Filed under: Biodiesel, Ethanol
"The worst moment in history to demand biofuels"
As the world's population continues to grow toward a projected 9 billion people by the early 2040s, the demand for food, fresh water and energy will grow with it. At the same time, supplies (water, in particular) are shrinking. So, does it really make it sense to suddenly accelerate the use of crops to produce fuel to satisfy our seemingly endless demand for energy? Of course not, especially when you consider the amount of water it takes to produce that fuel by current processes. The obvious answer to that question raised by Dennis Avery is an emphatic no. According to Avery, the demand for biofuels threatens moves toward sustainable farming practices and will further destroy rain forests. This is of course true if we continue to pursue current biofuel feed-stocks like corn, soy and even sugarcane. What we need to do is slow down the growth of fuel production from those sources and focus on next-generation sources like cellulose and algae. Of course, even those need to be monitored to make sure we aren't using excessive amounts of fresh water and that the energy input doesn't exceed the output. There are definitely a lot things we need to consider before moving forward too quickly, but moving quickly seems to be the one thing we're so good at.
[Source: Enter Stage Right]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Holger 1:05PM (4/14/2008)
A few months ago I came across an article which talked about farming possibilities for the future. Problems with our current farming system include: it uses too much oil, the farm is far away from the consumer, the farms require massive government subsidies, the food is often not so fresh upon arriving, and there's a lot of pollution run off from all the pesticides and fertilizers. The solution this article gave was to build giant skyscrapers which would be used as big greenhouses. Instead of having heavy soil to grow plants in, they would use a thin membrane in which seeds would sit in and then a mist of water and nutrients as the "soil". The lighting would be at a frequency to forward plant growth as much as possible. No pesticides would need to be used since the food is indoors. The farm is directly next to the largest consumer population. And for water use, by using water vapor collectors they can recapture almost all the water that does not find its way into the plant. The relevance of this to the above article is that if we can master farming in a way like this we could use biofuels without causing large food shortages or use more fuel input than the output yields. As for right now with our farming system at such a high inefficiency, well, the answer for biofuel feasibility is a resounding NO!
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rgseidl 2:49PM (4/14/2008)
Gradually eliminate both subsidies and the protectionist tariff for corn, but restrict imports of biofuels and feedstocks to sources that a US agency has verified to be sustainable (i.e. no clear-cutting of virgin rainforest). It may be necessary for this agency to add proprietary marker compounds to avoid fraud. Also ramp up taxes on heating oil so homeowners have an incentive to switch to heating with biogas or pellets, leaving more raw material for on-road diesel.
Removing the bias in favor of corn ethanol will increase the incentive to grow switchgrass, poplar, algae and other feedstocks for home heating pellets as well as various alcohols and biodiesel.
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Tim 3:03PM (4/14/2008)
Cheap, efficient, low mass electricity storage is the key to replacing petroleum with renewable electricity which is the ONLY truly safe, clean alternative.
Humanity NEEDS what EEStor promises and we need it NOW!
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Kardax 3:09PM (4/14/2008)
Food shortages are inevitable. Biofuels simply accelerate the process.
A more effective solution to both energy demands and food supply limitations is to simply make fewer babies.
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KarenRei 3:26PM (4/14/2008)
Holger: I read about that too. At first I was skeptical, but then, you left out the main point. Yes, the food is more expensive to produce. Yes, it uses more power, too. But -- the kicker -- *you don't have to transport it*. It's grown right where it's needed. You spend several times the cost of producing a head of lettuce in California shipping it to NYC, and most of that cost is fuel. Overall, growing many types of crops on-site will be cheaper and more eco-friendly than having to ship them thousands of miles. To top it all off, it's all fresh, organic, herbicide/pesticide free, and uses a fraction as much water and fertilizer. It doesn't work as economical for all crops, but for many, it does.
It wouldn't be a good way to produce biofuels, mind you; there are more efficient ways to make fuel from electricity. But it'd free up land for producing biofuels at the very least. Still, I think we need to get off of this "fuel" idea altogether and move to running on electrons -- I.e., BEVs.
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Bill 8:09PM (4/14/2008)
What besides Mary Jane is economical to grow via hydroponics?
And plenty of farms already exist now right next to your city/town - they can't grow everything you desire year-round, but you can learn to eat what's in season or what the local farm could store itself (apples, etc.)
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rschaefer 6:41AM (4/15/2008)
how about investing those petroleum products into something that will really make a difference in world demand on food, water, and energy:
condoms.
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Bill 7:09AM (4/15/2008)
In my area, the local paper "exposes" farm subsidy abuses yearly in the paper when they obtain the data from the department of agriculture. It generally shows the larger farmers being paid large sums up to and over $100k, NOT TO GROW certain crops. One certain farm, with its quaint and wildly popular roadside stand on the road to a popular regional amusement park, accepted over a half million dollars over the past five years to leave portions of their acreage fallow. These people are some of the wealthiest in our area. I can only imagine how this story multiplies throughout the country, especially with the big corporate factory farms that employ teams of accountants, lawyers and ex-grant writers to maximize their use of government programs. Short term solutions include suspending these subsidies and transitioning fallow fields to these more viable crops. The sad irony of these crises are that the more we invest in aiding developing third world countries, the faster they come online as players in the world economy, and the faster their fuel consumption drives up the prices for those who are aiding them. Finally, I believe that whatever energy technology we settle on as economically and enviromentaly viable, even if priced at current levels, is far better than relying on obtaining oil from unstable, American-hating cartels. I would rather pay 3.33 a gallon for fuel grown in Iowa or Pennsylvania than half way across the globe.
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Derek 7:28AM (4/15/2008)
#7 FTW! The best solution to achieve a sustainable situation.
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GreyFlcn 8:19AM (4/15/2008)
So Bill, you're suggesting we gut the Conservation Reserve Program?
Perhaps you should read more into your subject.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/4/10/133652/478
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Mark Sethre 3:06PM (4/15/2008)
I would argue that the high price of food has much to do with the high price of fuel. I would also like to predict that when the price of food goes up, so it follows that there develops a trend to produce more food. Supply and demand being a strong force. Perhaps the Mexican corn farmer who was ruined by U.S. agribusiness and it's govt. subsidies might find it once again profitable to grow corn. There also is the reality that there is not enough fuel, and that if we shut down the ethanol producers, it would add to the shortage, thus driving up the price of fuel, which in turn, would drive up the price of food. And in the interrum of the slow and painful
switch from petroleum to alternative sources of energy, it is a good idea to have these new corn digesting refineries already built, poised to quickly retrofit over to the celluosic processes.
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Robert Speirs 3:14PM (4/15/2008)
Hurray! Another government program accomplishes its object quickly, efficiently and with minimum damage to the economic system. And commenters come up with the obvious solution: Man should render himself extinct!
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jeff 7:42PM (4/15/2008)
"Of course, even those need to be monitored to make sure we aren't using excessive amounts of fresh water and that the energy input doesn't exceed the output."
You'll have a lot of time on your hands because there is no commercially available biofuel that does not require more energy input than what it produces.
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George 8:05PM (4/15/2008)
Why use living crops from today to make fuel when you have huge quantities of inexpensive dead plant material from yesterday, coal, to use as the alternative fuel feedstock?
Step 1: Make Syngas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngas
C + H2O ---> CO + H2
Step 2: Use bacteria to make ethanol http://www.coskataenergy.com/process.html
Step 3: Separate ethanol from water http://www.coskataenergy.com/process-separations.html
Coskata promotes conversion of biomass to ethanol, but I believe that the actual commercial process is coal to coal gas to ethanol. There are several other chemical processes that convert coal into more valuable liquid fuels. There are also natural gas to liquid fuel processes, but natural gas is expensive relative to coal. As petroleum prices rise, synthetic fuels start to make economic sense.
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Paul 10:02PM (4/15/2008)
#4,7,9 are saying in not so many words that they want condoms on certain people. Who gets to choose which people? I hope 4,7 and 9 are not on that commitee.
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James Mayeau 5:09AM (4/16/2008)
There is a side effect of using petroleum products. Farms will need less water to grow the same amount of crops, the higher the atmospheric co2 content gets.
I agree with Paul. I wouldn't want to put Kardax, schaefer, or Derek in charge of whom gets sterilized, although I wouldn't object if any of those gentlemen stepped forward for a zero growth vasectomy on a voluntary basis. You know, for the children's sake.
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