Reshared post from +Jack Stanley
Interesting article on biofuels in general – the two papers are available as links – lower energy, screws the consumer and not that good for the environment – just who benefited – the usual corporate ag industry and some bundlers who jumped on the subsidies and loans – long gone now.
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Sugar cane ethanol biofuel produces 10 times the pollution of gasoline and diesel « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax
Indur Goklany calculated that biofuels policies killed nearly 200000 people in 2010 alone. That was before this study showed things may be worse than we suspected. Brazil is the largest sugar cane eth…
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There's also the carbon cost of agricultural inputs to consider.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-03/brazil-will-still-need-to-import-crop-nutrients-as-domestic-supply-rises.html
Quote: The country doesn’t have enough natural gas, the raw material for nitrogen fertilizers, or reserves of potash and phosphorus rock to meet internal demand… Fertilizer use for sugar cane will overtake corn “in a few years,” the director said.
Fossil fuels are the worst because they release new Carbon that would otherwise stay trapped underground for millions of years… However, it does not make much sense for us to use petroleum based fertilizers to grow corn in the Midwest and have all that waste wash down the Mississippi River to Create a giant Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico… There's certainly lots of room for improvement with bio-fuels.
Localizing production is the key, +Sophie Wrobel, agree with you completely. But we need to find alternatives to sugar canes, sugar beets maybe, or possibly using yeast (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718073814.htm)?
[Added:] In Sweden we use wheat to produce ethanol, and to some extent forestry bi-products to produce methanol or bio-diesel. But with limited success so far, production still way too expensive. Personally I favor bio-gas, best developed in the western parts of Sweden.
I think the point of the article was more to highlight the dirty practices behind feul production, not the effect of burning fuel. That's where the offset comes into play , the same as with any other industry that has been offshored to take advantage of more lenient ecological restrictions.. Now, if we can localize production of fuel sources, that would be a big improvement over what is currently going on.
The article is a satire, isn't it? I mean, this can not be for real:
«If global policies devalue concentrated energy underground and prize diffuse photosynthetic sources of energy above ground, will we protect and retain dirty rocks deep below the surface at the expense of biodiversity and health of plants and people? It seems so.»
By the way, does she include in the calculations the products fixed from the atmosphere while growing the canes?
Either way, producing ethanol in a non-environmental friendly way is not acceptable. Nor is landgrabbing.
If we shall pursue a bioethanol, biomethanol – or more preferrably biogas – development, we have to produce our fuel much more locally.
This Stanford report from 2007 claimed far more modest results when comparing the ethanol blend E85 to gasoline.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/april18/ethanol-041807.html
Quote: "We found that E85 vehicles reduce atmospheric levels of two carcinogens, benzene and butadiene, but increase two others—formaldehyde and acetaldehyde," Jacobson said. "As a result, cancer rates for E85 are likely to be similar to those for gasoline. However, in some parts of the country, E85 significantly increased ozone, a prime ingredient of smog."
I doubt alchol burns much dirtier than gasoline. And envirenmental impact during transport and distribution ought to be comparable too. Maybe that emissions during production are bigger for say ethanol than gasoline?
But gasoline and diesel have a CO2 implact of 100% for the fuel itself, plus the impact of production, transport and distribution. Ethanol have 0% for the fuel itself, plus what's caused during production, transport and distribution. Can ethanol really have a bigger CO2 impact than gasoline and diesel? I doubt it.
alcohol burns dirtier than gasoline? who funded the study?