Growing palm oil for biodiesel not only not only contributes to the deforestation of tropical peatlands, but can end up generating as much as 2,000 per cent more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report concludes that we need to take a far more sophisticated approach to ensure that biofuels are developed in an environmentally friendly way. That requires governments to fit biofuels into an overall energy, climate, land-use, water and agricultural strategy to make sure that society, the economy and the environment as a whole all benefit.
Some first-generation biofuels, such as ethanol from sugar cane, can actually have positive impacts in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the report found. As currently practiced in a country like Brazil, it can lead to emissions reductions of between 70 per cent and well over 100 per cent when substituted for petrol.
However, the way in which biofuels are produced matters in determining whether they are leading to more or less greenhouse gas emissions, and the report identifies conditions under which production of biofuels does lead to higher emissions.
For example, biodiesel from palm oil produces high greenhouse gas emissions, mainly as a result of carbon releases from the soils and land. However, the report notes, biofuels from palm oil or soya beans can deliver a positive contribution to greenhouse gas emissions if the plants are instead grown on abandoned or degraded land.
The report, “Towards Sustainable Production and Use of Resources: Assessing Biofuels,” is based on a detailed review of published research up to mid-2009 as well as the input of independent experts worldwide. It was prepared to help governments and industry make sustainable choices in an area has recently become deeply divided while triggering sharply polarised views.
“Biofuels are neither a panacea nor a pariah but like all technologies they represent both opportunities and challenges,” said Achim Steiner, UN Undersecretary General and executive director of UNEP. “Therefore a more sophisticated debate is urgently needed which is what this first report by the panel is intended to provide.”
Steiner continued, “On one level, it is a debate about which energy crops to grow and where and also about the way different countries and biofuel companies promote and manage the production and conversion of plant materials for energy purposes — some clearly are climate friendly while others are highly questionable.”
5 Comments
Sidney Clouston
All energy can be based on Solar input. Biomass is by
me considered to be a form of stored Solar Energy that used elements. In Sustainable Rural Development
plans for Africa and other places we want to use the
Bioenergy in sustainable forestry. Wood waste and the agricultural waste can be used in Gasification.
Plantations of Oil Seed tees that employ the poor is
a Millennium Development Goal that is Poverty relief and directly address the Global Climate Change. One
planting by a man or woman will yield decades of CO2
sequestration. Renewable Biofuel includes Switchgrass that also sequesters CO2 below the ground
and adds Soil Organic Carbon, that in a rotation of food crop and cash crop (you can buy food with cash)
will benefit the Poor. Payback is when the Poor have
money and buy local and imported goods and services.
Uyi
Ted, can you tell me the main energy source used for growing other oil crops? I don’t have to ask the question about the fossil energy used in processing other oil seed to biodiesel, because same energy balance arises in soybean oil conversion to biodiesel.
Mahood
This study is very flawed, to begin there is very little palm biodiesel on the market, it is currently .01% of available biodiesel. To date the vast majority of palm oil comes from old growth plantations. Soy based biodiesels are far worse and are the most prevalent due to the agricultural cycle necessary to produce the bean. But all of these things considered are of little impact compared to the wasteful principles of how commerce is conducted. We are still relying on 19th century technologies to run advanced societies. If the worlds efforts are focused on local green implementation we can attack the issues far faster. In India you see these advances today, this study is as bogus as Al Gore. Only the true students of change will make the difference. Peace to the World
Ted
I do not understand why governments are not taking actions in terms of pollution and other emissions.
Global warming is spoken in News channels and in big-Industry conferences. I have never heard or seen initiatives taken by countries to control.
A recent study tells that the process is giving back more than four times the energy that it takes to make biodiesel.
A research from the University of Idaho and U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that for every unit of fossil energy needed to produce biodiesel, the return is 4.5 units of energy.
This energy-invest and energy-return ratio is “energy balance.”
Biodiesel made from soybean oil has a high energy balance and the point to be noted is that the main energy source used to grow soybeans is solar.
We should take this into account when considering biodiesel’s greenhouse gas reductions.
Biodiesel is a clean-burning renewable fuel for diesel engines. It improves air quality and creates green-collar jobs.
Regards,
Ted
Randy Dutton
Aerosol pollutants should be our biggest concern.
When will environmentalists realize they’re looking at the wrong issue, and backing the wrong solutions.
Landmark study re-models soot impact in climate change, rivals carbon
US researchers have remodeled soot emissions, concluding that soot is causing nearly 60 percent of the global warming impact of CO2, and because soot has a shorter lifecycle than carbon emissions (that can last for up to 100 years), tackling soot offers a “faster win” against climate change than carbon strategies.
The article, in Nature Geoscience, concluded that previous soot models had not previously accounted for the absorption of reflected sunlight. In possible confirmation of the data, significantly higher soot concentrations are found in the Arctic than Antarctic, and observations in the northern polar region show higher ice-melting rates not previously explained by the carbon emission model of climate change.
“Between 25% and 35% of black carbon in the global atmosphere comes from China and India, emitted from the burning of wood and cow dung in household cooking and through the use of coal to heat homes. Countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely heavily on diesel fuel for transportation also contribute large amounts,” commented nature.com on the sources of soot emissions.
UN Climate Change panelists urge focus on bio-char as climate urgency escalates
In Poland, panelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated urgent action on climate change mitigation, saying that reductions in SO2 concentrations, which have a cooling effect on the planet although causing acid rain, have unmasked new dangers from black carbon that is trapping heat in the atmosphere and, after falling top the ground, is reducing the reflection of heat by ice and snow. The delegates advocated urgent attention to the potential of biochar as a carbon trapping strategy. Biochar, produced from biomass via a fast pyrolysis process that also yields gas and renewable fuel oils, was profiled last week in the Digest as a carbon-reducing strategy when the renewable carbon-rich substance is buried in the soil.
Today in Biofuels Digest discussion groups: “The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar”.
At LinkedIn:
Arturo Velez, CEO and Founder, Agave Project: “The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification proposes that the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) recognize practical efforts to improve soils’ ability to take up and store carbon as a greenhouse gas abatement technology, and include them in the Clean Development Mechanism, currently the main financing and technology transfer vehicle for climate change mitigation projects involving both developing and developed nations. The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar,’ a form of charcoal used extensively by Amazonian Indian cultures as a soil enhancement for centuries, as one means of doing so.
Researchers find that reducing soot, ozone and HFCs, whle adding biochar, will push back catastrophic climate change by 40 years
In Washington, researchers led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina have found that the “dangerous threshold of 2?C warming” can be pushed back 40 years by reducing non-CO2 climate change agents such as black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons, as well as expanding bio-sequestration through biochar production.
The scientists are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that a binding legal agreement to cut HFC—the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty—has already delayed climate change by seven to 12 years.
A fast-action strategy presented in the paper is reducing black carbon soot, an aerosol produced largely from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuels and biofuels, and from biomass burning. It is now considered to be the second or third largest contributor to climate change.
Black carbon is responsible for almost 50 percent of the 1.9?C increase in warming of the Arctic since 1890 as well as significant melting of the Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia, providing fresh water to billions of people. Researchers consider black carbon an ideal target for achieving quick mitigation because it only remains in the atmosphere a few days to a few weeks and can be reduced by expanding the use of diesel particulate filters for vehicles and clean-burning or solar cookstoves to replace those burning dung and wood. With indoor air pollution killing 1.6 million people a year, global action to cut soot emissions would reap major benefits for both public health and climate.
Ground level or tropospheric ozone doubles as a major climate forcer and health hazard. It also lowers crop yields. A recent study reported that ozone’s damage to crop yields in 2000 resulted in an economic loss of up to $26 billion annually. It is formed by “ozone precursor” gases such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, methane, and other hydrocarbons, many of which can be reduced by improving the efficiency of industrial combustion processes. Reducing tropospheric ozone by 50 percent could buy another decade’s worth of time for countries to start making substantial cuts in CO2.
Biochar is one of the few promising “carbon-negative” strategies that can drawdown existing concentrations of CO2. The fine-grained charcoal product is a stable form of carbon, produced from pyrolysis, that can be plowed into soil where it remains for hundreds to thousands of years, also serving as a natural fertilizer.
• Bio-char from pyrolysis the fastest route to draw down CO2 to safe levels, say expertsIn Washington, Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, speaking at the Climate Change & Security At Copenhagen conference at Washington, outlines t…
• Landmark study re-models soot impact in climate change, rivals carbonUS researchers have remodeled soot emissions, concluding that soot is causing nearly 60 percent of the global warming impact of CO2, and because soot has a shorter lifecycle than carbon emissions (tha…
• UN Climate Change panelists urge focus on bio-char as climate urgency escalatesIn Poland, panelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated urgent action on climate change mitigation, saying that reductions in SO2 concentrations, which have a cooling effect on the p…
• Time Magazine, The Independent (UK) profile pyrolysis of biomass into biochar as CO2-reducing strategyPyrolysis and biochar have surfaced as climate change-fighting techniques in separate reports in TIME and The Independent (U.K.). Both articles point to the rich, dark “terra prete” soils found in the…
• Biofuels Digest Special Report on Gasification & Pyrolysis: UN Climate Change Panel and bio-charPanelists at the UN Climate Change meeting in Poznan advocated biochar, produced from biomass via a fast pyrolysis process that also yields gas and renewable fuel oils. According to kirhagen,com, �…
• Today in Biofuels Digest discussion groups: “The agency singles out the use of ‘biochar”.At LinkedIn: Arturo Velez, CEO and Founder, Agave Project: “The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification proposes that the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) …
– from Biofuels Digest
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