worse than inaction: wrong action on biofuels
Stop worrying that the world’s governments or corporations will not act quickly or vigorously enough.
Instead, worry what happens if there is decisive action, but it heads in the wrong direction.
That’s the caution floated by Almuth Ernsting about the global blueprint for a biomass economy (via climate change action).
The rub? Full costs of producing biofuels haven’t been factored in.
Say what? Ya mean this green thang ain’t so green. Right.
Read this and weep.
What’s been left out of the equation, says Ernsting, is the carbon sequestered in the peat before it was cleared, burned, and drained for new palm forests? Oops!
Turns out, the GHG savings from using biofuels can never match the GHG losses from growing it. Especially in view of the massive burning, which already amounts to 8% of all global emissions from fossil fuels. (BTW, this is the reason Indonesia is the third largest emitter, right up there with the US and China.)
Where did we go wrong? The calculation of GHG savings from, say, palm oil (on which EU now largely depends for its ethanol), started at the point of planting new trees. That is, it didn’t account for clearing, burning, and draining of the lands to be planted.
(Technically, this can be traced to the logging operations which precede the planting. The logging is charged for these impacts, not the planting.)
In fact, this blindspot relates to limited research to-date on the carbon already sequestered in our soils. (I was surprised to learn last Summer that the soil was almost as good a carbon sink as planting new koa trees.)
When the wetlands NGO recently did the research on the peat lands in SE Asia, they were shocked to find these (former carbon sink) lands now emitting up to 100 tons of GHG per hectare.
Here’s their conclusion:
“Bio-fuel is often more polluting than energy from fossil fuel sources. The rapidly increasing use of palm oil is one of the driving forces behind this. Production of palm oil in South East Asian plantations degrades huge peatland areas. The large amounts of carbon dioxide being emitted due to this degradation makes the use of palm oil many times more polluting than burning oil or coal.”
Let’s hope the biofuels folks in Hawaii are paying attention to these research findings. We should at least have more solid information on what happens when we turn the soil on all those once-irrigated, now fallow cane lands.
Biofuel isn’t green unless its ALL green.
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