A Lighter Shade of Green: Changing Views of Biofuels

Bio Fuels have been getting a bit of bad press as of late, in case you hadn't noticed. Recent research released from the Journal Science shows substantial carbon losses when lands are converted to biofuel production. These carbon losses are so large that the carbon savings from producing biofuels on these lands will take in some cases hundreds of years to make up the initial losses caused by clearing forests of tilling peat lands in order to plant biofuel crops.

While this is somewhat intuitive to anyone with a few ecology 101 credits, the obvious may be lost on the general public and policy makers. While these findings may come as an unwelcome criticism of the biofuel boom, an objective and critical analysis of this industry is essential. We need to develop a sustainable foundation now for the energy sector of coming decades.

Likewise it is foolish to paint the entire biofuel industry as being equal to corn ethanol and soy based biodiesel, as much of the media tends to. The biofuel industry in reality is a diverse mix of technologies and feedstocks. The sustainability of our future energy production depends on policy makers being able to see beyond the short term political gains they receive by blindly supporting some ill-conceived subsidies.

We need the ability to look beyond our own field borders to see what effects our actions(or inactions) are having on the rest of the world. We have for the most part been unprepared and unwilling to consider what effects the run up on commodity prices has had on food supplies, land costs and land use practices thousands of miles away. "Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuel for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuel sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuel. Using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products. " (T. Searchinger et al.)

While this study will be scrutinized and disputed, the questions raised here are valid and need to be discussed. We need to know if the energy technologies we are investing millions of our tax dollars in are providing the benefits claimed. Regardless of which crop associations or political lobbyists are tied to a particular technology we need to objectively examine the application and support of these technologies.