MIT Study Says Cellulosic Ethanol Could Have “Unintended” Environmental Consequences
The aggressive, worldwide production of cellulosic ethanol could both “contribute substantially to future global-scale energy needs” and have “significant unintended environmental consequences” says a study from MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
Producing cellulosic ethanol from non-food feedstocks has been studied extensively at a local scale, but it’s difficult to estimate the environmental impacts on larger, heterogeneous regions. In this study, researchers evaluated two potential consequences of diverting usable land to biofuel production: either existing agricultural operations are intensified, or large areas of natural forest are cleared to increase cropland. Sound familiar?
Could cellulosic ethanol cause more harm than good? As always, it depends on how it’s actually implemented:
Cellulosic biofuels may yet serve as a crucial wedge in the solution to the climate change problem, but must be deployed with caution so as not to jeopardize biodiversity, compromise ecosystems services, or undermine climate policy.
-MIT Report
See the 34-page study for more: Unintended Environmental Consequences of a Global Biofuels Program
[Via: GreenCarCongress]Image Credit: vsz via Flickr under Creative Commons License.
Ethanol has nothing to do with the consequences they are talking about. Clear cutting rain forests is the problem and that has been going on for more than the 50 years I have been alive. OK 51 really but I sopped counting at 50.
The only unintended consequences of switching to ethanol from pertoleum is cleaner air, cleaner water and richer and deeper top soil if the right crops are used and all the co-products of distillation are used to their full potential. They can be used for animal feed, fertilizer(eliminating petroleum based), pesticides(again eliminating perto based). They can be used to generate methane, the cleanest burning fuel next to H2. They can be used to grow algea and raise fish on farms. The fish then produce all the nitrogen you will need for fertilizer. Archer Daniles Midland is doig just that and just 5 acres of fish ponds fed with stillage and algea grown provides more nitrogen than they can use on 100 acres of food crops.
Why do none of these Universities ever go to Brazil and study the system they have come up with. They produce 45% of their motor fuel needs with 1% of their agricutural land. The other 55% is handled by diesel and bio diesel. They also export many Billions of gallons every year. They burn the wet bagasse left after shredding and juicing the sugar cane and produce all of their own heat and electricity. In fact they produce so much electricity that they sell 77% of what they generate back to the grid. The distilleries have become the most reliable source of power in the country.
They recently started using some of the bagasse to make cellulosic ethanol at a cost of 50 cents a gallon(same as the sugar ethanol) using a weak acid hyrolysis method that has proven effective for over 100 years. That plant is so efficient that they also generate all of their heat and power needs and sell power back to the grid. All that and they forbid sugar cane to be planted on rain forest lands. They also collect all of the smoke and perticulates from burning in a simply genious spray chamber and combine that with the ash left and make a very good fertilizer for the next cane crop. Making ethanol only removes the carbhydrates form whatever crop is used. All the proteins, fats and other naturally ocurring minerals are left after distillation to be used in many ways. Even the CO2 is a very valuable byproduct. It can be sold to soda companies for carbonation. It has many industrial uses. Coke is even using it as a refrigerant in all their coolers. It can be fed into green houses or fields to double or triple the food or fuel crop output. One oil company even buys the CO2 from a nearby distillery to pump into the ground to pressurize those hard to get oil deposits. They used to burn natural gas to generate the CO2. In fact burning valuable resources is how most CO2 is produced so that could also be eliminated.
CNCMike:
I think a few things need to be clarified here:
* Any time that land use is intensified in areas where land is scarce, there will be competition for it, which can cause more land to be put into use.
*”The only unintended consequences of switching to ethanol from pertoleum is cleaner air, cleaner water and richer and deeper top soil..”
Please try to be clear what type of ethanol you’re talking about. Corn-based ethanol has clear consequences. Cellulosic-based ethanol will have different consequences in different parts of the world, depending on the amount of land used for production.
* The system used in Brazil is something completely different: it’s sugarcane-based ethanol, and not exactly comparable to what we’re talking about here.
* The main point here is that the net impacts of large-scale production depend entirely on how new biofuel crops are deployed.
I agree it all depends how it is deployed. Grasslands will have less amount of impact since tall grass are idea bio fuel crop. A bigger impact is forest regions.
Why should CNCMike have to be more exact when MIT was allowed to paint all cellulosic ethanol with the same large brush. Of course changing to a CE based economy could have serious consequences, but that is the case with any new tech.
Flaw of the study: Assume we only produce biomass on forests or land best suited to normal agriculture. The argument for bio mass was to use the horid soild where we (maybe) grow hay or switchgrass. If biomass is a perrenial, then you also have no plowing, and less erosion and runoff.
Not only can we produce biomass on horid soils, researchers found that salty soil might be good growing ground.
Brigham Young U. researchers took an arid saline field, planted salt tolerant grass Panicum turgidum and companion plant Suadea fruticosa, and irrigated it with salt water. The resulting crop grew so fast it had to be harvested monthly, and produced the animal feed nutrition equivalent of corn. The companion plant can be turned into soap.
(google the names for the articles and documents. Research was done in Pakistan)
Earth First!, we stripmine the other planets later.
But that isn’t what the study is saying. It’s saying that if we produce biomass on normal land, it makes that land unavailable for other human needs, which means we then cut down forests for those needs.
I don’t think this will be the case in the US, but it could be the case in other parts of the world. Some calculations for the US:
http://gas2.org/2008/08/01/dedicated-energy-crops-could-replace-30-of-gasoline-ceres-inc-wants-to-make-it-happen/
“The U.S. uses 390 million gallons of gasoline for motor vehicle transport per day. That’s a bit over 142 billion gallons of gasoline each year. Using a back of the envelop calculation, if we took just 5% of rangeland in the U.S. (30 million acres), and converted it to switchgrass production, assuming we could produce 100 gallons of fuel from every dry ton, that’s 30 billion gallons of fuel, or 21% of U.S. gasoline consumption.”
And if the land is used to grow corn that goes to make twinkies and feed cattle to feed Americans who grow ever more unhealthy and obese - then I think we should turn it over to fuel production and make Americans healthier by starving them of the rubbish they dont need to eat. It all makes sense to me.
If you want calculations all we need to look at is something that is considered a pesky weed by a lot of ranchers. Mesquite trees. There are currently over 70 million acres growing in this country. If we just harvest the seed pods from those trees we could produce 23.9 billion gallons of ethanol a year with no crop land or farm land used and no planting, irrigating or fertilizing. Just using something that is going to waste.
As far as corn is concerned, we don’t need to plant any more corn than the 78.7 million acres that was recently already planted. Currently 87% percent of all US corn is fed to animals. Most of the rest is used to make high fructos corn syrup, corn chips, corn flour, corn meal, etc… The animals, especially cattle cannot digest the starch in corn very well and it creates a lot of health problems and veterinary bills for the farmers. If that 87% was used to first make ethanol it would produce a much higher quality animal feed that produces more meat and milk in less time with none of the health problems and it would produce 26.8 to 30.8 billion gallons per year. Just those 2 sources produce 50.7 billion gallons of the 142 billion we use every year and we did not touch one acre of land to change it from what it is currently being used for.
I live in Argentina, I just read the MIT report and found that on the map where they draw the most severe impact of “deforestation” there are no forests and there have never been. Argentina has been always known for its grasslands. Extensive grasslands that are excellent for biomass production for any use.
I think it is a shame that these people use the good name the MIT has to publish such enormous LIES, I invite them to come to Argentina and to check with their own eyes the area they claim will be deforested. Most grasslands ecosystems tend to accumulate excessive dry biomass, experts call this biomass “fuel”, and when you accumulate fuel what happens is that it might burn, therefore, the extraction and use of excess celullosic material actually improves ecosystems viability because it decreases extensive fires hazard that destroy biodiversity and property, and generate a new source of income vital for developing countries and poor economies.
Ethanol contributes exactly the same amount of CO2 as gasoline … you can’t pipe ethanol nearly as easily as gasoline … ethanol is highly corrosive and requires vast changes to storage, pumping and vehicle infrastructure … growing anything as feed stock for ethanol does not enhance the soil it depletes it just like nearly every other plant does when grown (thats why fertilizers are required or crop rotation plus fertilizer) …
cars in Ca. are nearly zero emission today burning 90% gasoline … face it ethanol was a nice try but it has failed to live up to the hype as all faith based science does …