23 scientists call for careful policy for cellulosic biofuels
Posted October 3, 2008 in Moving Beyond Oil, Solving Global Warming
Today, 23 leading soil, water, plant, wildlife, and other scientists called for careful science based policies to guide the development of cellulosic biofuels in an article in Science (author list available but subscription required for full article). This is an important and carefully balanced statement that should be required reading for all Hill staffers and other policy makers thinking about biofuels. Here's some more coverage of the article.
The authors are hard hitting: "... [W]e know that grain-based biofuel cropping systems as currently managed cause environmental harm."
But also practical: "[B]ecause grain-based ethanol will likely remain in the nation's energy portfolio, it is important to understand that appropriate practices can soften its environmental impact."
And critically, they make the following point that is often lost in the policy debate:
we know that the development of cellulosic feedstocks has substantial promise for avoiding many of the environmental challenges that face grain-based biofuels.... But however promising, these environmental benefits are by no means given. Whether they are realized will depend on which, where, and how cellulosic biofuels are produced And tradeoffs are unavoidable.
And their conclusion is just too spot on not to quote at length:
Decision-makers at all levels need to understand that applying best available practices to biofuel crop production will have positive impacts both on the sustainability of our working lands and on providing a long-term place for biofuels in our renewable energy portfolio--and that the policies necessary to ensure this outcome are not currently in place. Legislated environmental performance standards for cellulosic ethanol production could, for example, go far toward promoting sustainable outcomes. Such standards could range from a prohibition of specific practices, such as growing invasive species for feedstock or removing excessive annual crop residue, to the provision of incentive payments based on avoided greenhouse gas emissions, both direct and indirect. We know enough today to begin formulating these standards, and both the industry and the environment will benefit from their early identification and refinement.
Sustainable biofuel production systems could play a highly positive role in mitigating climate change, enhancing environmental quality, and strengthening the global economy, but it will take sound, science-based policy and additional research effort to make this so.
We cannot repeat enough the point that cellulosic biofuels can be good but only will be if we decide through our policies to require them to be good. Furthermore, we know enough to act now to position the industry in the right direction.
I think the GHG standards and sourcing safeguards in the RFS are major step in this direction, but I heartily agree with the authors that policies to promote broadly sustainable biofuels are not in place. The article also starts off pointing out that between the EU's policies and our own farm bill policies, there are an ever mounting mix of policies pushing biofuels. Together and individually not only do these not provide a comprehensive set of incentives for good performance, instead they (as the abstract of the article states "will rapidly accelerate adoption and place hard-to-manage pressures on efforts to design and implement sustainable production practices."
Given this, it's all the more disturbing that we're hearing that some players in the cellulosic industry are trying to get policy makers to weaken the safeguards and standards in the RFS. Getting biofuels right might cost more especially in the early stages, but if we can align the tax credits, farm bill policies, and the RFS, we can make advanced biofuels part of the solution from day one.
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Comments
Mark Radosevich — Oct 4 2008 02:48 PM
The 23 scientists mentioned above in Nathanael's blog are for the most part agronomists and soils people. They, like the author of this blog - still haven't the foggiest notion of what is coming over the hill in the greater world of nearterm biofuels.
Namely - that carbon is carbon is carbon as a basic building block - AND that sources of renewable carbon reconfigured for new biodegradable fuels are NOT farmed plants which have to be planted, fertilized, copiously watered or annually harvested with big diesel tractors.
Society's daily waste streams of garbage, sewer sludge, old piles of tires, plus forestry biomass, methane, or coal of any rank, petroleum coke waste bottoms and even CO2 greenhouse gas can all be cleanly and continously reconfigured into a truly biodegradable new oxygenated biofuel which is 20% stronger BTU than is corn ethanol - and at a fraction of the cost per gallon...
What needs to be implemented is a paradigm shift in the basic chemistry sets which create such a new biofuel incorporating the magic oxygen atom so that it doesn't become more float-on-water oil. And I'm speaking of steam reforming gasses like CO2 and CH4 methane OR cleanly gasifying any solid carbonaceous material.
It is this switch in basic process technology away from inefficient 4-day batch fermentation of corn or even more inefficient 7-day batch fermentation of lignin and cellulose which is coming. And soon...
It won't be biologics of enzymes or yeasts utilized in thansformation transformation of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms - it will be steam-driven continuous front-ends referred to as "thermochemical GTL conversion" instead.
Farmers will then have to be content with growing food crops, not fuel crops -- for the same annual harvest. Perhaps more of the farmers will embrace organic farming practices and thereby have a fatter wallet at the end of their annual harvest cycle.
Steve Clark — Oct 4 2008 07:41 PM
Biofuels are not the answer. It is a waste of time like clean coal. The showstopper is the internal combustion engine lack of efficiency. Biofuels are between 2,000 and 30,000 miles per acre per year. PV and EV is over 2 million MPA.
If you want the miles-per-acre analysis contact me.
Here is a short version of my response to Solar Today's article on biofuels.
Forget Biofuels; Focus on EVs
Like many energy experts, you are failing to question certain assumptions (see “Resolving the Biofuels Dilemma” by Carol Werner, July/August issue). The problem is not the energy; it is the technology we use to get mobility, the internal combustion engine.
If we continue to try to use internal combustion engines, we will see all manner of environmentally destructive solutions proposed, such as oil shale and coal-to-liquids and biofuels. The convergent solution is to kill the ICE and use a more efficient technology to give us personal mobility: electric. At over 90 percent efficient, an electric vehicle's drive system is nearly twice the energy-efficiency gain of changing from incandescent lights to CFLs.
We must understand that we don't want gasoline; we want mobility. Stop thinking in mpg and start thinking in mp$. If your ICE car gets 30 mpg and gas costs $3 per gallon (ah, those were the days), you are getting your mobility at a rate of 10 miles per dollar. A well-designed EV will easily get you 10 times the MP$. China has built over 40 million EVs. Israel is creating Project Better Place to eliminate the gasoline vehicle in less than 10 years.
If you power that EV with PV, you have not only created a renewable, green solution; you have also taken charge of the entire supply chain for powering your mobility, as well as bought a hedge against future cost increases. No more wars for oil, no more fears of peak oil, no more greenhouse gases from the transportation sector, no more tune-ups or oil changes. …
When people realize this, we won't be able to get the new technology fast enough. We will wonder why we ever hung on to our old ICE cars for so long.
Jim Bullis — Oct 6 2008 04:28 PM
There are good things about electric vehicles. However they come with some problems.
China is building coal fired electric power plants as fast as they can.
Israel now imports large quantities of coal. Natural gas is possibly going to come from Egypt, some time in the future. It looks like Project "Better Place" is going to run on coal for many years to come. Solar may eventually help out, but the incremental load of electric vehicles is going to be tied to an incremental increase in use of coal for many years to come.
Electric vehicles could be a modest improvement over cars driven by typical inefficient gasoline engines, but this is not the case if the cars are driven by higher efficiency engines such as the Prius 36% efficiency engine, or probably a planned VW gasoline engine. For those who imagine otherwise, coal driven electric power plants are about 32% efficient in producing electricity.
For those who believe that flexible, individual transportation is a good thing, then the only real solution requires making the cars themselves very efficient. This only requires attitude adjustment as to how cars should look.
Simply putting electric batteries in muscle cars or mommy wagons will greatly exacerbate the global warming crisis.
Jim Bullis — Oct 6 2008 04:40 PM
As to cellulosic based ethanol, or even corn or sugar based ethanol, these biofuels make sense if our cars sip fuel rather than guzzle it. Thus the scientist studying the problem have a chance of making things work.
Nathanael Greene — Oct 6 2008 06:00 PM
Thanks for all these great and thoughtful comments. Wonderful to know that people are tuning in. I'd just point folks that question the rational for worrying about trying to make biofuels work back to this post I did back in April.
Basically, what I said back then is that Jim is right, we need efficiency first and foremost. And that Steve is right too that we need electric drive vehicles (with low carbon electricity as Jim points out). But even pushing those two options hard and VMT reductions too, we still need more low-carbon fuels.
Jim Bullis — Oct 6 2008 08:12 PM
Nathanael, it is also good to see your response. You were thinking along these lines in your post of Feb.7 as well.
I agree that electric drive has a potential benefit but the case needs to be made that it should not be mandated. This is due to the fact that a high efficiency engine that is mechanically coupled to car wheels may well be a superior system to one that uses electricity from central power plants. Since there are powerful economic forces that will probably perpetuate central power plants, it might turn out better to hold back on direct electric power requirements.
Resilience of the world economies is even more clearly lacking today, so changes in the power infrastructure seem yet less likely.
True low carbon fuels are also very desirable, but there is a trade-off here as well, so I argue that mandating these is also a mistake.
Rather than pre-engineer solutions, I hope we can get to a law that imposes limits on CO2 emissions that result from a mile of travel. Maybe it could be on a mile per person of travel, but this seems overly complicated as to enforcement. So a simple limit on CO2 from a vehicle from a mile of travel would be a way to work toward the right goal. And this could be on a gradually more strict time table.
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