The Biofuel Dilemma
By Jamais Cascio
WorldChanging.com
November 26, 2005
Biofuels such as biodiesel may prove to be a useful transition technology for the move away from fossil fuels and into the Bright Green world. While they currently cost more than fossil fuels, a new process from the Tokyo Institute of Technology may bring down production costs dramatically. But attractive as they are, biofuels pose some sticky problems. Fortunately, a solution may be at hand.
There’s much to like about biofuels. They can replace fossil fuel uses without requiring significant modification of machinery. Since they are generally derived from vegetation, they’re close to carbon-neutral (as the next crop of plants will take up the carbon dioxide released from burning the previous biofuel crops). Biofuels like biodiesel produce significantly fewer particulates and carbon monoxide than regular diesel, and produce few of the sulfur emissions leading to acid rain. And while some regions hope to become biofuel powerhouses, the ability to make biofuels is not limited by geography, so cartels and “peak production” won’t become problems.
But biofuels have some notable drawbacks, too. Making biofuels from plants already in demand for food, such as soy, corn and canola/rapeseed, raises the prices of the food versions and reduces available supplies. And increased demand for biofuels is triggering the expansion of agricultural land, with devastating results in some areas. According to this week’s New Scientist, the clearing of land in south-east Asia for palm oil production is the leading cause of rain forest destruction in the region; Brazil faces a similar problem with soya plants, already the primary cause of deforestation prior to the biofuel boom.
The solution may be to stop looking at new crops for biofuels, and to start looking at waste biomass.
The use of agricultural material for food and industry is not 100% efficient. Tons of biomass waste remains after the “useful” plant products are gone. Take sawdust—wood product manufacturing produces millions of tons of sawdust every year (the state of Missouri alone produces around 760,000 tons of sawdust, while British Columbia produces over two million tons annually). Some of that can be reused, but much of it simply goes to waste. A new German process, however, could turn sawdust and other biomass wastes into high-quality synthetic fuels:
Steve Brown, Shell’s London-based commercial manager for biofuels, says the result is a domestically produced fuel that outperforms both petroleum and plant oil-based biodiesel. Brown says studies that account for each joule of energy consumed in growing or pumping feedstock and fuel production show motoring on gasification biodiesel produces 85-90 percent less climate-changing carbon dioxide than using fossil diesel, while conventional biodiesel offers only a 50 percent reduction.
Using Choren’s biodiesel also generates less soot and smog because the fuel contains none of the sulfur found in conventional diesel and few aromatic hydrocarbons, such as benzene. Carmakers DaimlerChrylser and Volkswagen, which helped finance Choren’s pilot plant, test-drove on its fuels and measured a 30-50 percent drop in exhaust soot and up to 90 percent less smog-forming pollutants, compared to the cleanest grades of conventional diesel.
Of course, this isn’t the first attempt to make biofuels out of otherwise waste biomass. As I noted back in June, University of Wisconsin researchers figured out a better method of converting plant carbohydrates into fuel, using a biomimetic process. And just a few days ago, Jeremy posted about work done at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory using ‘jungle rot’ fungus as a natural method of breaking down cellulose for use in ethanol production.
We should be careful not to imagine that biofuels alone will replace our use of fossil fuels. We need a much bigger change—a combination of high-efficiency systems, redesigned communities, and energy produced from clean, renewable sources. But changes of that scale take time. Biofuels, like hybrid cars and rooftop solar panels, are a kind of bridge technology, helping us get to where we need to go without cutting us off from our existing systems. It’s crucial that our use of them doesn’t make things worse in other ways.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Posted by: Paul on November 26, 2005 at 18:00:27