As Production Shifts from First to Third World, UN Study Says Biofuel Research is Lacking

GREEN IS GOOD
by Margaret Smith

Marketed as a "green" energy source, in recent years biofuel use has increased around the world. Global ethanol production tripled between 2000 and 2007, increasing from 17 billion to more than 52 million liters. Biodiesel expanded 11-fold, from less than 1 billion to almost 11 billion liters. And these fuels together still only provided about 1.8 percent of transportation fuels globally.

It looks like development has come at the expense of research, though. Last week Friday, a major UN report stated that biofuels' effect on the environment has not yet been sufficiently explored, and that a more "advanced approach" is needed beyond the study of its production and use in order to match growing global production.

The report, the first to be released by the United Nation's Environment Programme's (UNEP) International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, added that all factors and uses of biomass must be considered in order to measure its harm to the environment, including food, fibers and fuel.

"Besides GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions, other impacts such as eutrophication and acidification need to be considered," the report says. "The available knowledge from life-cycle assessments, however, seems limited, despite that for those issues many biofuels cause higher environmental pressures than fossil fuels."

As the report notes, some first-generation biofuels (ones that are made from agricultural crops as opposed to waste products) can effectively deliver net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For example, ethanol from sugar cane, as currently produced in countries such as Brazil, can lead to emission reductions between 70 and more than 100 percent when the fuel is substituted for petroleum.

Biofuel expansion comes at a high price, however. As more and more countries have caught on to this growing trend, a range of other biofuels have been found to actually add to the number of greenhouse gas emissions rather than reduce them, also causing a range of other harmful environmental conditions in their wake.

In Southeast Asia, palm oil expansion is regarded as on one of the leading causes of rainforest destruction. Indonesia alone is planning on massively expanding their palm oil production. About 20 million hectares are to be set aside for palm oil tree cultivation, a 14 million hectare increase from the current levels. Two-thirds of this expansion is based on converting and destroying rainforest land, while the remaining one-third is from previously cultivated or fallow land. According to the report, if these trends continue, by 2030 the total rainforest area of Indonesia will have been reduced by 29 percent as compared to 2005, and 49% as compared to 1990.

That's not all. Producing biofuels from such land may be more costly in terms of carbon. A quarter of the converted rainforest land contained peat soil -- an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation -- with a high carbon content. When used, this could lead to greenhouse gas emissions that are up to 2,000 percent greater than those generated from fossil fuels.

And, as the report notes, much of this biofuel production is happening in developing countries. Developed countries usually set target levels and mandates for biofuel production, but often have to look beyond their borders to reach them. The result is a demand for biofuel imports, putting the burden on developing nations with the tropical conditions that most biofuel crops thrive in. The report uses the European Union as one of the many examples of biofuel importers:

The EU has recently reconsidered the requirements for set-aside land in order to allow farmers to respond to higher demands for agricultural production. A part of the official set-aside land is already used for non-food production, including energy crops. It is expected that 1.6 to 2.9 [million hectares] will be returned to agricultural food production, representing 0.9 to 1.6% of the agricultural in the EU. No major changes between land use categories and may be expected within the EU due to increased use of biofuels. Though European biofuel mandates... will require imports from developing countries. In other words, the European impact an agricultural land is being displaced on developing countries.

All around the world, statistics show that developing nations are putting a significant amount of land aside for biofuel production and development. In Brazil, sugar cane -- a first-generation biofuel that thrives in the country's conditions -- plantations comprised 9 million hectares in 2008, about 15 percent of the total arable land area in the country.

In recent months, some developing countries have already started resisting biofuels, usually due to mounting pressure from a range of farmers, activists and environmental groups. Opposition groups say that developing nations can't handle putting such a prominence on biofuel production, citing food shortage and land area statistics. Just last week, the government of Tanzania suspended all biofuel investments and land allocation. With the promise of much needed money and development, however, many countries find it hard to go against the grain.

In total, the report estimates that between 118 and 508 million hectares of cropland would be needed to meet 10 percent of worldwide global transport fuel demand by 2030 if first-generation biofuels are used.

"Biofuels are neither a panacea nor a pariah but like all technologies they represent both opportunities and challenges," UN Undersecretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said in a statement.

"Therefore a more sophisticated debate is urgently needed which is what this first report by the Panel is intended to provide," he added. "On one level, it is a debate about which energy crops to grow and where, and also about the way different countries and biofuel companies promote and manage the production and conversion of plant materials for energy purposes -- some clearly are climate friendly while others are highly questionable."

GREEN IS GOOD

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