Here are the reasons to oppose biomass fuels, from a column I'm working on:
BIOFUEL BOONDOGGLE One proposed alternative to fossil fuels is biofuels: substances made from plants grown specifically to make fuels such as ethanol and methane. These fuels can be burned in internal combustion engines and used to make electrical power. The beauty of this proposal is that the CO2 produced by biofuel combustion is balanced by the CO2 consumed by the plants to make the precursors for the fuels. Take the case of ethanol: the plant (corn, for example) makes sugars and all the other materials in the plant, like cellulose, from CO2 and substances in the soil. We then ferment the sugar to make alcohol (and yeast, which has its uses too). The alcohol is distilled and its combustion produces less CO2 than was removed from the atmosphere by the plants (because there are organic waste products). Along similar lines, soybeans can be used to produce oil that can be converted to biodiesel. In such a system, we would create a cycle in which we are using today’s sunshine, which powers the photosynthesis that makes the sugars, for power. Today’s sunshine is renewable. There will be more for all our tomorrows for billions of years. When we use fossil fuels, we use ancient sunshine, millions of years old, which powered the photosynthesis that was used to make plants and microorganisms that eventually were transformed to petroleum, coal, and natural gas. Fossil fuels are not renewable, because they’re not being replaced at the rate they’re being consumed. Unfortunately, biofuels can’t replace all our fossil fuels because we would have to devote more farmland than is available to produce them in sufficient quantities. Their advocates counter that at least we could cut down on our use of fossil fuels. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that the amount of energy needed to fertilize the farmland, tend the plants, harvest the crop, convert the biomass to useable fuel, and distribute the fuel, exceeds or nearly exceeds the energy in the end product. A lot of farmland would be dedicated to producing a very low yield of energy. There are other problems with biofuels that outrank the low yield problem. First, there isn’t really any available farmland. Because of the population explosion, humans now use just about every bit of arable land available, and in several recent years, we haven’t grown enough food to feed everyone. We’ve had to dip into global food reserves, and they are now dangerously depleted. We can (and do) “create” more farmland with more irrigation, by destroying more rainforests, and by crowding people into cities. But these practices already lower water tables to dangerously low levels, create deserts, decrease CO2 absorption by forests in a time when we need to increase it, and increase crowding, with the attendant rise in unemployment, pollution, evolution of new disease strains, and social instability. The argument that biofuel crops provide a cycle in which CO2 is absorbed at least as much as it is produced ignores a crucial side effect. Even if we had the land needed to grow such crops, an area of farmland devoted to them absorbs far less CO2 than the same area of rapidly growing forest, because trees have far more photosynthetic capacity than any farm plants. Our use of other caebon sources will continue to accumulate CO2 in the atmosphere. Current atmospheric levels of CO2 are already too high for human survival. Positive feedback effects of melting ice (due to decreased albedo) and melting permafrost (which is releasing methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times as potent as CO2) are accelerating global warming. Left unchecked, this will result soon in runaway warming which we will not survive. The only prudent course of action is to stop burning carbon and start removing CO2 from the atmosphere as fast as we can if we hope to survive. There is no way around these facts, no "trick" we can use to keep burning carbon. We know how to stop burning carbon: go to reneable energy in the form of solar, wind, tidal, wave, and geothermal, in roughly that order of environmental friendliness, availability, and economic viability. We have the technology and the cost is lower than fossil fuel and nuclear if we consider true costs such as environmental and human health consequences. A shift of subsidies (our tax dollars) away from fossils, and withdrawal from our global military attempts to monopolize access to oil (Johnson, Chalmers, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004) would pay for it and provide jobs and renewed prosperity at home. There’s no earthly reason to burn carbon for more than another five years, except maybe mindless consumerism. Do we know how to accelerate the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere? Yes, although not enough yet. That will be the topic of my next column.
I hope you'll find this reasoning compelling.
Paul
Paul Brown Physiology Department West Virginia University Health Sciences Center Morgantown, WV 26506 (304) 293 - 1512