Afrodiesel

Biomassexchange.com : bioenergy feedstock trading starts

2006-02-10T08:19:00.000-08:00

The Biomamassexchange will become the world's trading floor for bioenergy feedstocks and biomass. The website biomassexchange.com is not yet online.
Biomass trading promises to become a big market. As there are many feedstocks for bioenergy spread all over the world, from small farmer's residues to wood chips from forestry activities, etc...
Biomass trading is set to become a vital instrument for the bioenergy revolution.

Afrodiesel, the basic idea

2005-01-31T14:55:00.000-08:00

The world is facing a hydrocarbon crisis on several fronts. We all know the problems:

1. there's a broad consensus that Global Warming (environmental costs of oil) is very real, and that the main culprit is hydrocarbon emissions; reasonable and enlightened governments understand that something must be done before it is too late
2. hydrocarbon emissions are also carcinogenic (health and social costs of oil) and lead to all kinds of health risks
3. some predictions show that Peak Oil (which embodies the economic costs of oil) is arriving sooner than we think. We may begin to experience increasing oil prices, shocks and financial crises once mainstream investors and industry acknowledges that Peak Oil is real. Moreover, our dependency on oil from the Middle East will only increase in the coming decades, aggravating the effects of peak oil.
4. This dependency on oil from a small group of nations has major geopolitical consequences which result in War, Destruction & Terror (political and humanitarian costs of oil), as the recent illegal invasion of Iraq demonstrates.
5. During the entire 20th century, oil barons have spent billions on maintaining a social status quo based on turning people into uncritical oil dependent consumer slaves. This system, known as Carboncapitalism (social costs of oil) is based on social inequality and authoritarianism.

And so the search for alternative automotive fuels is on, but some options (like hydrogen) will prove to be too difficult to introduce on a large, world changing scale.
One of the potential alternative biofuels is biodiesel, which is renewable, burns relatively clean, can be used in today's existing petro-infrastrucure (from cars to gas stations), and diversifies the portfolio of oil sources. So far, nothing new.

However, the adoption of biodiesel on a global scale poses some tremendous challenges that haven't been explored in depth. Governments are beginning to take biodiesel production seriously, but they think from within a purely national perspective, and omit crucial factors, like the tradeoff between food and fuel production.
When we start talking about biodiesel as an international commodity (like petroleum), we are facing a whole new game. In short, we must face the challenges that go with widescale biodiesel production with clarity and with an open mind. We must be just as critical about biodiesel, as we are about petroleum.

More and more people are beginning to think of Africa as the new Walhalla for biodiesel crop cultivation. For several good reasons. Hence, the new hype (supported by the EU) has been dubbed "Afrodiesel".
The main arguments in favor of Afrodiesel are:

Palm oil, the most promising biodiesel fuel when it comes to yield (not me in the picture)

1. The continent has tremendous unused agricultural potential, not only a favorable climate, but gigantic tracts of unused, high quality land, where very high yielding crops can be grown
2. The production of Afrodiesel will generate an income for millions of farmers, lifting them out of poverty and launching them into a progressive spiral towards more prosperity
3. Europe and other importers of Afrodiesel will have diversified their portfolio of oil resources, making them less dependent on oil from the Middle East (the Holy Grail for all governments)
4. Wide scale biodiesel adoption and cultivation will diminish Greenhouse Gas Emissions and get rid of a big part of the hidden costs of petroleum fuels.

The Jatropha tree, one of the most environmentally friendly oil producing crops

The main arguments against Afrodiesel are:
1. The possibility that mega plantations will use up land to grow crops for cars, instead of crops for food
2. Mass cultivation of biodiesel crops will destroy some of the worlds last remaining ecosystems, rainforests in particular
3. Biodiesel crop cultivation can never be sustainable, it will always (partly) rely on petrochemical agricultural techniques (using petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides), and it will deplete soils further
4. Moreover, it will require a lot more irrigation, which depletes already scarce water resources
5. Big oil and industry will dominate the sector and predate on it, once it proves to be a profitable one
6. African governments are corrupt and will get access to a new source of cash, with which to fund their power networks even more.

These are just some basic arguments in a very complex discussion.
In this blog, I try to get a better grip on the debate. The ultimate goal is to start up a grassroots network of biodiesel producers in Africa, but only when I have explored the issue in depth, and only if it makes sense.

It would be too easy to just follow the crowds and jump in on the hype, as so many well intentioned individuals, organizations and companies are doing. It's about time we all grow up and think before we act.

Coupling Palm Oil Production to Rural Electrification (e.g. in Congo)

2005-01-31T14:47:00.000-08:00

This is a good idea: couple palm oil production to rural electrification.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is such a gigantic country with such a dispersed population that a decentralized electrification option is needed. You simply can't build a grid that large.
If we're producing palm oil anyways, why not provide electricity to the villages who put all the work in it?
It takes a (modified) diesel generator and a small installation to transform the palmoil into biodiesel.

Only 4% of subsaharan Africa's rural population has access to electricity. See more on rural electrification as a legitimate but neglected development goal, here.

Broadening the Project: Green Community Based Transportation

2005-01-31T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm taking this entire Afrodiesel thing step by step.

Let's try to broaden it by researching a community based transportation project for communities in Congo, Angola and Mozambique (countries I know a bit). Let's brainstorm.

-connect local biodiesel production to local community owned transport network
-I know the Congolese entrepreneurs who buy old cars here in Europe; let's go ask some questions
-I know how desperate the state of transport in Congo and Mozambique is
-let's buy old diesel cars from Europe, let's set up a biodiesel conversion network in Congo
-fuel shortages and sudden price rises in Kinshasa have upset many people, many times

Lula to Begin Mass Production of Biodiesel for Export

2005-01-29T13:49:00.000-08:00

Brazil to export vegetable oil-based biodiesel, says President Lula da Silva

Date Posted: 12/14/2004

The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs has this story [cached], as well as Soytech.com.

EFE NEWS SERVICE via NewsEdge Corporation : President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday that Brazil had become one of the first countries to mass-produce biodiesel fuel made with vegetable oil and will soon export the product.

"Today we can smile and say that Brazil was one of the first to produce an alternative, less-polluting fuel that is generating more employment with a technology our country dominates - biodiesel," Lula said on his biweekly radio show.

"We will have something to be used not only within Brazil to generate jobs ... (and) riches, and to distribute income, but also a fuel to export," he added.

According to Lula, environmentally friendly fuels will be in great demand worldwide after the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, mandating all nations to decrease emissions of gases that contribute to global warming, especially those emitted by automobiles.

Four days ago, the government established regulations for the mass production, distribution and marketing of biodiesel fuel throughout the country.

According to the regulation, distributors are to begin adding a small percentage (2 percent) of biodiesel to each liter of petroleum-derived diesel fuel they sell beginning in February 2005.

Biodiesel, a fuel that pollutes less because it is natural in origin and biodegradable, is part of the Brazilian government's policy to promote the production of alternative fuels derived from the oils of vegetables like the castor-oil plant, palm, sunflower, soy and dende (orange palm oil).

To guarantee supplies, the government is offering incentives for the mass cultivation of oil-producing plants in different parts of the country, where some private projects are also already underway.

On his radio program, Lula said he hoped the Brazilian automobile industry would soon begin manufacturing vehicles that run exclusively on biodiesel, just as it already produces cars fueled by alcohol made from sugar cane, another alternative source of energy.

Lula added that the program would promote the development of arid regions in the northeast, where castor-oil plants and palms are already being grown.

"The government made a decision to develop Brazil's poorest regions. I have no doubt that, in a few years, we will be very happy because northeastern Brazil will finally stop being the country's poorest area," Lula said of the region in which he was born.

Mining and Energy Minister Dilma Rousseff, who appeared on the radio program as a guest, said plantations with crops that produce oil will become more important than oil fields.

"The time will come when all trucks, tractors, transportation systems and vehicles will run on diesel produced not in oil wells but on plantations," she insisted.

Rousseff also said that the project would allow Brazil to save millions of dollars on imported diesel, one of the fuels the country purchases in the largest quantities abroad.

"In 2005, we probably would have imported 4 billion liters of diesel. Now we're going to use 800 million liters of biodiesel produced here to reduce imports," she explained.

<<>>

http://www.soyatech.com/bluebook/news/viewarticle.ldml?a=20041214-6%20

Portrait of Rudolf Diesel, the visionary

2005-01-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Rudolf Diesel
Born Mar 18 1858 - Died Sep 29 1913

Internal-Combustion Engine
Patent Number(s) 608,845

Inducted 1976
Though best known for his invention of the pressure-ignited heat engine that bears his name, the French-born Rudolf Diesel was also an eminent thermal engineer, a connoisseur of the arts, a linguist, and a social theorist. Diesel's inventions have three points in common: They relate to heat transference by natural physical processes or laws; they involve markedly creative mechanical design; and they were initially motivated by the inventor's concept of sociological needs. Diesel originally conceived the diesel engine as a facility, readily adaptable in size and costs and utilizing locally available fuels, to enable independent craftsmen and artisans better to endure the powered competition of large industries that then virtually monopolized the predominant power source-the oversized, expensive, fuel-wasting steam engine.

Invention Impact
His engines were used to power pipelines, electric and water plants, automobiles and trucks, and marine craft, and soon after were used in applications including mines, oil fields, factories, and transoceanic shipping.

Inventor Bio
During 1885 Diesel set up his first shop-laboratory in Paris and began his 13-year ordeal of creating his distinctive engine. At Augsburg, on August 10, 1893, Diesel's prime model, a single 10-foot iron cylinder with a flywheel at its base, ran on its own power for the first time. Diesel spent two more years at improvements and on the last day of 1896 demonstrated another model with the spectacular, if theoretical, mechanical efficiency of 75.6 percent, in contrast to the then-prevailing efficiency of the steam engine of 10 percent or less. Although commercial manufacture was delayed another year and even then begun at a snail's pace, by 1898 Diesel was a millionaire from franchise fees in great part international.

Monsanto talks about biodiesel

2005-01-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

The Biodiesel Revolution

Consumption of vegetable oil is not an uncommon idea. Millions, perhaps billions, do it everyday. McDonald's has been selling us on the concept for decades. But try selling someone a truck that runs on vegetable oil, and they'll likely think you're from the same company that tried to sell us a digital clock that runs on a raw potato.

But these trucks already exist in fleets-along with boats, school buses, military vehicles, generators and countless other engines-and have since 1900. They are the brainchild of Rudolph Diesel, who fully intended for his diesel engine to run on vegetable oil and animal fat.

Truth be known, these engines don't exactly run on the stuff found in your Fry Daddy. That oil is converted into biodiesel through a fairly simple process known to chemists as 'transesterification.' With minimal modification, any diesel engine can run on 100 percent biodiesel, which, unlike petroleum diesel, is replenishable, clean and safe. The benefits of biodiesel over all petroleum-based fuels make it appear to be a miracle fuel. So why haven't we been using it for the past century?

"Mainly because of the oil industry," says John Long, president of SunFuels, which will soon be producing biodiesel in Northern Colorado. "After Diesel was murdered-or however he died-the oil industry modified his engine to run off of diesel, a bi-product of producing gas. For every one gallon of gas produced, there's two gallons of diesel."

A Poor Boy's Dream

The man whose name is so closely tied with his engine and the fuel on which it commonly runs never intended the diesel engine to run almost exclusively on petroleum diesel. When he debuted the "diesel" engine at the 1900 Paris Exposition, where he took the highest prize, the Grand Prix, he ran the engine on 100 percent peanut oil.

Diesel's engine successfully solved the two problems he detested most with then-modern engines. Raised by a strict father in a financially unstable family, Diesel learned to detest waste. During an apprenticeship with a steam engine company, he witnessed how inefficient steam engines are, with nine-tenths of the fuel's energy wasted.

Diesel also wanted to create an engine that could run on a variety of fuels-kerosene and alcohol, for instance. With such an engine, people could use whatever fuel was readily available locally, empowering more isolated communities. Farmers often had trouble acquiring coal and petroleum in the farm belt, but vegetable oil was usually available, since most of the world's cultures grow something from which oil can be extracted.

"The Diesel engine can be fed with vegetable oils and would help considerably in the development of agriculture of the countries which use it," Diesel said.

The benefits of the diesel engine were never fully utilized, however. Sales were good in Europe, but in America, the land of plenty, there was little need for a multiple-fuel engine. And when Diesel was found floating in the English Channel, he was financially broke and mentally unstable, having been committed once for "nervous exhaustion" and violent headaches. Many believe that Diesel was pushed from the ship by either oil interests or a military tactic. At the time, the French navy had converted to diesel, and he was busy selling the English on the idea. Evidence points to suicide, but either way, the oil interests had their way.

After Diesel's death, the engine was modified to run best on petroleum diesel. Narrower fuel lines were used, disallowing the more viscous vegetable oil from flowing smoothly. While still efficient, Diesel's dream engine lost most of its versatility, a possibility Diesel may have foreseen.

"The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he said in 1911, "but such oils may become in the course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present."

Diesel's observations in 1911 remained true for the greater part of the twentieth century, but it now appears the time has come for veggie-fuels.

A Biodiesel Boost

"We are at the mercy of OPEC and other overseas oil producers. When they want to strangle the U.S. economy, all they have to do is turn off the spigot. Among other things, we need to look at increasing domestic energy production and reducing our reliance on foreign oil."-Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald (R-IL), July 7, 2000

According to a Department of Energy report, production of petroleum oil in the U.S. peaked in 1970, and today the majority of our oil is imported, while we scour our countryside for more. Such a dependence on foreign oil puts our economy in a precarious position.

With a third of our economy directly related to transportation, a shift in oil supply could have far-reaching, catastrophic consequences. And a look at the stability of the areas where we are getting our oil-oil strikes in Venezuela, our fourth largest supplier, and not-so-America-friendly Middle East countries like Iraq-shows potential for disaster. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, Americans spent $33 billion a year (a tax not added at the pump) between 1980-1990 for our military to secure oil. And oil has been the aphrodisiac for relations with unlikely partners like Saudi Arabia. Such threats to our economy make Americans uneasy.

As with most trends, many European countries recognized this weakness years ago and have been building an infrastructure to produce biodiesel since the late '70s. Europe's now the world's largest producer with 74 biodiesel plants and over 1500 biodiesel stations with prices equal or lesser than diesel fuel due to heavy taxation on petroleum fuels and biodiesel exemption.

In 1992, U.S. policymakers began to follow suit and passed the Energy Policy Act (EPAct), which required companies with fleets of at least 50 vehicles weighing 8500 pounds or more to acquire alternative fuel vehicles. To comply, these companies had to spend money on new vehicles when they already had vehicles that ran fine on diesel. Some fleets-like the New Jersey Highway Department and the U.S. Postal Service-were running their diesel trucks on biodiesel with little modification. So, in 1998, EPAct was amended to include biodiesel. The provision allowed fleets to earn one alternative vehicle purchase credit for every 450 gallons of biodiesel consumed in at least a 20 percent biodiesel/20 percent diesel blend, known as B20.

With three executive orders between 1998-2000, President Clinton further promoted the use of biofuels by setting specific goals for all the federal fleets to reduce petroleum consumption by twenty percent by 2005. Today, Congress is considering tax incentives similar to those in Europe.

The results of this legislative boost were almost immediately obvious. Between 1999 and 2000, biodiesel use in major fleets grew exponentially, while quality standards were set for commercial sales. In 2000, biodiesel also became the only alternative fuel to pass the EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency) Tier I and Tier II Health Effects Testing under the Clean Air Act. Other bio-fuels, like ethanol, have only passed Tier I.

Currently, a number of states are also considering or passing legislation promoting the use of biodiesel. Some states, like Minnesota and Kansas, have passed laws requiring either all or the vast majority of diesel consumed to be blended with at least two percent biodiesel. Other states, like Hawaii and Montana, are taking the initiative to offer tax incentives while federal incentives are pending.

While unstable foreign markets for petroleum certainly, in part, cause this slew of legislation promoting biodiesel, other factors are also driving the push. A surplus of vegetable oil has sent prices down, hurting an already struggling agricultural economy. Farming lobbyists have been touting biodiesel's potential to boost this sector. According to the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), rumored to be comprised mainly of soy farmers, even the slightest shift to biodiesel consumption would send significant waves through the agriculture economy. One percent of the diesel market using a one percent blend (B1) could increase the price of soybeans from $0.05 to $0.09 per bushel, yielding a total return to soybean farmers of $125 to $250 million a year, according to a 1999 NBB report.

In light of this, provisions were made in this year's Farm Bill, promoting production of bio-based fuels. From 2003-2006, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture will reimburse producers who make products, other than food or feed, considered to be bio-based. The bill contains the stipulation that, in order to receive the incentive yearly, production must increase yearly.

Got Clean Air?

Quite often economic benefits are granted more weight than other equally beneficial features. Whereas other alternative energy sources-wind power and solar power, electric cars, etc.-may be beneficial to the environment, they will not likely become the status quo without economic benefits attached. Plus, the means to produce some of these alternatives are just as harmful to our environment as the fuels they intend to replace. This is where biodiesel wins over environmentalists as well as capitalists.

Biodiesel has gone through a $2.2 million dollar testing regimen at the EPA and has passed with flying colors. According to the EPA, diesel fuel exhaust contains polycyclic organic matter (POM) that can harm the reproductive, developmental, immunological and hormone systems of humans and wildlife. Use of a two percent biodiesel blend (B2) would displace 700 million gallons of diesel and largely reduce cancerous impacts of POM.

Biodiesel use is also part of the life cycle, converting oxygen to carbon dioxide, which the oil-producing plant then uses and converts back to oxygen. It is also shown by the EPA to emit 44 percent less carbon monoxide-a contributor to global warming-than diesel, and particulate matter emission, a cause of cancer and lung disease, is 40 to 50 percent lower. While smog causing hydrocarbons are 68 percent lower for biodiesel than petroleum diesel, nitrogen oxides, another cause of smog, may increase. But the lack of sulfur in biodiesel allows for the use of nitrogen oxide control technologies not available for diesel.

The EPA now requires that 97 percent of sulfur emissions, the primary cause of acid rain, be eliminated by 2006. Problem is, diesel without sulfur is very dry, and without the lubricity provided by sulfur, diesel engines don't run very well. Biodiesel, with an extremely high lubricity, is a prime candidate for a sulfur-free diesel additive. One percent biodiesel blend improves lubricity by 65 percent.

Biodiesel is also non-toxic, or at least less toxic than table salt. And biodiesel biodegrades four times faster than diesel, so oil spills are more easily managed. Storage and transportation are also non-issues, since biodiesel has a much longer, more stable shelf-life compared to diesel, and the point at which it ignites is double that of diesel. Tests have been done during which lit matches were thrown into vats of biodiesel, and propane torches directly pointed at it, yet the biodiesel didn't light.

Plus, it smells good.

Fuel from the Sun

"I'd like to see you try this with a diesel engine," John Long says as he bends down to smell the exhaust from his 1982 Volkswagen Westphalia, a diesel-of course-affectionately named Amelia. "It smells like French fries."

He goes on to say that, prior to Yellowstone National Park deciding to fuel vehicles and generate power with biodiesel, they were concerned the smell would attract bears. In response, Montana's Department of Environmental Quality tested the emissions on bears, showing that bears apparently don't like the smell.

Long and a handful of other entrepreneurs comprising SunFuels plan to ride the biodiesel revolution into commercial success by building the largest biodiesel processing plant in America-right here in our region. SunFuels' plant will begin producing ten million gallons of biodiesel a year in 2004, increasing by ten million gallons a year-and taking advantage of Farm Bill credits-until they reach their peak at thirty million a year in 2006, the last year for credits. Their processor will also be the only one in the country equipped to produce biodiesel from a variety of feedstocks, including recycled vegetable oil and animal fats. This allows them to shift production based on market costs.

SunFuels now has a thorough business plan, an office and, most importantly, investors, but a little over a year ago it was still a dream.

Long began experimenting with biodiesel early last spring with equipment he bought for $50. He began by collecting recycled deep-fryer oil from local restaurants, which will pay for this service, and converting it into biodiesel to feed Amelia. After dozens of road trips, including a couple cross-country, his faith in the miracle fuel grew, and he began to assemble a team to form SunFuels.

Along with biodiesel, SunFuels plans on selling byproducts of biodiesel production, like glycerin. Another appealing thing about biodiesel is that all byproducts can be used; nothing is wasted. Glycerin, if purified to over 99 percent and made kosher, can be sold in bulk on the global market for a nice price ($4/gallon), offsetting biodiesel costs. Biodiesel can also be sold in spray bottles for use as a solvent and a fuel additive, among other things.

"We're kind of doing it backwards," says Ryan Lafferty of SunFuels. "We want to sell the fuel first, while other producers are selling the products first."

SunFuels will primarily sell their biodiesel to already established distributors, like Hill Petroleum, who is receiving requests for biodiesel from fleets like those at Peterson Airforce Base in Colorado Springs. Currently, there are no biodiesel producers in Colorado. But producers of biodiesel are as hard to count as basement brewers. There appear to be only twelve producers in the nation, but, as Lafferty says, "They often open up uncelebrated. There's no way of knowing."

The SunFuels team is also confident that "big oil" won't try to hold them down, as many predict. "They are going to need us once they need to improve their fuel because of the EPA's requirement to remove sulfur from diesel," Lafferty says. "The big boys let the little boys-like us-hash it out, work out the kinks, then buy us out. It's a common trend."

SunFuels' mission sees biodiesel as a player in a larger goal of sustainability, and the team plans on exploring other fuel alternatives and building ties with farmers by starting cooperatives.

SunFuels also has plans to open a biofuel service station that pumps 100 percent biodiesel, as well as a B20 blend and E85, a blend of 85 percent ethanol (a biofuel/gasoline blend) and gasoline. The convenience store will also carry healthy alternatives to Big Bites.

"We need to think of our energy needs," says Tony Falbo, vice president of marketing and sales for SunFuels. "This is not new graffiti, but the tendency is to continue with status quo rather than consider replenishable energy."

"I wonder if this would make Rudolph Diesel laugh," says Long.

Feeding Cars, Not People

2005-01-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

George Monbiot, a journalist for the Guardian, wrote an interesting piece, making the case that the adoption of biodiesel on a planetary scale, will have dire conseques. It will be a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe, he argues.

The article was published in the Guardian.

Here it is in full:

Feeding Cars, Not People

The adoption of biofuels would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 22nd November 2004

If human beings were without sin, we would still live in an imperfect world. Adam Smith’s notion that by pursuing his own interest a man “frequently promotes that of … society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” and Karl Marx’s picture of a society in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” are both mocked by one obvious constraint. The world is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others.

It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for “biofuels”. Biofuels are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon which the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bio-alcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.

Next month the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020.(1) To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20 pence a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra 45 euros a hectare to grow them.

Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straight away. This in fact was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Show in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. “The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today,” he predicted. “But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum.”(2) Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right.

I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster.

Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country,(3) equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel.

It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars – the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday.(4) I’d like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU’s plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for bio-locomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease.

Road transport in the United Kingdom consumes 37.6 million tonnes of petroleum products a year.(5) The most productive oil crop which can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is between 3 and 3.5 tonnes per hectare.(6) One tonne of rapeseed produces 415 kilos of biodiesel.(7) So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel.

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the United Kingdom.(8) Switching to green fuels requires four and half times our arable area. Even the EU’s more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there was unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people’s demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950.(9) The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today’s agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world’s major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry which has already destroyed most of Brazil’s cerrado (one of the world’s most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.

It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair’s two big ideas – tackling global warming and helping Africa – could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, “provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply”.(10) I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn’t aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production – from rural incomes to skylark numbers – except the impact on food supply.(11)

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn’t it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. The European Union, 8th May 2003. Directive 2003/30/EC: On the Promotion of the Use of Biofuels or Other Renewable Fuels for Transport. Official Journal L 123 , 17/05/2003 P. 0042 – 0046.

2. Eg Monsanto, no date. The Biodiesel Revolution. http://www.monsanto.co.uk/biofuels/071202.html.

3. British Association for Biofuels and Oils, no date. Memorandum to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/press_release/royal_commission_on_environmenta.htm

4. Robin McKie, 21st November 2004. Forget the tiger. Put some mushrooms in your tank . The Observer.

5. Department for Transport, 2004. Petroleum Consumption: by Transport Mode and Fuel Type. http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/page/dft_transstats_031767.pdf

6. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Crops for Energy Branch, 17th November 2004. Pers comm.

7. ibid.

8. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2004. Agriculture in the UK 2003. http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/auk/2003/chapter3.pdf

9. Lester R. Brown, 1997. The Agricultural Link: How Environmental Deterioration Could Disrupt Economic Progress. Worldwatch Paper 136. The Worldwatch Institute, Washington DC.

10. Dr Peter Read, 20th October 2004. Good news on climate change. Abrupt Climate Change Strategy Workshop. Press Release. http://www.accstrategy.org/goodnews.html

11. House of Commons Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 29 October 2003. Seventeenth Report. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmenvfru/929/92902.htm

American neoconservatives are turning green

2005-01-27T16:47:00.000-08:00

As Green as a Neocon
Why Iraq hawks are driving Priuses.
By Robert Bryce
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005, at 6:10 AM PT

President Bush has a simple policy about energy: produce more of it. The former oilman has packed his administration with veterans of the oil and coal industries. And for most of the first Bush term, his energy policy and his foreign policy were joined at the hip. Since the Bush administration believed that controlling the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf was critically important to the American economy, the invasion of Iraq seemed to serve both the president's energy goals and his foreign policy ones.

But a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.

Read the article on Slate.

Will American neocons invade and occupy Africa in order to plant biodiesel crops?
I doubt it. But petrodollars often end up in unexpected places (like in Ossama Bin Laden's pockets), so who knows?