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02-15-2008 01:29 AM
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Voltaire
  - Joined on 08-08-2007
- Posts 809
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Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/13/science_biofuel_reports/
US scientists puncture the ethanol biofuel bubble
Crop switch likely to increase emissions
Published Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:31 GMT
Good science news (or bad, depending on your point of view) has arrived with two reports on the carbon footprint of biofuels, in the paper edition of Science magazine. They deal serious damage to the belief - which up to now has been driving the biofuel bubble - that stepped-up ethanol production in the US is an answer to global warming.
Writing in "Use of US croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions for Land Use or Change," Timothy Searchinger and many others state: "To produce more biofuels, farmers can directly plow up more forest or grassland, which releases to the atmosphere much of the carbon previously stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fire. The loss of maturing forests and grasslands also forgoes ongoing carbon sequestration as plants grow each year ..." (A companion piece, "Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt" by scientists at the University of Minnesota, covers similar territory.)
The scientists step on switch grass, too, a weed peddled by those promoting the still largely theoretical panacea of ethanol production direct from cellulose. "Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on US corn lands increase emissions by 50 per cent," write the authors in the lead paragraph.
The news tosses a good deal of water on the biofuel fire. Unfortunately, the reports are subscription only and while there were a number of pirated copies flowing in email due to the electronic publication of the news last week, the perfectly awful figures still deserve some reporting. For example, the New York Times story on the reports ignored ugly figures like the percentage losses in feed crops contrasted with increases in emission, perhaps figuring correctly that the average reader is too stupid and easily bored to tolerate them. Since the Times has been a cheerleader for miracle alternative energy solutions, the reports were surely hard for it to swallow. One could imagine the nervous gulping in the paper's second sentence. It noted that ethanol mania, therein called the "benefits of biofuels," had come under attack and that the articles in the magazine would "add to the controversy."
This is what happens now in the US when fairly clear cut, inconvenient and unpopular peer-reviewed science shows up in the public arena. As far as mainstream journalism is concerned, it generates a "controversy." In the current political context, controversy is good because it can be used as cover, deployed by the various interests who stand to make a fortune from a boom predicated on previous received wisdoms now contradicted by more rigorous thought.
The authors conclude in Science that as the US ramps up biofuel production, other crops will decline - "corn by 62 per cent, wheat by 31 per cent, soybeans by 28 per cent, pork by 18 per cent and chicken by 12 per cent." The general reply to this is to claim that boosted crop yields on remaining land and greater efficiencies will make this up. Not so fast, reply the authors, stating their figures are already based on the assumption of growth in yields but that "positive and negative effects, "the latter from factors like "reduced crop rotations and greater reliance on marginal land," cause a canceling out.
Declines in production of feed grains due to biofuel diversion cause significant cuts in food exports. Brazil, China and India then cultivate more arable land for food crops. This is a double whammy, not only releasing carbon dioxide locked up in plants and soil in the US but also around the world. It's a strong and compelling analysis of the current US rush to ethanol. Indirectly, it's quite an indictment of it, too.
The choices presented by the study are harsh ones. The pooch is so screwed by current greenhouse gas figures that even with the reining in of biofuel production so that only a much smaller slice of feed grain - 10 per cent - is diverted, cuts in emission then come through with human cost. They adding a little starvation to the balance sheet.
"Counteracting increases in biofuels with controls or disincentives against land conversion would face not only great practical challenges, but also have harsh social consequences," the authors write. The smaller reduction in land use for ethanol as opposed to feed crops would still result in a diminution of production of world milk and meat, the effect of which would reduce carbon dioxide release but at the same time depress poorer diets in developing nations. "In that event, more greenhouse benefits would stem in reality from reduced food consumption," it states. The authors write with a bit of delicacy that this effect is "probably not a desirable one."
The report puts those pushing the fad of biofuel into a real corner. There are no miracles forthcoming and all of the talk about transformative technology seems to be just that. The authors stress that their results mean that only ethanol production from waste material stands not to add to greenhouse gas production and then only if it is conducted under a strict regimen. This means the possible use of cellulose, but only in a system in which good cropland isn't turned over to cultivate the biofuel weed, switch grass.
None of this can be good news to biofuel producers although in the short term it would seem unlikely to seriously impede their current plans. There is too much greed and politicized government subsidy plowed into US biofuels to expect rationality to prevail and brakes to be applied, even gently, immediately.
The final conclusion in Science has the ring of common sense: "[When] farmers use today's good cropland to produce food, they help to avert greenhouse gases from land use change."
Additional note: In January, just one day after George W. Bush's state-of-the-union address, the Department of Energy cancelled its support for a "clean coal" electricity generating facility in Mattoon, Illinois. It effectively killed the project. Called FutureGen and employing Fischer-Tropsch processing, the plant was viewed as a key prototype in the country's energy security future. However, the sticking point on it was its production of carbon dioxide. No one has been able to practically address what to do with it other than offer up the airy fancy that the greenhouse gas be stuffed into the ground, the functional equivalent of an instantaneous miraculous solution.
Taken together with Science's dual reports on biofuel land use causing increase in global carbon dioxide emission, the beginning of 2008 has been a shock to the American belief that silver bullets for energy independence and curbing climate change are nigh. ®
Anyone got access to the original _Science_ text in a postable form?
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natescape
  - Joined on 01-14-2002
- Between Providence and Cape Cod
- Posts 4,979
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
I hate when the press (fairly rightfully) trashes ethanol, but casts the criticism under the broad umbrella of "biofuel", when bioidesel's quite different.
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Voltaire
- Joined on 08-08-2007
- Posts 809
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
That's why I want to see the original _Science_ article. It seems unreasonable that researchers who are scientific professionals would use "ethanol" and "biofuel" as synonyms.
OTOH, their alleged statements about land use problems and the problems of using of food crops to make bio-fuels are 100% in agreement with other statements from the scientific community to that effect.
I also find the tidbit about the cancellation of a coal based F-T plant to be interesting given the heavy support that approach to solving our energy problems has in certain folks on this site.
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perotter
 - Joined on 07-09-2006
- Minnesota
- Posts 217
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Timothy Searchinger is an attorney. We all know that an attorney would never ever even think of putting any kind of a twist on the truth. Would they? Every attorney in the US is the golden standard of only truth.
FutureGen has nothing to do with the F-T process.
Also, FutureGen hasn't been canceled. It has been restructured to have the money going to several plants instead of all of the money going to just one elec plant.
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/futuregen/
Are these reporters on drugs, liars, or stupid?
Martin
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dereckbc
 - Joined on 09-18-2006
- Posts 693
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
 natescape:
I hate when the press (fairly rightfully) trashes ethanol, but casts the criticism under the broad umbrella of "biofuel", when bioidesel's quite different.
Yes Nathan it is frustrating. I have long believed ethanol is no answer, and to some degree I think BD falls under the same umbrella restrictions, it still takes land. I know BD has a greater conversion energy ratio: But is it enough to justify the economical and ecological sacrifices some are asking for? I am not smart enough to answer that question. What I do know is renewable energy is not ready to answer long term energy issues as of now, and we need to buy some time with what we have now, sorry but that is fossil fuel and nuclear. So my question back at you and the group is why do we limit the US resources we know we have but refuse to be exploited now to buy that time so desperately needed?
Dereck In Texas
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Doctor
  - Joined on 02-24-2007
- Miami, FL
- Posts 342
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Certain media outlets only choose to publish the parts of studies that
are congruous with their own political philosophies and opinions -
leading to half-truths, incomplete analysis, and selective or piecemeal
deconstruction of parts of a story rather than the whole story from all
perspectives. The Guardian,
NYT, CNN are all very good at "filtering" the news through their
political lens; false assumptions in the study leading to
incomplete, and irrational conclusions, and dated information
(pre-2007 Energy Independence Security Act analysis) related to corn
ethanol consumption using previous analyses and assumptions - on
12/19/07 the US congress already put a "cap" in the EISA at 12 billion
gallons total so many of the previous assumptions and figures do not
apply.
The world is consuming corn, wheat, soybeans, palm oil, sugar, etc. for food in emerging markets of China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Latin America, Middle East,
etc. at a much faster rate than biofuels growth. Biofuels are a very
small portion of total demand. In Chapter 1 of the Biodiesel 2020
study William Thurmond talks about this in the "China
Eats The World" segment, and highlighted much larger factors
influencing feedstock price trends and unsustainable agronomy practices
for feedstocks just for food (biofuels aside). For example, the US
exports 1/3 of its soybeans to China and Brazil is now exporting 1/3 of its soybeans to China. This is very often overlooked in the media since many writers love to bash anything energy (or BP, Shell, Chevron, Conoco) related.
This is a litmus test for all of us. If they can successfully kill ethanol from corn, you can be sure they will come after the rest one by one.
"I don't have all the answers. I don't need all the answers right now. All I have to do is solve the problems one at a time. More importantly, I won't be doing it by myself."-- Sean O'Hanlon
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Voltaire
- Joined on 08-08-2007
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Doctor:
This is a litmus test for all of us. If they can successfully kill ethanol from corn, you can be sure they will come after the rest one by one.
The difference is that "they" SHOULD "successfully kill ethanol from corn". It's one of the worst ideas in the entire biofuels field.
AFAICT, the only real reason for the amount of interest and money backing non-cellulosic ethanol, and especially non-cellulosic ethanol from food crops like corn and soy, is farming subsidies and the political good will one gets from certain voting blocs because of those subsidies.
The science is certainly not supporting the use of food crops as ethanol sources.
If the science backs the validity of bio-diesel as much as I think it does, I'm not too worried about "them" =if= we are smart and use crops that are efficient producers of oil per acre for oil sources.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel
" A 1998 joint study by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) traced many of the various costs involved in the production of biodiesel and found that overall, it yields 3.2 units of fuel product energy for every unit of fossil fuel energy consumed.[34] That measure is referred to as the energy yield. A comparison to petroleum diesel, petroleum gasoline and bioethanol using the USDA numbers can be found at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture website[35] In the comparison petroleum diesel fuel is found to have a 0.843 energy yield, along with 0.805 for petroleum gasoline, and 1.34 for bioethanol. The 1998 study used soybean oil primarily as the base oil to calculate the energy yields. Furthermore, due to the higher energy density of biodiesel, combined with the higher efficiency of the diesel engine, a unit of biodiesel produces the effective energy of 2.25 units of ethanol.[36] Also, higher oil yielding crops could increase the energy yield of biodiesel. However not all oils retain the same heat capacities."
If we use the same source's oil yield per acre of crop numbers, then canola's 127 gals/acre is 127/48 more efficient than soy, which improves the bio-diesel energy yield to 8.47 from the quoted 3.2 based on using soy. The energy yield gets better as we increase our crop efficiency, and canola at 127 gals/acre is nowhere near the crop efficiency limit even for land plants; let alone algae. In fact, more efficient oil producing strains of canola / rape are reputed to be able to 2x and even 3x that 127 gal/acre yield.
The realistic upper limit on bio-diesel energy yield is probably in the 110+ range if we can get ~1/3 the theoretical peak yield of ~5000 gals/acre given for algae.
Energy yields like that + the better RW efficiency of diesel ICE's compared to everything else are why I keep disagreeing with Froggy's pessimism about bio-diesel for applications like heating and transportation.
Energy yields like that + diesel ICE efficiencies are why I do not think "they" are going to be able to shoot down bio-diesel. Especially algoil biodiesel if we can pull it off.
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perotter
- Joined on 07-09-2006
- Minnesota
- Posts 217
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
It would be 8.47 - energy of the N2 that has to be put on that acre of canola. About 20 gallons an acre, kwik math. Plus, as a practical matter, don't forget the longer rotation period that canola has. Currently soybeans & canola end up being about the same over a 8 year period of time.
Any large amount of US BD has to come from algae or by planting about 100 million acres of hazelnuts(etc). The politics of cutting down a 100 million acres of forest would slow that option. We all know about the current situation of algae.
IMO, the current US production of BD would best be used as an emulsifier to add ethanol to petro diesel.
Something to think about is the use of BD or #2 fuel oil for heat. There are bio based fuels that can be used for heat that are cheaper, but not the most convenient for a transportation fuel.
Martin
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Voltaire
- Joined on 08-08-2007
- Posts 809
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
perotter:
It would be 8.47 - energy of the N2 that has to be put on that acre of canola. About 20 gallons an acre, kwik math. Plus, as a practical matter, don't forget the longer rotation period that canola has. Currently soybeans & canola end up being about the same over a 8 year period of time.
Any large amount of US BD has to come from algae or by planting about 100 million acres of hazelnuts(etc). The politics of cutting down a 100 million acres of forest would slow that option. We all know about the current situation of algae.
IMO, the current US production of BD would best be used as an emulsifier to add ethanol to petro diesel.
Something to think about is the use of BD or #2 fuel oil for heat. There are bio based fuels that can be used for heat that are cheaper, but not the most convenient for a transportation fuel.
Hmmm. http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/crops/a686w.htm
I do not think this supports your assertion. The optimal land management scheme seems to be canola / rape every 3rd cropping year (that is !not! a calendar year. That is how long it takes to go from seed to harvest for a crop. 80-95 days for canola.). The reference explicitly states that a 2 cropping year rotation is feasible.
I do not know off the top of my head what the optimal land management strategy is for corn or soy, but I do know you can't grow =any= crop 100% of the time on the same patch of land without seriously delitereous effects of the land used and longer term crop yields. Some searching can find similar data for corn or soy as I just gave for canola / rape.
But IIRC, the time frames are similar enough that you can not be correct about canola / rape and soy averaging out to similar yields over an 8 year period. What are you basing that conclusion on?
In another thread I helped a farmer find required land for a given size canola / rape oil bio-d yield. Even the most pessimistic numbers I could find did not support your claimed need to put "100's of millions of acres" under canola / rape cultivation to provide significant bio oil reserves.
...and let's not forget that current canola / rape strains are no where near the yield limit for land crops. Both selective breeding and gene mod techniques are actively being pursued to increase those yields. The yield improvement from maize to corn was what? History shows we are very good at optimizing crop yields given enough incentive, time, and resources.
The idea of using BD solely or even mostly just as "an emulsifier to add ethanol to petro diesel" is also illogical.
We need to reduce our use of fossil fuels and of ethanol. Not find ways to prop up their continued use.
Like it or not, crude oil is running out. We have to find large scale replacements. That means burning as close to !no! crude oil as possible in as many applications as possible.
Ethanol is a provably inferior bio fuel whose only =real= large scale benefit has been farming subsidies. Now that the same crops are under increasingly greater food use vs fuel use pressure, the flaws in any scheme to use ethanol as a large scale replacement for crude oil are becoming starkly clear. IMHO, the data shows that if we continue to pursue ethanol as the "favored son" of biofuels, we are not going to get the fuel we need and an ever increasing number of people are going to starve. Not my idea of a solution.
ATM, the best bio-fuel is bio-diesel. As long as we need liquid fuels, and Froggy and I debate how long that will be on a regular basis, the numbers say we should be using bio diesel as much as possible for those applications where liquid fuels are favored.
(Note that explicitly does NOT mean Electrical Power Generation. Large scale EPG by burning fuel is one of the stupidest uses for liquid fuel, if not =the= stupidest, in existence.)
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Doctor
- Joined on 02-24-2007
- Miami, FL
- Posts 342
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Voltaire:
The difference is that "they" SHOULD "successfully kill ethanol from corn". It's one of the worst ideas in the entire biofuels field.
AFAICT, the only real reason for the amount of interest and money backing non-cellulosic ethanol, and especially non-cellulosic ethanol from food crops like corn and soy, is farming subsidies and the political good will one gets from certain voting blocs because of those subsidies.
The science is certainly not supporting the use of food crops as ethanol sources.
No argument on using feed crops for large scale biofuels production but: 1. Ethanol from corn is fine IN THE MIDWEST for now. 2. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater before cellulosic ethanol is up to commercial scale production. (5-15 years?) 3. If we really want to become sustainable (green) we will need to use ethanol in place of methanol for BD production. I think you are missing the larger picture that this is really being done as a wedge issue.
"I don't have all the answers. I don't need all the answers right now. All I have to do is solve the problems one at a time. More importantly, I won't be doing it by myself."-- Sean O'Hanlon
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Voltaire
- Joined on 08-08-2007
- Posts 809
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Doctor:
No argument on using feed crops for large scale biofuels production but:
1. Ethanol from corn is fine IN THE MIDWEST for now.
2. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater before cellulosic ethanol is up to commercial scale production. (5-15 years?)
3. If we really want to become sustainable (green) we will need to use ethanol in place of methanol for BD production.
I think you are missing the larger picture that this is really being done as a wedge issue.
1= I disagree. Record high prices for corn and soy indicate to me we have gone as far as we should go in using corn and soy as oil crops. Those prices mean that somewhere in the world =more people starved as a result=. That's all =I= need as cause to "get off the bus".
2= Cellulosic ethanol is another wrong headed idea. We do not need more efficient ways of producing less efficient fuels. We need more efficient ways of producing more efficient fuels. The proof of that is in the fact the no matter how much cellulosic ethanol improves ethanol's life cycle energy yield, it simply will never be equal the life cycle energy yield for bio-diesel. =If= said bio-diesel is made from reasonable oil stocks rather than from inefficient ones.
3= Yes, but we need far less ethanol than we do bio oil to make biodiesel. If we don't get bio-d production numbers and production efficiencies up high enough, it will not matter how well we can make ethanol. We need ~5x as much bio oil as ethanol for any given desired level of bio-diesel production.
I completely get the wedge issue idea. I say "Let them." If the numbers support the technology, it won't matter what nay saying is done. The numbers will refute FUD well enough for decent policy decisions to be made. If the numbers =can't= refute FUD, then the naysayers deserve to win.
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perotter
- Joined on 07-09-2006
- Minnesota
- Posts 217
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Voltaire:
Hmmm. http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/plantsci/crops/a686w.htm
I do not think this supports your assertion. The optimal land management scheme seems to be canola / rape every 3rd cropping year (that is !not! a calendar year. That is how long it takes to go from seed to harvest for a crop. 80-95 days for canola.). The reference explicitly states that a 2 cropping year rotation is feasible.
I do not know off the top of my head what the optimal land management strategy is for corn or soy, but I do know you can't grow =any= crop 100% of the time on the same patch of land without seriously delitereous effects of the land used and longer term crop yields. Some searching can find similar data for corn or soy as I just gave for canola / rape.
But IIRC, the time frames are similar enough that you can not be correct about canola / rape and soy averaging out to similar yields over an 8 year period. What are you basing that conclusion on?
In another thread I helped a farmer find required land for a given size canola / rape oil bio-d yield. Even the most pessimistic numbers I could find did not support your claimed need to put "100's of millions of acres" under canola / rape cultivation to provide significant bio oil reserves.
...and let's not forget that current canola / rape strains are no where near the yield limit for land crops. Both selective breeding and gene mod techniques are actively being pursued to increase those yields. The yield improvement from maize to corn was what? History shows we are very good at optimizing crop yields given enough incentive, time, and resources.
The idea of using BD solely or even mostly just as "an emulsifier to add ethanol to petro diesel" is also illogical.
We need to reduce our use of fossil fuels and of ethanol. Not find ways to prop up their continued use.
Like it or not, crude oil is running out. We have to find large scale replacements. That means burning as close to !no! crude oil as possible in as many applications as possible.
Ethanol is a provably inferior bio fuel whose only =real= large scale benefit has been farming subsidies. Now that the same crops are under increasingly greater food use vs fuel use pressure, the flaws in any scheme to use ethanol as a large scale replacement for crude oil are becoming starkly clear. IMHO, the data shows that if we continue to pursue ethanol as the "favored son" of biofuels, we are not going to get the fuel we need and an ever increasing number of people are going to starve. Not my idea of a solution.
ATM, the best bio-fuel is bio-diesel. As long as we need liquid fuels, and Froggy and I debate how long that will be on a regular basis, the numbers say we should be using bio diesel as much as possible for those applications where liquid fuels are favored.
(Note that explicitly does NOT mean Electrical Power Generation. Large scale EPG by burning fuel is one of the stupidest uses for liquid fuel, if not =the= stupidest, in existence.)
You're making progress!!! You are starting to look things up. In ND a cropping year is the same as calendar year. A 3 year rotation, over a number of years, is the max. A 2 year rotation is very risky & if done to very often one could end up not being a farmer(lose the farm to the bank). In the prime ag land in the US, the normal corn & bean rotation is - corn, beans, corn, beans, corn, bean....... Optimal land mangement? Don't know, but that is what is done. Some crops do fine or better being grown year after year on the same land. More on this latter. Provide significant bio oil reserves is vague. My fault. Consider it a min of 250,000 barrels a day, but like 1,000,000 barrels a day. The 250,000(450,000 total energy) is the diesel that is used by ag each day in the US. Gotta eat, right? The 1,000,000 is the amount that we could get by on if we only got US & Canadian crude. US daily distillate use has been running about 1.8 million barrels a day for - ag, construction, barges, rail, & commercial truck freight. Jet fuel is running about 1.5 million barrels a day. Pick your amount. For a little math. 126 gallons of oil from canola = 3 barrels. To get 1,000,000 a day we need 365 million a year. 365/3 = 121 million acres. 121.666 * 3(crop rotation) = 365 million acres. Want 3.3 million a day? That's 365,000,000 acres of canola each year & 1.095 billion acres. There's currently 450 million acres of crop land in the US. Trees get in the way of plowing etc. All of the beans or corn grown in the US every year, max 100 million acres each. Like Derek has posted, most people have no idea how much fuel is use in the US a day or how difficult it is to replace crude oil with biofuels. I think about 1 billion gallons of biodiesel was produced in the US in 2007. Or about 65,000 barrels a day. Not much. We use more lube oil than that a day. Might as well use the BD to mixed with E for diesel fuel. No one is starving because we use the starches of corn to make ethanol. If the corn was free, the people who are starving couldn't pay the shipping to get it there. I've been in some of those poor countries. Lived & ate right with the conman people & don't do the tourist thing. Not even 1 meal. I base how much I give to the children who are begging for money on skinny they are. Yet, in 2007 I seen rice pads that had been in rice for an estimated 2000 + years that have just been abandoned because the farmers can't make a living. This isn't an isolated case either. Also, people lack protein in their diets, not starch. Make no mistake. I love BD. We need all we can get & do think there will be some made from algae. As for ethanol vs bd, why not both? To quote Dr. Friedrich Bergius - "However, the technical problems of each area needs to be studied separately ....... to develop a successful industry of this kind." By the way, around here heating a house by burning corn is the cheapest way to do it unless one get fuel for free. Guess corn is still to cheap. Martin
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froggy
 - Joined on 03-07-2006
- wi
- Posts 2,181
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
perotter:
By the way, around here heating a house by burning corn is the cheapest way to do it unless one get fuel for free. Guess corn is still to cheap.
So... by using some peoples rational... corn IS the ultimate fuel source and =thus= an answer (at least as of right now).
Im not sure people of the south understand how diverse the heating systems in the people of the north. There are more outdoor stokers around here than not it seems as of late. Corn, wood, paper... tro it in da box. perotter:
I've been in some of those poor countries. Lived & ate right with the conman people & don't do the tourist thing. Not even 1 meal. I base how much I give to the children who are begging for money on skinny they are. Yet, in 2007 I seen rice pads that had been in rice for an estimated 2000 + years that have just been abandoned because the farmers can't make a living. This isn't an isolated case either.
Again my friend Martin makes an excellent point that is hugely important. Because of cheap oil, USA and others makes bazillions of tons of cheap grain products and local farmers cannot compete so they go broke (or starve) and this is why food shortages happen. Sometimes the actual event of weather or war is the final straw but make no mistake that the issue is too cheap of large scale production of food from fossil fuels. Which is why rising oil costs hurt initially because of the entrenched system, its the best thing for the local farmer and local economies around the world and here in some of america (unless your a big @$$ acre farmer).
IMO the american farmer needs to wake up to the efficiency and marketing game and start producing massive amounts of local produce and other products. This is already happening with the growth of organic farms and Community farms but there is a huge amount of job/economic growth that has to happen in this field. Less oil and more labor.
Plus... local fresh and made with love tastes better than chemicals.
flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo! -Virgil
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dereckbc
- Joined on 09-18-2006
- Posts 693
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
perotter:
Like Derek has posted, most people have no idea how much fuel is use in the US a day or how difficult it is to replace crude oil with biofuels.
Or to put it into perspective if every bit of the
US
and
Canada
farmland were converted or used to make bio fuel, It would only replace about 10 to 15% of what we currently use now (forget future needs). Not only would we still need to import oil, but add all our food to that import list. Fact is crude oil is here to stay.
Dereck In Texas
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Voltaire
- Joined on 08-08-2007
- Posts 809
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
dereckbc:
perotter:
Like Derek has posted, most people have no idea how much fuel is use in the US a day or how difficult it is to replace crude oil with biofuels.
Or to put it into perspective if every bit of the US and Canada farmland were converted or used to make bio fuel, It would only replace about 10 to 15% of what we currently use now (forget future needs). Not only would we still need to import oil, but add all our food to that import list. Fact is crude oil is here to stay.
The above is BS on 2 fronts.
First, Mike Briggs and others have shown that a fraction of the arable land in the USA could provide enough bio-oil to satisfy all our present crude oil demand.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html
Even if we do not use algoil, use of efficient bio-oil producing land crops on less than 200 million acres could produce enough bio-oil to replace =all= the crude oil we presently use for transportation and heating.
The USA has in excess of 1 billion acres of arable land. So =even of we do not have the "algoil revolution"=, we could satisfy all transportation and heating needs presently satisfied using crude oil by using < the 20% of the arable land in the US to grow bio-oil crops that get turned into biodiesel.
Of course, if the "algoil revolution" =does= take place, the USA will only need to use 30-60 million acres to satisfy those needs.
The 2nd piece of BS is the statement "Crude oil is here to stay", CRUDE OIL IS A NONRENEWABLE RESOURCE THAT IS RUNNING OUT. Faster than most people realize given the recent and present increases in demand for crude.
Like it or not, the peak oil folks are correct. We are running out of crude oil, and long before serious shortages in crude take place there will be outrageously high per barrel prices.
I'm not finished the analysis, but ATM it looks like crude oil will hit ~$115 US per barrel before the end of 2008. =Regardless= of whether the US economy has a recession or not. Why? Because in places like China and India more than =8 times= the population of the USA is increasing their crude oil use at annual rates in excess of 20%.
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dereckbc
- Joined on 09-18-2006
- Posts 693
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Voltaire:
The above is BS on 2 fronts.
No Voltaire it is not BS just simple math. You need to go read your own referenses. I have respect for Mike, but he is talking about theory using Alg-oil with a rate of 15,000 gallons per acre. We all know alg-oil is a pipedream.
Convert every little bit of arable land in the World to grow feedstock for oil, and it won't even make a greasy spot in the bottom of the barrel. Not only would you not have fuel, you wouldn't have food, just war.
| CAN BIOFUEL REPLACE CRUDE OIL? |
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Dereck In Texas
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perotter
- Joined on 07-09-2006
- Minnesota
- Posts 217
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Re: Article in _Science_ critical of biofuels
Voltaire: Even if we do not use algoil, use of efficient bio-oil producing land crops on less than 200 million acres could produce enough bio-oil to replace =all= the crude oil we presently use for transportation and heating.
What land crops grows in the US that will produce over 958 gallons of oil per acre? That 958 gallons is at 100% convers
At a min, we use 12.5 million barrells a day of finish liq fuel - just for trans.
12.5 * 365 = 4562.5 million barrels a year
4562.5 / 200 = 22.81 barrells per acre
22.81 * 42 = 958 gallons per acre
200 million acres is no small amount of ag land. There is only 420 million acres under the plow. There there is a reason for that.
200 million acres is what is used to grow all the corn, beans & wheat in the US.
There are a few non-oil land crops that can do that & be grown on marginal land that will produce 13 to 30 barrells (546 to 1260 gallons) per acre, year after year, of FT diesel.
Martin
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