Studies Warn Biofuel Crops Could Accentuate Global Warming

Just one month ago, a study conducted by a team of American researchers concluded that there was nothing more environmental-friendly than the biofuel crops, that could reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by 94% and produce five times more energy. New studies however warn that by transforming the various ecosystems into biofuel crop fields would only accentuate the global warming phenomenon rather than reducing it. According to the latest estimations, converting natural ecosystems into biofuel crop fields is likely to release up to 420 times more carbon.

“The land we’re likely to plow up is the land that we’ve had taking up carbon for decades,” said Tim Searchinger, who conducted the experiment along with other scientists, the Washington Post reported. “We can’t get to a result, no matter how heroically we make assumptions on behalf of corn ethanol, where it will actually generate greenhouse-gas benefits,” he added, estimating that 167 years would pass before the biofuel would stop contributing to the climate change.

There are several studies that have been conducted on the matter; one of them, released by a team of researchers at the Princeton University, led by Tim Searchinger, in collaboration with fellow scientists at Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa State University, concludes that the use of corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse emissions in 30 years than gasoline.

Another study conducted by a Nature Conservatory scientist in collaboration with researchers at the University of Minnesota concluded that by converting rainforests, peatlands and grasslands into farms for biofuel crops would significantly increase global warming for decades to come, even centuries. “We’re rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful,” said Jason Hill from the University of Minnesota, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a little frightening to think that something this well intentioned might be very damaging.”

Studies Warn Biofuel Crops Could Accentuate Global Warming

And so the debate continues!

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"Destiny must be shaped and not left to mere chance"..Spencer Collins

Which makes this discussion more political than anything of substance...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

My only issue with this and other articles criticizing biofuels is that it is a generic statement encompassing all types of biofuels. I agree on the points being made about Corn Ethanol and cutting down rainforests in Brazil to put more land under cultivation of sugar cane ethanol.

However, switchgrass and be grown on marginal crop land, it is a perennial native prairie grass that is drought, insect and disease resistant. It does not require row plants or multiple passes on the crop land at the same level as corn. Corn requires subsoiling, tilling, fertilizing, row planting, insecticide spraying, harvesting, tilling crop wastes under, and rotating crop fields as the soil is spent. Then the harvest needs to be trucked to ethanol plants. Corn is a multi step process at the plant whereas switchgrass comes to the plant like baled hay. Switchgrass puts down deep roots and improves top soil structure. It grows to 8ft tall, yeilds the highest tonnage per acre for ethanol and because it is perrential it provides wildlife habitate.

The new breakthrough is biofuel generated by algae. The pilot program in Arizona has an algae "greenhouse" attached to a traditional power plant. The Plant air emission CO2 is pumped into the greenhouses. Algae uses CO2 and emits clean emmisions. In the process, there are daily harvests of biofuel. This is NOT in an of itself a fossil fuel intensive process.

In contrast, Corn ethanol is basically corporate welfare. If it didn't get government subsidies, it would not be cost competitive. The change from MTBE fuel additive to ethanol and the subsidies are making billionaire AgriCorps even richer as they have put land the equivalent size of California under corn ethanol production.