Forests paying the price for biofuels Biofuel “renewables” a New Scientist perspective
Fred Pearce, New Scientist
THE drive for “green energy” in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orang-utan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America. And surging prices are likely to accelerate the destruction.
The rush to make energy from vegetable oils is being driven in part by European Union laws requiring conventional fuels to be blended with biofuels, and by subsidies equivalent to 20 pence a litre. Last week, the British government announced a target for biofuels to make up 5 per cent of transport fuels by 2010. The aim is to help meet Kyoto protocol targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Rising demand for green energy has led to a surge in the international price of palm oil, with potentially damaging consequences. “The expansion of palm oil production is one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction in south-east Asia. It is one of the most environmentally damaging commodities on the planet,” says Simon Counsell, director of the UK-based Rainforest Foundation. “Once again it appears we are trying to solve our environmental problems by dumping them in developing countries, where they have devastating effects on local people.”
The main alternative to palm oil is soybean oil. But soya is the largest single cause of rainforest destruction in the Brazilian Amazon. Supporters of biofuels argue that they can be “carbon neutral” because the CO2 released from burning them is taken up again by the next crop. Interest is greatest for diesel engines, which can run unmodified on vegetable oil, and in Germany bio-diesel production has doubled since 2003. There are also plans for burning palm oil in power stations.
Until recently, Europe’s small market in biofuels was dominated by home-grown rapeseed (canola) oil. But surging demand from the food market has raised the price of rapeseed oil tool. This has led fuel manufacturers to opt for palm and soya oil instead. Palm oil prices jumped 10 per cent in September alone, and are predicted to rise 20 per cent next year, while global demand for biofuels is now rising at 25 per cent a year.
Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth UK, which backs biofuels, says: “We need to ensure that the crops used to make the fuel have been grown in a sustainable way or we will have rainforests cleared for palm oil plantations to make bio-diesel.” ... Thats all we got, subscription required for the rest.
(19 November 2005)
Demand climbs for biodiesel fuel
Peggy Andersen, Associated Press via Seattle Times
SEATTLE — The Pacific Northwest loves being green. Recycling got an early start here. Seattle-based coffee giant Starbucks has scrambled to provide bird-friendly, shade-grown coffee. State forest lands were the first in the West to earn "green certification" for environmentally sound management.
Now, with gasoline prices fluctuating in wallet-busting ranges and petroleum tainted in many minds by violence in the Mideast, demand for biodiesel is booming. ...
But there have been supply problems, said Jim Boone, maintenance manager for Metro Transit in Seattle, which runs 340 of its 1,400 buses on B5 biodiesel, a mix of 5 percent biodiesel and 95 percent ultra-low-sulfur petroleum diesel. "They're not making enough of it yet," Boone said. "Sometimes we can't get it."
With two new 35-million-gallon-a-year plants coming on line in Minnesota and more in other states, shortages shouldn't be a problem, said spokeswoman Jenna Higgins at the National Biodiesel Board in Washington, D.C.
Washington officials are interested in canola oil as a source of biodiesel because it isn't as vulnerable to jelling at low temperatures as soy oil, the source of about 90 percent of U.S. biodiesel.
(20 November 2005)
Jungle Rot: the Future of Ethanol
Jeremy Faludi, WorldChanging.com
Researchers at the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy lab (EERE) and National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) have been working for years on making ethanol out of cellulose--straw, corn stalks, and other agricultural waste leftover from growing food crops. This would mean ethanol would finally make sense as a fuel, because its Energy Return On Energy Invested would be positive (since the cellulose would be waste from food, it would be "free" in terms of energy), it could be produced in large quantities (since it would not compete with food for land), and it would be cheap.
The main obstacle to making ethanol from cellulose is that cellulose doesn't break down easily or quickly. But some years ago, people found that jungle rot (the fungus Trichoderma reesei) did it quite well. Since then, NREL, EERE, and many universities and companies have been trying to make it even more effective. ...
And from the Comments:
Canadian company SunOpta, in partnership with Abengoa Bioenergy of St. Louis, is currently building the world's first true commercial-scale biomass to ethanol plant in Salamanca, Spain. This plant will produce over a million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year from wheat straw starting in 2006. ...
(17 November 2005)
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