Comments: Leading biofuels wreak environmental havoc

Yes, to break the link between biodiesel feedstocks and food products;
Jatropha is the cheapest and viable option
Just we have to ensure that
Jatropha crop is planted in the right way and
with due care to what’s possible in terms of sustainable farming techniques

Abhishek Maharshi
Centre for Jatropha Promotion & Biodiesel
www.jatrophaworld.org

a. maharshi CJP

Unfortunately, the authors are misinformed about ethanol made from sugar cane in Brazil and do a great disservice by publishing a report where they haven't done their homework.

Sugar cane is the best feedstock for making ethanol - it's energy balance is at approximately 9:1 as opposed to corn, which is 1.6:1.

Besides, the Brazilians are not clearly not burning down the Amazon Forest to plant sugar cane.

In the first place the principal sugar cane growing areas in Brazil, the interior of the State of Sao Paulo, the Minas Gerais triangel, and the State of Parana, are over 1000 miles away from the Amazon. Secondly, the country of Brazil has outlines areas where sugar cane will not be permitted to be grown, including the Amazon and the Patanal. Thirdly, the Amazon does not present the right climatic conditions to grow sugar cane for ethanol.

Finally, Brazil is phasing out the burning of sugar cane biomass in the field prior to cutting, and also phasing out human labor to harvest sugar cane. Over the next several years, we will see a shift from human labor to mechanization as well as by 2017, the end of sugar cane biomass burning in the field.

Nathalie Hoffman

Clarification: The authors don't argue that the Amazon is being cut down for sugar plantations or that sugar is not a highly efficient ethanol feedstock. Instead it is suggested that large-scale sugar plantations are displacing small farmers who are then moving into Amazon lands. A similar effect is seen from soy cultivation in the cerrado. So the impacts are indirect. That said sugar is a far more productive biofuel feedstock than corn, rapeseed, or soy. This means that less land need be cleared to produce a unit of sugar-dervied ethanol than other energy crops.

Rhett

A much more efficient way to utilize biomass is to burn it in cogeneration power plants. That's the most energy efficient utilization pathway, by far. Liquid biofuels, at least first generation fuels, are quite inefficient.

A transition to electric transport would go a far way in supporting such a more efficient use. However, that's only a long-term prospect.

But on the other hand, it's time conservationists start to admit that there are hundreds of millions of hectares of low value *non-forest* land that can be used safely for biofuels.

The science is very clear on this. It would be nice if conservationists were to accept and report these findings too, once in a while.

Of course, it's their job to focus on conservation areas; but they should look at the bigger picture and encourage safe bioenergy production, certainly when it serves their cause: many bioenergy concepts actually boost biodiversity, restore wildlife habitats, prevent deforestation and combat desertification and erosion.

Mongabay is one of the few resources understanding that there are other, far less threatening ways to produce bioenergy. And precisely because it acknowledges this, its focus on areas that must definitely be protected, is all the more pragmatic and credible. It basically says: look, there are smarter and better ways to produce bioenergy, so let's simply stop taking the easiest, most destructive route, and instead focus on responsible biomass production so that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

Likewise, the scientists of the Science article are simply quite pragmatic: they point at the inefficiency of first generation biofuels as they are currently produced and the threats they constitute for forest areas that are many times more valuable. That's a much needed exercise and it can't be repeated enough. The bioenergy community acknowledges this, and instead stresses that there is more than enough opportunity to produce highly efficient, environmentally okay biomass. It will cost a fraction more, but that's something consumers must be willing to put up with as long as there are no economically viable ways to protect forests.

Jonas, Biopact

Jonas

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