Bad Biofuels

United Nations Environment Program spokesman Nicholas Nuttall states: “There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver bullet of climate change. We fully believe that if biofuels are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem, there urgently needs to be better sustainability criterion.” In other words, we're not seeing the whole biofuels picture. And the picture isn't good.

Two papers published in Science explain that if the full emissions costs of producing biofuels are taken into account, growing and using biofuels will result in more greenhouse emissions than conventional fuels. The factor that has previously been ignored in the biofuel life cycle is the carbon emissions that will result from clearing new land for growing fuels. Using existing food-producing farmland for growing fuel does not solve the problem, because switching from food to fuel will reduce the supply of food crops, and that will motivate farmers elsewhere to clear more land. Tropical rainforest land is already being cleared for this purpose, but the studies show that the carbon cost is great even if less-lush scrubland is cleared for farming. link

Prior to the release of these studies, scientists have been wary of biofuels. In his book, The Omnivore's Dilema, Michael Pollen explains that by some estimates, growing and producing one gallon of corn ethanol takes 9/10-ths of a gallon of gasoline. This is because petroleum is used in production and application of fertilizers, as well as irrigation, distillation, and transportation of the biofuel. The October 2007 issue of National Geographic dedicates a cover story to the environmental price of biofuels. link