The Biofuel Conundrum
A story of how saving carbon can cause forest fires, dead animals, and even more carbon
Biofuel is a term often used to denote fuels that are produced through biological processes such as agriculture and fermentation. Biofuels are widely considered carbon neutral, or at least low carbon enough to be a solution to fossil fuels, this is due to the fact that the carbon that is released through biofuel combustion comes from the carbon stored by those plants during their lifetime, pretty neat eh? Well not really.
The Different Biofuels
There are 4 types of biofuel, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation fuel, all of them uses the same source material, biomass, the difference comes from the source of the biomass and to an extent, the biomass-energy conversion process.
1st generation biofuels are made from food crops grown on arable land. Crops that are frequently used to create first generation biofuels include palm, soy, corn, sugar, and rapeseed, and sunflower. These are the most polluting form of biofuel available, arguably, they are even dirtier compared to fossil fuels due to their externalities.
2nd generation biofuels are those that are made from lignocellulosic biomass or in plain english, agricultural waste. 2nd generation biofuel represents a leap in technology and sustainability, instead of using food crops, they use agricultural waste, trash for all we care, to produce fuel, how cool is that! Well turns out we cant have our cake and eat it at the same time, the usage of waste has considerably increased the difficulty of extracting the oil, so much so that the conversion process may just be more polluting compared to the first generation biofuels.
3rd generation biofuels are made from algae. This oil rich substitute for crops have the benefit of not taking up arable land and has a minimal impact on the economics surrounding food crops, yay no biofuel induced hunger here! Sadly, there are no 3rd generation biofuel that are economically feasible to produce at a large scale, yet.
4th generation biofuels are similar to 3rd generation biofuel due to them not needing any arable land, the difference is in the energy generation process. Whereas 3rd generation biofuel destroys the biomass to convert it to energy, 4th generation biofuels preserve the biomass while still generating energy. Examples of this concept would be photobiological fuels and electrofuels.
The Problem
Before addressing biofuel any further we should probably talk about the elephant in the room, costs. Turns out that biofuel isn’t as cheap as it is thought out to be, it’s even more expensive than conventional and even some unconventional oil.
Although biofuels today are more expensive compared to conventional oil, it’s costs are rapidly decreasing due to the recent technological advances and high budget it receives on the R&D front. Biofuels are also quite popular both in the business and science communities due to its massive profit potential, so securing funding is never the issue, the issue would be to develop a sustainable method to produce biofuel, both economically and environmentally.
Another reason why most people ignore the costs of biofuels is that they’re hoping for a green solution to the fossil fuel problem but doesn’t want to migrate from combustion cars, after all nearly all of our infrastructure is built with fossil fuel in mind. Biofuel is seen as a greener fossil fuel so everyone is trying to make it work despite the prohibitive costs and questionable environmental impact.
Nowadays, there are multiple research teams developing and perfecting different ways to produce biofuel, all in the name of efficiency and economics, so, it’s safe to say that in the future, costs won’t be the limiting factor on biofuel production, strong emphasis on the word future though.
Welp, we’ve tackled economics and now we’re going to tackle the environmental side of biofuel, so smooth sailing from here right? not really, no.
Biofuels are chosen because they are believed to cause less pollution compared to conventional oil, they also give hope to nations that are less endowed with hydrocarbon reserves to survive and thrive in this world run by oil. The second premise is a bit hard to argue, it would take a long post about geopolitics, realpolitik, and the sort to even touch it, so, we’re going to take a shortcut by assuming it is correct, and moving on to the first premise, biofuels are cleaner, or are they?
Well, turns out they’re not. Bummer eh? All that marketing and posturing down the drain. Two of the graph above shows that palm oil, soybeans, and rapeseed are actually dirtier compared to crude oil, only when palm oil uses methane capture technology does it become cleaner than crude oil. Thankfully we have wheat, corn maize, sugarcane, sugar beet, and a slew of 2nd gen fuels that are highly efficient and are way cleaner compared to oil.
After reading all that you’d probably think “Oh it’s easy, why not use 2nd gen biofuels, or even the 3rd or 4th ones, we’d be all set, right?” well no, not so fast.
Currently, most biofuels come from the 1st and 2nd gen process, but mostly the 1st, why? Two reasons, economics and simplicity.
Its easier and cheaper to harness food crops as biofuels compared to cellulosic or algae based fuels. It doesn’t need as much technology, it’s faster to produce, and most important of all, it doesn’t need much investment to start production.
From the two graphs above, we can summarise that most biofuels are produced using first generation technology such as those of vegetable oils, molasses, sugarcane, wheat, and coarse grains. We can also conclude that the amount of biofuel produced using 2nd generation technology is still very small, and will likely continue to play second fiddle for the next 5 years to first generation biofuels.
A lot of biofuels are being produced by using feedstock, this in turn increases the need to provide land for those feedstocks, thereby causing, directly or indirectly, either land use change or a decrease in food security.
A decrease in food security might happen in theory due to more feedstocks being used to produce biofuel, but this hasn’t happened yet because growing food for consumption and for biofuel turns out to be equally profitable, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too right? So, what’s the solution? Get more land.
Land Use Change
That picture above is a corn field that’s focused on producing biofuel grade corns to feed the growing ethanol industry. Every year more and more arable lands are converted from food production to biofuel production, but food demand isn’t decreasing and neither is the demand for biofuel. To keep supplying both the food and biofuel industry, farmers must increase the amount of arable land they can cultivate, and the easiest way to do this is to repurpose non-used and non productive lands for agriculture. These lands include forests, marshlands, grasslands, peat, and fallow fields.
Land use repurposing into agriculture is almost always bad, it damages the local ecosystem and reduces the local biodiversity. Agricultural waste and fertilizer runoff from the fields can damage the surrounding lands, polluting them and throwing the ecosystem into imbalance . It is even more damaging if done without proper care and planning.
In developed countries like the United States, the push to increase biofuel production by growing corn has given developing countries like Brazil a huge incentive to increase soy production due to a decrease in US grown soy. The increase in soy production contributes to the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest because farmers and corporations need more land to grow soy so they burn the forests down to quickly prime it for agricultural use.
Brazil also produces a significant amount of biofuel by itself using sugarcane, this also drives deforestation in the northern Amazon forests due to its constant expansion and competition with the soy industry.
It takes about $1000-$6000 to clear 1 hectare of forest using heavy machinery, it only takes $18 to clear 1 hectare using gasoline
Forest fires are the easiest and most cost effective method of clearing forests and priming them for agricultural use. It’s very cheap, very fast, and gives the soil a temporary boost in fertility due to the ash acting as fertilizer.
Despite it’s seemingly low cost, forest fires cause a lot of damage to the surrounding area in the form of externalities. Externalities such as smog can impede locals from doing their daily activity, halt airlines, and cause sickness. Forest fires also drastically reduce the biodiversity of said forests, reducing it to fire resistant plants and certain insects. If measured financially, the damage caused by forest fires both direct and collateral can reach millions of dollars, so much for saving cash.
One of the most famous cases of debilitating smoke caused by forest fires are the ones hitting Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. Forest fires in both Sumatra and Kalimantan, supposedly caused by farmers and corporations wanting to open more land for palm plantations and agricultural fields, have caused huge disruptions both socially and economically. Flights have been delayed due to insufficient view ranges, schools have been closed due to worries over student safety, cars have been stuck in traffic due to everyone slowing down and not being able to see anything.
Forest fires, besides causing economic and social damage to humans, also cause ecological damage to its environment and the animal living in it. Many animals are left homeless after a forest fire, their homes burned and their living space reduced, it’s no wonder that they often wander into human villages in search for food and shelter, an act that humans don’t seem to like that much. Thus, animals that survive the initial forest fire will inadvertently die of hunger or in the hands of angry villagers trying to protect their food.
Sad huh?
Think about it the next time you buy biofuel.
