Report

THE REAL SCOOP ON BIOFUELS

Tokar, Brian

2006

Overview

You can hardly open up a major newspaper or national magazine these days without encountering the latest hype about biofuels, and how they're going to save oil, reduce pollution and prevent climate change. Bill Gates, Sun Microsystems' Vinod Khosla, and other major venture capitalists are investing millions in new biofuel production, whether in the form of ethanol, mainly derived from corn in the U.S. today; or biodiesel, mainly from soybeans and canola seed. It's virtually a \"modern day gold rush,\" as described by the New York Times, paraphrasing the chief executive of Cargill, one of the main benefactors of increased subsidies to agribusiness and tax credits to refiners for the purpose of encouraging biofuel production. Even Brazilian sugarcane, touted as the world's model for conversion from fossil fuels to sustainable \"green energy,\" has its downside. The energy yield appears beyond question: it is claimed that ethanol from sugarcane may produce as much as eight times as much energy as it takes to grow and process. But a recent World Wildlife Fund report for the International Energy Agency raises serious questions about this approach to future energy independence. It turns out that 80% of Brazil's greenhouse gas emissions come not from cars, but from deforestation - the loss of embedded carbon dioxide when forests are cut down and burned. A hectare of land may save 13 tons of carbon dioxide if it is used to grow sugarcane, but the same hectare can absorb 20 tons of CO2 if it remains forested. If sugarcane and soy plantations continue to spur deforestation, both in the Amazon and in Brazil's Atlantic coastal forests, any climate advantage is more than outweighed by the loss of the forest. The utility of incorporating the amylase enzyme into crops is questionable (it's also a potential allergen), gains in starch production are marginal, and the use of genetic engineering to increase crop yields has never proved reliable. Other more complex traits, such as drought and salt tolerance (to grow energy crops on land unsuited to food production), have been aggressively pursued by geneticists for more than twenty years with scarcely a glimmer of success. Genetically engineered trees, with their long life-cycle, as well as seeds and pollen capable of spreading hundreds of miles in the wild, are potentially a far greater environmental threat than engineered varieties of annual crops. Even Monsanto, always the most aggressive promoter of genetic engineering, has opted to rely on conventional plant breeding for its biofuel research, according to the New York Times (Sept. 8, 2006). Like \"feeding the world\" and biopharmaceutical production before it, genetic engineering for biofuels mainly benefits the biotech industry's public relations image.

• Publisher: Environmental Research Foundation
• Subject: Agribusiness / Biodiesel fuels / Biofuels / Biotechnology / Carbon dioxide / Climate change / Crop yield / Deforestation / Drought / Energy crops / Environmental impact / Ethanol / Food production / Genetic engineering / Green energy / Greenhouse gases / Land use / Oil pollution / Plant breeding / Pollen / Pollution control / Production increases / Salt tolerance / Soybeans / Sugarcane / Taxation / Wildlife