exported to livestock producers as far away as Japan and South Korea.

The grain operator ADM will construct its first wholly owned US biodiesel facility in North Dakota to take full advantage of the multiple subsidies, which will make things worse for farmers, consumers and the environment without providing a real solution to climate change and the energy crisis.