 Environment - March 26, 2008 |
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| Biofuels may not be the best climate change answer |
By Kevin Ma
Staff Writer
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Canada needs to rethink its biofuels policy because new research suggests these green fuels may be a lot of buck for their bang.
Biofuels, or petroleum substitutes derived from plants and animals, have been touted as the solution to high oil prices, climate change and struggling grain farmers. World governments have poured on support in recent years, doubling global production in the last five years, according to the UN.
But the promise of these green fuels has turned black recently. Environmentalists like the Sierra Club have blasted them for jacking up food prices. Researchers have questioned whether they will make any dent in greenhouse gases at all. A recent report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has even asked if they are "a cure worse than the disease." The U.K. government even started a full-scale review of the impacts of biofuels this February.
Canada makes very little biofuel right now, according to the federal government, but that could change. Sturgeon County will have a 225-million-litre-a-year biodiesel plant next year, and national ethanol production is set to quadruple by 2010, according to the federal government. That means we have time to change course. Canada should redirect its biofuel bucks towards other proven energy solutions because biofuels will not give us the climate change bang we need.
The promise
Biofuels show great promise as a green fuel. They come from renewable sources (corn, wheat, and canola in Canada), unlike oil, meaning they could help us stretch our finite fossil fuel resources. They could also help grain farmers make money. Corn prices alone have doubled since 2007, for example, says Iowa State economics professor Bruce Babcock, and Canadian wheat has hit its highest levels in years.
Climate change has blasted biofuels into the spotlight. In theory, a biofuel made from a plant will add no net emissions to the air because they release just as much carbon dioxide as they absorb. They can also be blended with regular gas and diesel to fuel almost every car on the market.
That gives biofuels big potential to take a bite out of transportation pollution, which Environment Canada says accounts for 27 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Switching a car to an 85-per-cent cellulose-based ethanol blend from normal gas would cut its emissions by a massive 75 per cent, according to Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN) — very close to the 80 per cent cuts most researchers have called for. (Note that this blend is not currently available in Canada.)
The reality
But recent research questions whether biofuels can meet these promises.
Take oil, for example. Replacing five per cent of all gasoline and diesel with biofuels, as proposed by the federal government, would take about half of Canada’s corn, 12 per cent of its wheat and eight per cent of its canola, according to Agriculture and Agri-food Canada — not realistic, especially if the rest of the world is also pursuing biofuels.
And take prices. Corn and grain prices did jump in the last year, says Babcock (who was scheduled to speak on this topic at an Edmonton agriculture conference this week), but that wasn’t all due to biofuels. Grain supplies have been tight worldwide since 2002 due to changing diets in Asia and India, he notes, and grain prices are also measured in U.S. dollars, the value of which has plunged. "The effect would be fairly modest at this time," he says of biofuels, although it could hit poor food-importing nations hard in the future.
Then there’re greenhouse gases, a factor that John Rilett of Climate Change Central (scheduled to speak at the same conference as Babcock) says has him on the fence about biofuels. "Corn-based ethanol is probably the worst biofuel from a greenhouse gas perspective," he says, cutting emissions by just 29 per cent relative to gas. Put it in a 10-per-cent blend (which is what most cars can handle without modifications), and the advantage drops to four per cent, according to NRCAN.
Add in land use changes and you may actually make the world worse. Several recent studies suggest that it will be impossible to meet national biofuel targets without cultivating more land. Since this would mean ploughing up forests and grasslands which currently act as carbon sinks, this would actually add emissions to the air, creating an emissions debt that a Science magazine study by Searchinger et al estimates could take 50-to-167 years to repay.
These land use figures have been disputed, but even if they’re wrong, Canada’s current biofuel policies won’t make a dent in its greenhouse gas emissions. NRCAN estimates that if Canada replaced 10 per cent of its gas with ethanol (twice the federal target), it would cut its transport emission by about one per cent.
Cellulose-based biofuels made from agriculture scraps could avoid the land-use problem since they wouldn’t require any new cropland. Wang and others estimate that they could cut greenhouse emissions by about 86 per cent if widely used.
But this white knight is a long ways away, says Don O’Connor, the mechanical engineer who did most of NRCAN’s biofuel calculations. "The cellulose stock is always around the corner," he says, and won’t be commercially available for at least four years. Grown in a sustainable way, the OECD estimates that these fuels could cut emissions by about five per cent globally by 2050.
Better solutions available
O’Connor argues that Canada should still support biofuels despite these problems. "The bottom line is we don’t have many options when it comes to transportation." We need to replace liquid fuels, he says, and biofuels have a lot of room to improve.
He’s right, but there are other options available. You can get more greenhouse reductions by using plant scraps to displace coal power than gasoline, notes a 2007 UN bioenergy report, and by investing in public transit, fuel efficiency and urban planning. For example, a current-generation hybrid car produces about 25-per-cent fewer emissions than a normal one and can be converted to an electric model that, if powered by renewable electricity, would produce no emissions.
Are biofuels the answer? It depends on the question, Babcock says. "If your problem is greenhouse gases, the solution isn’t biofuels. But if you want to raise prices, the solution is biofuels." He and others argue the best way to cut transport emissions is to invest in plug-in hybrid cars and nuclear power.
Biofuels will play a small role in controlling climate change if only to address all those old non-electric cars on the road. That means Canada should adapt its biofuel policy to reflect this. Shunting the lion’s share of our biofuel support towards cellulose biofuels, which give us the biggest reductions, would be a good start.
Climate change requires serious cuts to emissions, and biofuels won’t deliver them. Until the technology matures, Canada should keep its bucks out of the biofuel boom. |
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