h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

From today, all petrol sold in the UK must contain 2.5% biofuels. This, despite increasing evidence that biofuels are actually more damaging to the environment. More importantly, growing crops to burn in cars means there are less crops available to feed people amidst signs of growing food scarcity in the world in general and the third world in particular. The cost of a loaf of bread has risen 25% in the UK in the last year.

Why has the government elected to go down this route?

On a related issue, the government sees taxes as the way to limit car emissions. Ostensibly this encourages people to shift to cleaner cars, but I suppose the increased rake-off for the government is incidental. Why don't they just announce that all cars *must* meet tight emission standards by a certain date? When faced with an absolute like that, industry always responds. Californian moves in that direction were a major factor in the development in hybrid cars like the Prius.

Why does this government seem to see taxes as the solution to every problem?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347142.stm

It gets worse. The ethanol used to cut our fuel is imported from USA where subsidy junky farmers are double dipping; agricultural subsidy for growing maize and export subsidy.

Meanwhile the land taken out of producing grain for human and animal consumption is pushing commodity prices through the roof.

"This, despite increasing evidence that biofuels are actually more damaging to the environment"

I've not heard about this evidence? What are your sources?

"The cost of a loaf of bread has risen 25% in the UK in the last year."

I was under the impression that that was due to a poor wheat harvest and nothing to do with biofuels whatsoever.

Some people are taking this seriously..

"
UN special rapporteur Jean Ziegler accused the EU of agricultural dumping in Africa.

He said producing biofuels, a key part of the EU's plans to tackle climate change, was a "crime against humanity".

"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7346198.stm

Wonder how long before there are food riots in the US?

"Why does this government seem to see taxes as the solution to every problem?"

It doesn't, there are numerous cases where the government has tackled a problem without resorting to taxes (crime, terrorism etc). Being pernickety aside, governments tend to use increased taxation because a) it increases revenue (well, duh, I wish people would stop pretending that this is some sort of shocker or in some way awful - would you prefer underinvestment? Would you prefer the taxes being raised from a source you don't have the option to avoid or cut down on?) and b) in democracies carrots are preferred to sticks. You claim industry will always change if forced; I agree, but industry has a narrow field of vision and *doesn't want to change* and this government is a bit cowardly towards the CBI and its mates.

Re: biofuels, I found this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/17/climatechange.energy

There seems to be a lot of concern but I want to know what the experts think; much of this concern seems to come from environmental groups and there's a whiff of the GM foods about it all. Does anyone know what the scientific concensus (or debate) is about the use of biofuels?

I remember reading a National Geographic article on biofuels a while back. I can't find the actual article, but there's an interactive thingy which has various stats and numbers and other such exciting things: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/biofuels/biofuels-interactive.

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Well the point of them is to reduce overall CO2 emissions by basically recycling carbon instead of mining it. But it seems to take more energy to produce them than previously thought, so this reason for them doesn't seem to hold up. The scientific consensus is not as strong as the economic consensus though, which is that biofuels are a major factor in rising food prices, and are causing severe harm to the environment.

This article is really good http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015

and so is this one
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10250420

"But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America's reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America's (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year."

(note that prices started rising before last year's harvest: 2006 had a record harvest for cereals and the price went up then too.)

If you stop growing food to grow biofuels, then you produce less food and the price rises. It really is that simple.

Another side-effect is that rising crop prices act as a huge incentive to chop down forests to cash in on the boom in prices. Deforestation causes about 1/6 of CO2 emissions globally, so this is another reason why biofuels are such a bad idea.

That's interesting. It seems cellulose biofuels are based around using waste products from agriculture and that the algae biofuel also uses energy run-off from other industrys. The grown biofuels such as ethanol, though, are more expensive and would use up crop-growing land.

What about hydrogen? Are there any figures on its cost-effectiveness?

Aha, this is one of my pet hates. Ignoring the issue of feeding the hungry for a moment (though this is a valid point) - I'm firmly convinced that biofuels in general are a seriously bad idea. Their carbon efficiency varies - sugar cane is good, maize bad - with some studies suggesting that some crops will release more carbon overall than burning fossil fuels, taking into account land clearance, fertiliser production, transport and processing etc. Diving in gung-ho without any consideration of where the crops are grown would be extremely stupid. There are moves to use waste rather than grow fresh crops, which would be very efficient. If we were only worried about carbon, then probably the best use of land would be reforestation.

From New Scientist (can't link, need login):
"If 10,000 square metres of Brazilian rainforest is cleared to make way for soya beans – which are used to make biodiesel – over 700,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide is released. The saving generated by the resulting biodiesel will not cancel that out for around 300 years, says Fargione. In the case of peat land rainforest in Indonesia, which is being cleared to grow palm oil, the debt will take over 400 years to repay, he says."

Now, consider those figures. The CO2 is released now, adding to the current load and risking hitting one of the 'tipping points'. CO2 might be saved in the distant future - but the half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere is only about 200 years anyway. Indonesia is draining its peat bogs to make palm oil for European cars, a trade that is fully in accordance with Kyoto, and is now the world's third largest emitter as a result. This is a very good example of how not to do it.

By the way, the legislation is European, and I believe the UK has to comply. It's a clear example of government lagging science by several years.

Brazil Amazon deforestation soars
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7206165.stm

Biofuels 'need strict standards'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7259593.stm

"Biofuels have become a highly controversial issue, with claims that the rapid expansion of energy crops could threaten global food security, and add further pressure to sensitive ecosystems including rainforests.

It is also argued that in some cases the benefits to the climate of burning plant material instead of fossil fuels are outweighed by the energy needed to produce and transport biofuels, and by the release of carbon from soils by changes in land use. "

New reasons to be suspicious of ethanol
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10766882

"OFFICIALS in Tampa, Florida, got a surprise recently when a local firm building the state's first ethanol-production factory put in a request for 400,000 gallons (1.5m litres) a day of city water. The request by US Envirofuels would make the facility one of the city's top ten water consumers overnight, and the company plans to double its size. Florida is suffering from a prolonged drought. Rivers and lakes are at record lows and residents wonder where the extra water will come from."

Looking at the effect of fertilisers alone:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19626343.800-is-the-biofuel-dream-over.html

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that between 1 and 2 per cent of nitrogen added to fields gets converted to nitrous oxide, based on direct measurements of emissions from fertilised soils. But nitrogen from fertiliser also gets into water and moves around the environment, continuing to emit nitrous oxide as it goes. To estimate these "indirect" emissions, Crutzen and his colleagues calculated how much nitrogen has built up in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, and estimated how much of this could be attributed to the use of fertilisers.

This suggested that between 3 and 5 per cent of the nitrogen added to the soil in fertilisers ends up in the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. Crucially, that would be enough to negate cuts in CO2 emissions made by replacing fossil fuels. Biodiesel from rapeseed came off worse - the warming caused by nitrous oxide emissions being 1 to 1.7 times as much as the cooling caused by replacing fossil fuels. For maize bioethanol, the range was 0.9 to 1.5. Only bioethanol from sugar cane came out with a net cooling effect, its nitrous oxide emissions causing between 0.5 and 0.9 times as much warming as the cooling due to fossil fuel replacement."

Coincidentally, this piece appeared in the Times today - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3746593.ece

Basically, he makes a call for more globalisation to combat food shortages.

So is this mandating of biofuels in petrol an environmental measure, or something to help out the US?

Incidentally, if the US is no longer going to be flooding the world economy with cheap grain, shouldn't poor countries, being largely agricultural, actually gain from that?

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Nah, in theory it's carbon neutral cos the plants absorb CO2 before we burn it again. Once you add in the energy used to transform plants into petrol (yeah I know it's ethanol) it isn't carbon neutral though.

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I don't know if the US will be exporting much food. If it does, they'll probably *just* undercut the market price to make sure they sell it all. Poor *farmers* will benefit, but most people just eat food, they don't grow it. There have been food riots in a few places already, and govts are starting to put export tariffs on rice and wheat in SE Asia, or just ban the exports altogether.

That is a *bad* thing, because anything that stops farmers making a mint is going to stop them growing more next year, and the year after. There are other ways to keep food prices (as opposed to crop prices) down, and over and over price controls have been shown not to work.

One other thing that's put prices up is demand for meat. In one of those Economist links I posted it says that demand for meat rises as incomes rise. China is doubling its income every 7 years or so, India every 10, and SE Asia is also growing pretty fast. As 8kg of cereals produces 1kg of beef, animal feed is the other major reason why prices are so high. China ate 20kg of meat per person in 1985, now it's over 50kg. I'm pretty sure other developing countries are similar.

George Monbiot had an article about this in the Guardian this morning. Very relevant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/15/food.biofuels
"Credit crunch? The real crisis is global hunger. And if you care, eat less meat"

The world will survive.
Mankind not, I'm afraid.

Alfredo,

There are other possibilities....

http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.aspx?id=91d78997-4921-4fc9-8c11-536dd9e5b6cc

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7347239.stm

Global food system 'must change'

It's all happening today.

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The legilsation referred to in OP it is to help the EU meet its Kyoto targets, so nothing to do with the US. Unfortunately the EU can do this by trading with countries who are 'exempt', so really it has very little to do with the environment either.