As if long-term energy planning and climate change mitigation were not difficult enough, along come two startling biofuel research reports from Europe in the past two weeks that serve to remind us of the need for constant vigilance and rational decision-making by government, especially with regard to the scientific process, long-term energy planning, and capital investments in a very uncertain future.
Worse than CO2 emissions?
In the first study (
PDF), a team of research scientists from Britain, the U.S. and Germany led by acclaimed atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen re-examined the amount of nitrous-oxide (N2O) emissions from biofuel production. They found that when the emissions are calculated in “CO2-equivalent” global warming terms, many biofuels contribute as much or more to global warming through N2O emissions than by using fossil fuels alone.
There can’t be that much N2O emissions compared to CO2, you say. But N2O is a greenhouse gas with a 100-year average global warming potential (GWP) 296 times larger than an equal mass of CO2. That reason alone validates the study.
The team has published its findings for open review in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and, just like the science of climate change, their findings promise to be a hotbed of scientific debate in the months to come.
What makes the study resonate in particular is that Prof. Crutzen is no stranger to success in environmental science. In 1995 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland “for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone”. It was their Nobel Prize work that became the underlying basis for the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Prof. Crutzen’s team investigated bio-ethanol production from several crops and residues. Of particular note, they found the relative warming of corn ethanol from N2O emissions is 0.9 to 1.5 times greater than the fossil fuel emissions they save. Only sugar cane ethanol was found to compete as a global warming alternative to fossil fuels. Sugar cane ethanol’s relative warming potential is 0.5 to 0.9 times that of fossil fuel emissions saved. A team member from the University of Edinburgh calculated that with the US Senate wanting to increase corn ethanol production by a factor of seven, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 6%.
While corn is not a feedstock in Florida, the researchers do note that crops with less nitrogen demand, such as grasses and wood fibers, have more favorable climate impacts.
What is clear is that the N2O line of inquiry into biofuel production has opened the door wider to well-to-wheels analysis for all feedstock-production process-end-use models, as prerequisite research in advance of commercialization. That will probably prove very troubling for currently planned government and business investments.
Take for example Florida’s Farm to Fuel program. A staggering sum for Florida, more than $25 million in matching funds, is currently earmarked for new biofuel projects, but only $3 million of that is earmarked for research. The balance, $22 million, is earmarked for commercial projects.
Scrap biofuel subsidies and mandates?
The second study ( PDF), a policy paper prepared for the Chair of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Round Table on Sustainable Development for a September 11-12th discussion with ministers from OECD member states provides a blunt assessment of current biofuels policy.
The 57-page paper, a must-read for Florida’s Energy Commission and the Florida Governor’s Action Team on Energy and Climate Change, is a wide-ranging assessment of the issues facing policymakers and what has been learned to date. Topics include the potential of conventional and second-generation biofuels technologies, land requirements, energy yield from dedicated crops, potential from residues and wastes, conversion efficiency and energy from biomass, climate change mitigation potential, economic potential, long-term perspective, government policies that influence production and prices, consequences of government policies on agricultural markets, climate change and energy security, cost-effectiveness of government support policies, and finally, certification schemes.
Be warned, the authors are not sanguine about the future of biofuels. In their proposed alternative policy agenda they conclude, among other things, that:
“The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits. The upward pressure first-generation biofuels create on food prices, and the increasing burden their subsidization places on taxpayers, are likely to make policies that support them indiscriminately less and less acceptable to the public.
Current biofuel support policies are placing a significant bet on a single technology notwithstanding the existence of a wide variety of different fuels and power trains that have been posited as options for the future. Those policies – that support high blends of ethanol, in particular – necessitate major investments in vehicles and fuel-distribution infrastructure — investments that, once made, put pressure on policy-makers to protect them.
Governments should cease creating new mandates for biofuels and investigate ways to phase them out. Mandating blending ratios, market shares or volumes creates certainty for investors in biofuel production capacity, but in so doing simply transfers risk to other sectors and economic agents.
To the extent that subsidisation of biofuels reduces the retail prices of transport fuels in some countries, biofuel-support policies are also insulating drivers from the true costs to society of their fuel consumption, be it reduced national security or increased emissions of CO2. A far more neutral and efficient policy tool would be to tax fuels according to the externalities they generate.
Attempts to quantify support provided to biofuels also point to a more disturbing problem: that governments are providing billions of dollars or euros to support an industry about which they have only scant information. Yet without good statistics, it is difficult to imagine that policy makers are obtaining the feedback they need to respond to new developments in a timely fashion.”
A noted scientist, Sir Henry Tizard (1885-1959), once said “The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world."
