US scientists puncture the ethanol biofuel bubble

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 Register