Plant wood, not wheat, to reduce C02: report

Restoring and protecting forests would do far more to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere than dedicating vast tracks of land to “energy crops,” a new report says.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently announced a $1.5-billion, nine-year plan to make Canada a leader in biofuel production.

But there is concern in many quarters about the “green” energy boom, which critics say is having a serious environmental impact around the globe as forests are levelled and farm land is set aside to grow biofuel crops.
The report, published today in the journal Science, assesses biofuels – produced by using everything from sugarcane to wheat – and compared carbon emissions associated with their use over the next 30 years.

It concludes growing trees and restoring forests is a far more effective way to reduce emissions linked with global warming and climate change.

“In all cases, forestation of an equivalent area of land would sequester two to nine times more carbon over a 30-year period than the emissions avoided by the use of the biofuel,” says the report by Renton Righelato of the World Land Trust and Dominick Spracklen of the University of Leeds. Taking this into account, “the emissions cost of liquid biofuels exceeds that of fossil fuels.”

They note energy crops require an enormous amount of land: to replace just 10 per cent of gasoline and diesel fuel would require an estimated 43 per cent of crop land in the U.S. and 38 per cent of crop land in Europe.

Montreal Gazette