21 July 2009

Biofuels' future bright, if planned properly

If done right, manufacturers can produce biofuels in large quantities, but only if they come from feedstocks produced with low life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, as well as minimal competition with food production, researchers said. The key two words in all of that is “done right.”

“The world needs to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but recent findings have thrown the emerging biofuels industry into a quandary. We met to seek solutions,” said the University of Minnesota’s David Tilman, an ecologist and lead author of a paper on the subject. “We found that the next generation of biofuels can be highly beneficial if produced properly.” The paper stems from analysis by researchers from the University of Minnesota, Princeton, MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Congress is now debating climate change policy and is in the process of trying to get a handle on land use issues. Specifically, they are looking at greenhouse gases released when a user clears land to grow biofuel crops. The emissions from that cleared land can, for decades to centuries, exceed those from petroleum use.

“It’s essential that legislation take the best science into account, even when that requires acknowledging and undoing earlier mistakes,” said Princeton’s Robert Socolow, co-director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative.

“Careful scientific reasoning revealed accounting rules that separate promising from self-defeating strategies,” Socolow said. “Future carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere will tell us when we’re kidding ourselves about what actually works. For carbon management, the atmosphere is the ultimate accountant.”

To balance biofuel production, food security, and emissions reduction, the researchers conclude the global biofuels industry must focus on five major sources of renewable biomass:

• Perennial plants grown on degraded lands abandoned from agricultural use
• Crop residues
• Sustainably harvested wood and forest residues
• Double crops and mixed cropping systems
• Municipal and industrial wastes

These sources can provide considerable amounts of biomass, at least 500 million tons per year in the U.S. alone, without incurring any significant land use carbon dioxide releases.

“We need to transition away from using food for biofuels toward more sustainable feedstocks that can be produced with much less impact on the environment,” said the University of Minnesota’s Jason Hill, a resident fellow of the Institute on the Environment.

“Technology experts, energy systems analysts, climatologists, ecologists, and policy experts all agreed: Biofuels ‘done right’ have a bright future in solving our energy and environmental challenges,” said the University of Minnesota’s Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment. “Both new and existing biofuel strategies have the potential for being among the green energy solutions we need today.”

For related information, go to www.isa.org/environment.