The Cost of Biofuels
This blog is unconnected to Noni, and not even connected to health matters, but I was reading an article in this mornings newspaper that got me thinking that no matter how hard we, as a human race, try to get things right, our ideas and therefore governing policies often swing wildly like a pendulum, and we can get things so very wrong.
We have all read countless articles on global warming and Al Gore certainly raised the worlds consciousness when he took global warming as his cause after his defeat in the USA Presidential elections in 2000. There is no doubt the climate of the world is changing. There is also no doubt the climate of the world has been constantly changing since our Planet Earth first came into being. The question now is - how much of the current changes can be attributed to population growth, industrialisation and the actions of mankind, and how much can be attributed to natural climate changes? I don’t know the answer - I don’t know if anybody does. The certainty is that our climate is changing and over a period of time, those changes will effect the world as we now know it.
As the ‘climate change’ movement grows worldwide, some Governments have awakened to the fact that their constituents expect action and have brought in legislation to attempt to arrest or slow down climate change. Other Governments are grappling with the economic cost of making changes to slow the emission of greenhouse gases, fearing the effect it will have on their economies, and ultimately, their voters. Our New Zealand Government has brought in legislation requiring suppliers of petrol and diesel to provide 3.4% of their fuel from renewable sources by 2012.
“Renewable sources” invariably means biofuel. Biofuel is considered a means of reducing greenhouse gases and increasing energy security by providing an alternative to fossil fuels. However, it is becoming apparent that growing crops for biofuel is harming the world both economically and environmentally.
Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen published his findings in October 2007 that show that the release of Nitrous Oxide from rapeseed oil and maize contribute more to global warming than the fossil fuels they displace. Scientists have produced damning evidence to suggest that biofuels could be one of the biggest environmental cons, because they actually make global warming worse by adding to the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide that they are supposed to curb. Two separate studies published in the journal Science show that a range of biofuel crops now being grown release far more carbon dioxide into the air than can be absorbed by the growing plants.
“All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly” said Joe Fargione of the US Natural Conservancy, who was the lead scientist in one of the studies. “Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel too will require that still more land is converted to agriculture”.
The scientists carried out the sort of analysis that has been missing in the rush to to grow biofuels. Both studies looked at how much carbon dioxide was released when a piece of land is converted into a biofuel crop. They found that when peat land in Indonesia is converted into palm-oil plantations, it will take 423 years to pay off the ‘carbon debt’. When forested land in the Amazon is cut down to convert into soybean, it will take 319 years of making biodiesel from the soybeans to pay off the ‘carbon debt’. Such conversions of land to grow corn, maize, sugarcane, palm oil, or soybean release between 17 and 420 times more carbon than the annual savings from replacing fossil fuels, the scientists calculated.
The humanitarian and economic results are even worse. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the Rome-based World Food Program for the United Nations has said that many of the world’s poorest people are unable to get enough food because of soaring prices caused partly by the use of food crops to produce biofuels. The WFP provides food aid around the globe, and Sheeran said the amount of food the agency can afford to buy is down 40% from just 5 years ago. Driving this increase is the use of food crops to produce biofuels. Another UN agency in Rome, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said that 100 million tons of cereals are being diverted to the production of biofuels each year.
Population growth and increased affluence have resulted in dietary changes and a large increase in animal feed production over the last two decades. By the year 2020, we will be feeding an additional 800 million people on the planet. Diverting food crops for biofuel not only effects people in developing countries and the poorest people in the world. It also effects the production of meat for more affluent societies. Mostly, chicken, pork and beef are grown using grains and cereal. The efficiency of their growth is measured in FCR (feed conversion ration) - that is how many kilos of food an animal consumes to produce one kilo of meat. Chicken is the best converter of grain to meat at about 1.7 : 1, with pork at about 3 : 1 and beef at about 7 : 1. That is 7 kilos of grain to produce one kilo of meat. The price of all meat worldwide is increasing as grains become more expensive.
It has only been less than a decade since greenhouse gases, global warming, carbon emissions and carbon credits became part of our vocabulary. We appear to have knee-jerked our way to find a solution before all the scientific evidence is in. Let’s hope that pendulum stops swinging wildly and the experts of the world can agree on a course of action that doesn’t result in negative changes for us all.
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