Time's Grunwald Grinds an Axe Against Biofuels

Let's say a journalist hears an exciting new idea propounded by a gifted phrase-maker who happens not to have a professional credential in the field. Let's say that journalist writes a one-sided cover story for his newsmagazine propounding his source's theory. And let's say that a year later he writes a story about public policies on the very issue where he's so heavily invested on one side of the debate.

Unfortunately for American journalism -- and for the public debate about renewable fuels -- this isn't a hypothetical question. Just read Michael Grunwald's report, "Stress-Testing Biofuels: How the Game Was Rigged".

Grunwald claims that the Environmental Protection Agency's examination of the impact on global warming of corn ethanol and other biofuels was stacked in favor of these renewables. But his claim that there was a rigged "stress test" doesn't pass the smell test.

As with his cover story last year, with the even-handed headline "The Clean Energy Scam" Grunwald's recent article relies on a theory propounded by a source whom he describes as "Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger." As Grunwald writes, the thesis that producing ethanol has "indirect effects on land use: when an acre of land is used to grow fuel instead of food, an extra acre somewhere else is probably going to be converted into farmland to grow food." Moreover, he continues, "that acre may well be an acre of wetland or forest that would otherwise store loads of carbon."

While he is indeed housed at Princeton University, Searchinger is an attorney by training, not a scientist, an economist, or an agronomist. So his assessment of the likelihood that the increased production of biofuels in the United States will require the despoiling of forests and wetlands which will deposit carbon in the atmosphere and promote global warming is as worthy of respectful attention as the views of any other attorney with a interest in economics, agriculture, and the environment.

As it happens, more than 100 actual scientists and researchers questioned the "indirect land-use change" theory in a letter to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is also addressing this issue.

Rejecting the theory that increased ethanol production automatically results in the loss of an equivalent acreage of forests and wetlands, these scientists note that "most primary forest deforestation is currently occurring in places like Brazil, Indonesia and Russia as a direct result of logging, cattle ranching and subsistence farming." In other words, when forests are destroyed in other countries, the causes are immediate and local, not a chain reaction resulting from the production of renewable fuels here in the United States.

In addition to this important point, other objections can be raised to the "indirect land-use change" theory:

• It is based on a supposed model for events that have not yet occurred and, therefore, cannot be modeled -- what would happen if there is a dramatic increase in the production of grin-based biofuels, as well as "cellulosic" biofuels from non-food sources, such as wood chips, grasses, agricultural waste, and even garbage.
• It ignores the increasing productivity of agriculture, not only in the U.S. but also throughout the world. For instance, it would have taken twice as much land in 1967 as it took in 2007 to harvest the same amount of corn.
• It omits the fact that some sources of cellulosic biofuels -- for instance, switchgrass -- grow in soil that cannot be used as farmland and still other sources -- such as garbage -- need not be grown at all.
• And it also overlooks the reality that ethanol production creates agricultural co-products. In fact, one-third of every bushel of grain entering an ethanol biorefinery is returned to the livestock feed market as cattle feed.

In fact, Grunwald got it wrong. Far from being "rigged" in favor of biofuels, EPA's examination was rigged against biofuels. While exploring a hypothesis about a hypothetical situation involving biofuels, the examination did not emphasize what is actually known -- the comparative carbon footprints of biofuels and petroleum-based fuels. Compared to gasoline, cornstarch ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 48-59 percent, and cellulose-based ethanol does even better.

Indeed, the EPA examination -- and Grunwald's journalism and Searchinger's thesis even more so -- ignore the actual alternative to biofuels: petroleum products. By exploring the "indirect land-use change" that may be caused by producing biofuels but not the comparable consequences of any other industry, including producing and using petroleum products, these stories and studies offer little illumination for the debates that must be held and the decisions that must be made.

Comments

[averagemaninthecountry]

I can't believe some of the numbers and opinions being trucked out concering ethanol.
Irregardles of US energy policy, Brazil is going to ride ethanol fom sugar cane all the way into first world status from the third world.
Inefficeint as corn ethanol may be, it does not have a sufficient subsidy to support some of the claims against it. We can grow corn, and qualify to sell carbon credits, haul it hundreds of miles, remove 80% of the starch, turn the bacteria loose, spin off the alcohol and sell it at a profit if gas is aboe $3/ gal, and then haul the distillers grains to a feedyard where it is priced to compete with alfalfa and corn grain.
Grunwald's claims and even the EPA report don't pay the common sense test.

[GoldEnergy]

Ethanol opponents are really running scared since we are finally going to be introducing a clean burning, environmentally sustainable and global warming fighting fuel on a scale that will truly compete with gasoline/diesel. Alcohol (ethanol) is liquid solar energy that will help to free us from the death grip of Big Oil (ie the American Petroleum Institute) and the monopoly it enjoys in the transportation field.

Check out Dr. Robert Zubrin's book "Energy Victory" and David Blume's book "Alcohol Can be a Gas" to get behind the scenes of how we can switch from the oil economy to the alcohol economy...creating sustainable jobs, growing economies around the world and fight pollution on all levels.

See www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/?bid=2&aid=CD106&opt for David Blume's book, dvd & online videos. Also go to Amazon.com to check out Dr. Zubrin's book.

[Bonobo]

Oh, and the Corn Industry Lobbyist doesn't have a vested interest, and is better qualified.

Cornstarch ethanol may not even break even on energy return (fuel to grow vs. fuel produced). More efficient tropical biofuel crops are clearly driving deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia. Even if cellulose-based ethanol ever gets out of the lab, it's still a bad method. The only reason to make a biofuel is for auto-based transportation, and even then, a recent Stanford-UC Merced study (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/january7/power-010709.html) demonstrated that simply burning the feedstock to produce electricity for electric cars would be almost twice as efficient.

Plus, there simply isn't enough true "waste" biomass out there. Marginal lands wouldn't be marginal if they produced anywhere near as much biomass as arable land. You could strip the world's prairies and steppelands, and not come close to the yield of some good bottomland.

There is also a very fundamental problem with any biofuel. Photosynthesis is less than 3% efficient at converting the available solar energy. PV and wind energy have far higher yields for the same area, and don't compete with crop or wild lands.

The only thing good that can be said about biofuels are that they are better than fossil fuels, but we still can’t afford them at scale.

[doctorkosan]

The scientists­/engineers are better qualified than the lawyer.
Corn based ethanol produces 30 % more energy than is used in its production so your second sentence is also incorrect.
Cellulosic ethanol will be even more efficient than corn ethanol.
A recent USDA ananlysis shows there is enough waste biomass (agricultural and forestry) to make 140 billion gallons per year of gasoline which is the current USA usage. Add Canada's waste biomass and there is plenty - again you are wrong.
The efficiency of photosynthesis is a bogus issue unless you are planning to intercept all that sunlight hitiing forests and wasteland and use it so the biomass dosn't form. I trust you have no plan that does that.
Renewable fuels will be more affordable than fossil fuels in the future - you almost got your last point right.

[SK9]

As replacements for Fossil Fuels, Wind and Solar are possible for the United States (we have vast windy plains and deserts), but they will be very, very expensive and damaging to the environment. Biofuels are a disaster for everyone. They cannot solve the problem and to have any impact at all would require enormous land (ab)use.

Professor David MacKay (a Physicist at Cambridge) has written a book titled 'Sustainable Energy, Without the Hot Air'. The book can be purchased or is available online at:

http://www.withouthotair.com/

The book is dedicated: 'to those who will not have the benefit of two billion years’ accumulated energy reserves'.

From the Preface:

What’s this book about?
I’m concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle – twaddle about
sustainable energy. Everyone says getting off fossil fuels is important, and
we’re all encouraged to “make a difference,” but many of the things that
allegedly make a difference don’t add up.

Twaddle emissions are high at the moment because people get emo-
tional (for example about wind farms or nuclear power) and no-one talks
about numbers. Or if they do mention numbers, they select them to sound
big, to make an impression, and to score points in arguments, rather than
to aid thoughtful discussion.

This is a straight-talking book about the numbers. The aim is to guide
the reader around the claptrap to actions that really make a difference and
to policies that add up.