| Adam Hart 2008-01-27, 3:25 am |
| To bio or not to bio - are 'green' fuels really good for the earth?
http://tinyurl.com/264grs
The EU says we need them, some experts say they damage the planet. Who
is right?
David Adam, environment correspondent The Guardian, Saturday January
26 2008
Greenergy processes vegetable oil. It takes the gloopy juice squeezed
from inside rape seeds harvested on surrounding Lincolnshire fields,
strips out the waste and chemically tweaks the leftovers to make it
easier to burn. Greenergy pipes almost 100,000 tonnes a year of its
veggie option to ConocoPhillips and Texaco, just across the road,
which mix it with their diesel fuel.
Until recently, the operation was viewed as a good thing. Because the
oilseed rape plants absorb carbon dioxide, the company says the carbon
emissions of the mixed fuel are lower, which helps the fight against
global warming. And because oil companies that supply the blend pay
less tax, everybody wins. Greenergy is expanding and similar
facilities are going up elsewhere.
But now a chill wind is blowing through this emerging industry. Fuels
from vegetable oil, sugar, corn and a number of other crops and
plants, collectively known as biofuels, are taking flak. There are
doubts about their carbon savings, and concern over their impact on
food supplies, prices and the land needed to grow them. This week, a
parliamentary committee called for a moratorium on efforts to increase
their use. Yet on Wednesday, the EU confirmed it will force oil
companies to mix biofuel into petrol and diesel, while separate UK
action on climate change will make all suppliers use biofuels by
April.
It is a confusing situation, which provoked New Scientist to call on
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to "determine
whether biofuels are good or bad". The issue splits even the green
campaigners: Friends of the Earth said this week's European move was a
disaster; WWF welcomed it.
Challenge
Jeremy Tomkinson, head of the National Non-Food Crops Centre in York,
which promotes biofuels, says the New Scientist question misses the
point. "We need people to understand not all biofuels are the same,"
he says. "You can't say whether all biofuels are good or bad. The
challenge is to use more of the good ones and less of the others."
The Greenergy refinery illustrates the point. At the moment, the plant
is running on British rape seed oil, but later in the year it will
include oils from US soya beans. In the summer, it could blend palm
oil from the tropics into the mix. Sometimes it uses waste cooking
oil.
Like others in the oil industry, biofuel companies source their
feedstocks from suppliers across the world, depending on price and
availability. Greenergy has a similar biofuel facility in Rotterdam,
using rape from France and Germany.
The company is also involved in ethanol, which it mixes into petrol.
Most ethanol from plants comes from fermented sugar cane in Brazil,
but batches can also come from sugar beet, wheat and corn, grown in
different ways across different countries. Andrew Owens, managing
director of Greenergy, says it takes the environmental impact into
account. The company has blacklisted some suppliers, and will not buy
bioethanol from the US, because of the amounts of nitrogen fertiliser
required to grow the crops.
Its website says the carbon savings of bioethanol produced in the
northern hemisphere, such as from another British biofuel facility
owned by British Sugar in Norfolk, are "questionable". Greenergy has
lined up a sugar cane-based bioethanol supplier in Africa, to combat
rising demand for the Brazilian version, which is generally agreed to
be the greenest biofuel around.
On biodiesel, it points out that tropical fuels such as palm oil
produce less carbon-intensive fuels, because they require less
greenhouse gas-fuelled effort to grow, and claims associated problems
such as deforestation to start plantations are "managerial rather than
intrinsic".
Owens says it tries to buy from companies which have joined the Round
Table on Sustainable Palm Oil, an industry body that is working to
green the supply chain, and inspect non-members. "I can trace our
supplies through to specific farmers and plantations. I believe we're
driving up standards across the board."
Owens argues that the food industry, which still takes the vast
majority of palm oil, has caused more damage in countries such as
Indonesia but escaped the level of criticism aimed at green fuels.
Demand
Tomkinson says the new mood against biofuels could even make the
situation worse. European investors have lost their nerve, he says,
and are planning to build fewer refineries. To meet increased demand
for biodiesel, oil companies would have to look elsewhere. Under the
UK and European regulations, Britain alone will need about 2m tonnes
of biofuel by 2010. Current production is about 300,000 tonnes.
(Though UK use of palm oil as biofuel is limited by our colder
climate, which makes it waxy and unsuitable for engines).
It is this expansion of biofuel use that most worries opponents and
critics. Even if companies such as Greenergy manage to make their
products sustainable and climate-friendly - and campaigners point out
that some palm oil companies registered with the Round Table have
still been linked with illegal logging - how could such checks be
maintained on a huge scale?
Besides deforestation, campaigners say wider biofuel cultivation could
cause water shortages and increase pollution, and that converting land
could release more carbon emissions than the fuels save. Scientists
have questioned whether there is enough suitable land to grow
sufficient crops.
There are also uncertainties over the life cycle analyses used to work
out the overall carbon saving of different biofuels. Paul Crutzen, the
Nobel prize-winning physicist, recently suggested that more nitrogen
compounds, potent greenhouse gases, could escape into the atmosphere
from fertiliser than officially counted. Some say, per tonne of carbon
saved, biofuels are simply not cost-effective.
The parliamentary environmental audit committee concluded on Monday
that the possible risks outweighed the benefits and that UK and
European targets on biofuel use should be scrapped until their
environmental advantages can be guaranteed. Tim Yeo, chair of the
committee, said: "The government must ensure its biofuels policy
balances greenhouse gas emission cuts with wider environmental
benefits."
Andris Piebalgs, the EU energy commissioner, strongly disagreed and
said the only realistic alternative was oil, which he described as "a
shrinking source of energy with serious environmental concerns in
regions where it is produced, that generates large amounts of carbon
dioxide not only when it is burned, but also when it is extracted,
transported and refined".
The UK government, this week handed down a stiff EU target to produce
15% of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020, was also in no
mood to abandon its biofuel targets, which it reckons can save a
million tons of carbon pollution by 2010.
Both the UK and EU say they will apply strict sustainability criteria
to the new fuels, and demand audited carbon savings. Britain has
created the Renewable Fuels Agency and plans to publish the results
for each supplier. By 2010, it says the process will be able to link
tax benefits received by the oil giants to how green their biofuels
are.
The Royal Society, in a study that was more supportive of biofuels
than was reported, recently gave cautious backing to the
sustainability criteria, though it pointed out they were riddled with
uncertainties. Friends of the Earth said the government had given
people no easy way to distinguish good biofuels from bad, and that
indirect effects, such as people being displaced from land seized to
grow crops, were not assessed.
Andrew Owens of Greenergy says: "We are trying to introduce
unprecedented standards. We're the good guys here."
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