Filed under: Biodiesel, Green Daily
SF Green Party Sustainability co-chair on the "Terrible Illusion of Biodiesel"
We just revisited the moves that San Francisco is making to add biodiesel to the city fleet, with the latest news being the establishment of SF Greasecycle. In response to the city's latest progress on the biofuel front, Eric Brooks, the co-chair of the San Francisco Green Party sustainability working group, has lashed out at the idea of biofuels in general and biodiesel in particular. The response comes in a guest editorial in Beyond Chron called "The Terrible Illusion of Biodiesel." Brooks writes with the gloves off. Check out these selections:
- Those who trumpet "the valor of biodiesel and other biofuels, need to knock it off immediately.
- The new biofuels boom is -worse- than global warming. And unwitting starry eyed supporters of it like Willie Nelson and E. "Doc" Smith are the keystone that is helping massive multi-national corporations get the planet's increasingly environmentally conscious public to become blindly hooked on a devastating, diseased, biofuels illusion.
- The problem is one of sheer scale. The amount of fuel that can be produced from recycling used cooking oil is only a tiny fraction of the total fuel used every day by diesel automobiles. What this means is that projects like San Francisco's waste oils biodiesel program will quickly run out of those waste oils long before even a small part of San Francisco's fleet of diesel cars, trucks and construction equipment is converted to biodiesel. At that point there is only one place to get the supposedly magical biodiesel; from massive corporate plantations of monocrops grown specifically to produce biodiesel.
I take Brooks' point that biodiesel won't solve everything. Long-time reader can guess (sorry I'm so predictable) that I'm once again about to point out the Australian government's advice to its citizens last year: Drive less. Of the three Rs of the green movement (reduce, reuse, recycle), the one that has the best chance of helping our planet is the first. Reducing the amount of stuff we use is key. I don't think criticizing someone who is following that last R is a good way to go about enacting positive change, though. Turning a waste product into a usable fuel is good news. No question.
[Source: Beyond Chron]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim 3:02PM (11/26/2007)
Somebody buy Eric Brooks a horse. He can use the dried horse patties to cook his food and heat his cave. I don’t think he’ll have a lot of parties there though.
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Phil 4:08PM (11/26/2007)
He says "massive corporate plantations of monocrops grown specifically to produce biodiesel" like it's a bad thing.
I might be missing something, but isn't this exactly what we need?
Grow stuff, burn it, grow more stuff. Sounds pretty sustainable to me!
Perhaps the French and Germans who already use lots of biodiesel are also an illusion.
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bjd002004 6:19PM (11/26/2007)
Ray,
Can't say I blame you for not seeing the main problem with algae in this discussion about "sustainability". Don't be fooled into believing algae is a sustainable solution. It's actually Alchemy. There is little to no scientific information on exactly how algae will affect global warming, which I think is the gist of this "sustainable" conversation, right.
Until somebody produces some hard data, I can only conclude two things about Algae:
1. Algae used to absorb CO2 from coal plants can only help global warming if the algae ends us sequested underground. (BTW- The utilities aren't just going to install algae technology and then sequester all that algae underground, all in the name of solving global warming. That would result in a huge, expensive endeavor, that generates nothing of value to them, except for perhaps avoiding possible future carbon taxes.)
2. Growing algae using the effluent CO2 from coal plants, and then using that algae to produce biodiesel will not do anything to solve or slow global warming. (It just adds another link in the carbon chain. Ultimately it will lead to the release of CO2 into the atmosphere as vehicles combust the biofuel.)
Do the real math people and you will see that the end-game of this subject has not been discussed in any detail. This so-called "sustainable" scenario where you take coal (hydrocarbons) from underground, burn it to make electricity, and then use the effluent CO2 to grow algae, only to make biofuel from the algae cannot be sustainable. It still leads to a release of net new CO2 into the air. 1+1 does not equal zero.....it equals 2.
Don't be brainwashed RAy.
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detroit9000 6:54PM (11/26/2007)
I like farmers better than terrorists.
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kballs 7:10PM (11/26/2007)
You don't need coal exhaust gases to grow algae for biodiesel, but if you do use coal exhaust, then you're getting more usable energy per unit of carbon, since the carbon is recycled.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with bio fuels when you make them from non-food stocks (switchgrass, plant waste, sawdust, algae) that don't use pesticide, fertilizer, or non-rain-water.
And for the millionth time, there is no 1 universal solution, so don't whine about single pieces of the puzzle not saving us on their own.
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Rick 7:26PM (11/26/2007)
but if we are going to burn the coal anyway - why not take advantage of the emissions and make something out of them if possible?
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rgseidl 8:30PM (11/26/2007)
The environmental value of any biofuel is in how it is produced. Therefore, touting the end product as "green" is misleading.
As yet, there is no agreed-upon environmental metric for biofuel production processes. One partial and often misunderstood concept is EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). That's because it is an economic measure, comparing biofuel energy out to fossil fuel energy in. The solar energy required to make the physics and chemistry work is, after all, provided free of charge.
An EROEI below 1.0 indicates a production process that consumes more fossil fuel than the baseline, i.e. direct use of dino-juice in vehicles. Various studies for corn ethanol have come in between 0.85 and 1.15, depending on assumptions made regarding farming, feedstock logistics, ethanol refining and product logistics. In other words, corn ethanol makes political sense for mid-western politicians, who have secured generous subsidies for their constituents.
In tropical Brazil, ethanol from sugar cane comes in at an EROEI of 7-8. The US levies stiff import tariffs on this.
The EROEI, biodiesel from soy or rapeseed is not as good, roughly 2-4, but that is still much better than corn ethanol. Using algae as feedstock, the number could be much higher still. The one valid point is that biodiesel from waste vegetable oil is only available in very small quantities.
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Gene Matocha 9:13PM (11/26/2007)
It's sad to see someone who is an environmental activist use out-of-date information, paranoia of government, paranoia of industry, and short-sightedness to attack what is likely (in my opinion, certainly) to play a role in helping not only the environment, but the global economy as well. Especially in a public forum where there is no easy way to provide rebuttal (balance) within the same forum, or in this case, web page.
As for algae, it looks like it may very well be a viable bio-fuel source crop. But I also agree that "feeding" it carbon emitted from coal plants won't do much for green house gas emissions, but you don't HAVE to "feed" algae from coal fume...that's just one proposal.
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michaewh 10:41AM (11/27/2007)
Save the environment! Commit suicide!
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E. Doc Smith 3:25PM (11/28/2007)
San Francisco still has a ways to go, but we are continuing to make great progress in a city desperate for sustainable alternatives. You guys rock!
E. "Doc" Smith, Columnist for BeyondChron and Director of Green Depot - San Francisco
http://www.greendepotsf.org
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ray 11:36PM (1/24/2008)
Tell me, please: what part of the idea of Biodiesel is the "illusion"?
These "green" guys are always great nay-sayers. "Nothing we do can help" is their cry. "Conserve! Conserve!" Conservation works in a static economy, (or one that's contracting), but the US economy is expanding. We need supply-side solutions, and one like Biodiesel which absorbs CO2 is very attractive.
The math works out if you utilize biodiesel from algae. We're talking 10,000 gallons of fuel per acre, conservatively. And algae-derived fuel does not cause the price of food crops to rise, as nobody eats algae. It's definitely the way to go.
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