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 Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat - New York Times
 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/science/earth/08wbiofuels.html?_r=1&;
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Studies Deem Biofuels a Greenhouse Threat
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: February 8, 2008

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than
conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these
“green” fuels
are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have
concluded.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent
months,
as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their
production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal
Science,
are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the

emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being
converted to
cropland globally to support biofuels development.

The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the
tropics or
grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases
into the
atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of

natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less
carbon
than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces.

Together the two studies offer sweeping conclusions: It does not matter if
it
is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas
contribution
is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the
production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly,
intentionally
or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.

“When you take this into account, most of the biofuel that people
are using
or planning to use would probably increase greenhouse gasses
substantially,”
said Timothy Searchinger, lead author of one of the studies and a
researcher in
environment and economics at Princeton University. “Previously
there’s been
an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior
analysis.”

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels
because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the
carbon
absorbed when the plants grew. But even that equation proved overly
simplistic
because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions
— for
refining and transport, for example.

The clearance of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas
that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Joseph
Fargione,
lead author of the second paper, and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy.
“
So for the next 93 years you’re making climate change worse, just
at the time
when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.”

The Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change has said that the world has to
reverse the increase of greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to avert
disastrous
environment consequences.

In the wake of the new studies, a group of 10 of the United
States’s most emin
ent ecologists and environmental biologists today sent a letter to
President
Bush and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, urging a reform of
biofuels
policies. “We write to call your attention to recent research
indicating that
many anticipated biofuels will actually exacerbate global warming,”
the letter
said.

The European Union and a number of European countries have recently tried
to
address the land use issue with proposals stipulating that imported
biofuels
cannot come from land that was previously rain forest.

But even with such restrictions in place, Dr. Searchinger’s study
shows, the
purchase of biofuels in Europe and the United States leads indirectly to
the
destruction of natural habitats far afield.

For instance, if vegetable oil prices go up globally, as they have because
of
increased demand for biofuel crops, more new land is inevitably cleared as
farmers in developing countries try to get in on the profits. So crops from
old
plantations go to Europe for biofuels, while new fields are cleared to feed

people at home.

Likewise, Dr. Fargione said that the dedication of so much cropland in the
United States to growing corn for bioethanol had caused indirect land use
changes far away. Previously, Midwestern farmers had alternated corn with
soy in
their fields, one year to the next. Now many grow only corn, meaning that
soy has
to be grown elsewhere.

Increasingly, that elsewhere, Dr. Fargione said, is Brazil, on land that
was
previously forest or savanna. “Brazilian farmers are planting more
of the world
’s soybeans — and they’re deforesting the Amazon to
do it,” he said.

International environmental groups, including the United Nations, responded

cautiously to the studies, saying that biofuels could still be useful.
“We don’
t want a total public backlash that would prevent us from getting the
potential benefits,” said Nicholas Nuttall, spokesman for the
United National Energy
Program, who said the United Nations had recently created a new panel to
study
the evidence.

“There was an unfortunate effort to dress up biofuels as the silver
bullet of
climate change,” he said. “We fully believe that if
biofuels are to be part
of the solution rather than part of the problem, there urgently needs to be

better sustainability criterion.”

The European Union has set a target that countries use 5.75 percent biofuel

for transport by the end of 2008. Proposals in the United States energy
package
would require that 15 percent of all transport fuels be made from biofuel
by
2022. To reach these goals, biofuels production is heavily subsidized at
many
levels on both continents, supporting a burgeoning global industry.

Syngenta, the Swiss agricultural giant, announced Thursday that its annual
profits had risen 75 percent in the last year, in part because of rising
demand
for biofuels.

Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately attacked

the new studies as “simplistic,” failing “to put
the issue into context.”

“While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences
of
differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today, how
world demand
for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic alternatives are to
meet
those growing demands,” said Bob Dineen, the group’s
director, in a statement
following the Science reports’ release.

“Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can
begin to
address the challenges of energy security and environmental
protection,” he
said.

The European Biodiesel Board says that biodiesel reduces greenhouse gasses
by
50 to 95 percent compared to conventional fuel, and has other advantages as

well, like providing new income for farmers and energy security for Europe
in
the face of rising global oil prices and shrinking supply.

But the papers published Thursday suggested that, if land use is taken into

account, biofuels may not provide all the benefits once anticipated.

Dr. Searchinger said the only possible exception he could see for now was
sugar cane grown in Brazil, which take relatively little energy to grow and
is
readily refined into fuel. He added that governments should quickly turn
their
attention to developing biofuels that did not require cropping, such as
those
from agricultural waste products.

“This land use problem is not just a secondary effect — it
was often just a
footnote in prior papers,”. “It is major. The comparison
with fossil fuels is
going to be adverse for virtually all biofuels on cropland.”