Biofuel

Articles Tagged with: Biofuel

4 December, 2008

EU Biofuel Targets

On 17th December, the European Parliament is due to vote on two pieces of legislation, the Renewable Energy Directive and the Fuel Quality Directive, each of which will lead to large-scale agrofuel expansion through long-term (2020) targets. Those laws are likely to trigger more land conversion, particularly in the global South, to grow fuel for Europe’s cars, at the expense of forests and people, climate, food and biodiversity.

Rettet den Regenwald (Rainforest Rescue) is coordinating a campaign to persuade MEPs to vote against these proposals You can sign their online letter here.

…or even better, if you live in the UK you can email your MEP directly using the biofuelwatch campaign.

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1 April, 2008

Carbon Neutral Office Tower?

I was asked recently by a friend of a friend to comment on the practicality of building a carbon neutral office tower.

Without knowing any better, I bravely suggested that a carbon neutral office tower was not yet possible. The root problem I surmised is that we can’t control the source of energy delivered by the grid. Thus any would-be carbon neutral building needs to generate all of its power on site using renewables to be certain that its energy use is not causing carbon emissions.

Assuming that power generation of any kind is likely to take up a lot of space, it seems highly unlikely that a tall energy intensive building on a tight urban would be able to generate all of its power on site. The only viable way to be carbon neutral is therefore to generate as much as possible on site using renewables and use carbon offsetting or carbon capture to neutralise the remaining carbon emissions. Obviously having an energy efficient building will make emissions targets easier to achieve.

Having made these comments I thought it prudent to do a little post-verification just in case I had got it wrong. Luckily my old colleague and friend Mark Weintraub was able to confirm most of what I had surmised. Being something of a high rise guru Mark was able to point me in the direction of current best practice in sustainable design of tall buildings.

Apparently the best we can do at the moment is achieving 20% of a building’s ongoing energy requirement generated on-site using renewables. This figure is included in a BREEAM ‘excellent’ rating or LEED ‘platinum’ rating. BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmentally Design) are the sustainable design standards for the UK and USA respectively.

Mark suggested several approaches to on site generation. The favourite seems to be space efficient hydrogen fuel cells which can provide a large proportion of electrical energy and also cooling through absorption chillers. From what I can gather, absorption chillers use the heat output from the fuel cells’ electricity generation to dehumidify air prior to cooling by evaporation, but I’m not very clear on this at the moment.

Another option is a combined heat and power (CHP) plant run on biofuels but this takes up much more space than fuel cells.

In considering these options it is obvious to me that neither fuel cells nor CHP are automatically carbon neutral. We still need to get the fuel from somewhere. If you have read other pages of my blog you will see that I am very sceptical about carbon neutral biofuel. Similarly hydrogen does not simply occur; it must be produced by separating water molecules, a process which uses energy. Only if this energy comes from a truly carbon neutral source (such as geothermal, hydro or nuclear) can the resulting hydrogen claim to also be carbon neutral. These fuels also need to be transported to the building, a process which presumably will use a diesel engine truck. Everything is interconnected which makes it all very complicated.

Purists might argue that we should therefore rely on our building sheathed in photo-voltaics and bristling with wind turbines. This might avoid the pitfalls of certified carbon neutral fuel, but the fact that we haven’t done this yet suggests that either the technology is inadequate or that there is just not enough solar or wind energy acting on a single high density building to provide all of it’s energy requirements.

One advantage that is clear to me is that efforts to be carbon neutral are pushing for better designed and more energy efficient buildings. In rural and lower density suburban sites, carbon neutral and/or off grid buildings are already a reality, but in high density urban centres we are still waiting for either sustainable design technology to improve or our grid electricity to be carbon neutral.

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7 March, 2008

Environmentalism Schism

As a sometime environmentalist I often find myself joining email campaigns of the ‘save the whales’ variety, targeting careless corporations and evil industrialists. The Ecological Internet ‘Forest Liars’ campaign that I signed this morning was different though. It included in its many targets; household eco-warrior names such as WWF, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth.

Although I moderated the tone of the pre-composed text, I still felt slightly uncomfortable hitting the ‘send’ button. This is not the first email alert of this kind that I have received from Ecological Internet, but it is the first one that I have acted upon. In pondering my motivation for this mutinous act, it will help to look at the background of a couple of key issues.

Many of you will know about Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification; it is a mechanism designed to reduce the environmental impact of an extractive industry, in this case logging. It works by creating a brand by which consumers can recognise timber products which originated from sustainably managed forests. The key to its success is independent auditing and enforcement of approved forest management procedures and chain of custody of the subsequent product.

FSC certification can apply to plantations, logged forest and primary forest. The justification for applying FSC certification to primary forest is that it’s better than the business as usual of conventional logging

The gist of Ecological Internet’s campaign is that the Earth’s climate is in such dire straights that we cannot afford to loose the carbon sequestering service of any more primary / old growth forest, and yet the above mentioned household names are all condoning and even encouraging FSC certified logging of primary forests.

I am sympathetic to this cause because the claimed environmental benefits of FSC seem to be in danger of exceeding their true value. The environmental best practice benchmark has been moved from conservation to ‘sustainable’ logging. There is even a suggestion that FSC certified logging of primary forest should be eligible for carbon credits. I do not need scientific research to prove to me that extracting the large valuable trees from primary forest will result in a net increase in carbon emissions – the opposite of a carbon credit.

The Schism is equally evident in the debate on biofuels. Biofuel consumption is increasing, predicated on the belief that it can help reduce our carbon emissions by replacing traditional fossil fuels. In this case there is scientific evidence which proves that biofuel can actually result in greater carbon emissions than fossil fuels. This occurs when the biofuel feedstock is grown on land which was previously rainforest. The rub being that rainforest and the soil or peat that it grew from stored more carbon than subsequent oil palms, soy beans etc.

Thus, on the one hand, organisations like Biofuelwatch are arguing that many of the claimed environmental benefits of biofuel are unfounded and we should not rush to embrace them. On the other hand WWF maintains that the use of biofuels should be increased and the sustainability claims made more accountable by the use of assessment and enforcement mechanisms similar to FSC. In this case known as the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)

Given that palm oil plantations are a fact (and a very economically compelling fact) it makes perfect sense to me to try to influence the behaviour of the industry by working with it rather than against it. FSC started from a similar understanding; that if logging is going to happen anyway, why not try to create an incentive to do it more sustainably. The incentive being that FSC certified timber can access more markets and possibly at premium price.

The demand for FSC and RSPO certified products is generated in part by campaigning organisations and I am encouraged that these campaigns seem to be influencing behaviour for the better. Of course there will be those who say that too little is being done too late but the risk that environmentalists face, is if they are too self-righteous and aggressive in their campaigns then the target industry will close their ears and minds and we will achieve nothing.

When I consulted a close friend on my conundrum she said that the best we can do is to encourage engagement between all parties. She used the metaphor that a lack of engagement between environmentalists and industrialists in certain parts of Sabah had resulted not only in fragmented points of view, but in a fragmented landscape.

If I dig deep into my motivation for hitting that send button, I come upon a dialogue to which I was privy between Biofuelwatch and WWF. Biofuelwatch had attempted to engage with WWF on the subject of WWF policy on bio-fuels. The tone of the Biofuelwatch correspondence was well reasoned and not confrontational or sensational, as is often the case with Ecological Internet. The response from WWF was I thought, rather haughty and refused to acknowledge that there was an issue which needed to be addressed at that time. End of dialogue. I still do not know whether they are addressing it. Clearly, Ecological Internet believes that they are not addressing the FSC issue either.

The root of the schism appear to be that, while certification can help to reduce the environmental impact of some sectors of the industry, it does little to restrain the continued logging of primary forest or the expansion of biofuel feedstock cultivation. So, we have moderate environmentalists taking a cooperative tone while more radical activists are pointing out that this diverts attention from the continuing destruction taking place on the front line.

Although I am not always aligned with the style of presentation of Ecological Internet’s arguments, their email campaigns appear to be effective. They also seem to be able to identify campaign targets which are unpalatable to many and yet essential if environmentalism is to continue provoke debate and change on the most relevant issues.

I worry that the Grand Daddies of environmentalism might be focusing too closely on their damage limitation campaigns – such as reducing the impact of logging – that they are loosing sight of the fundamental principles upon which their organisations were founded – such as the prevention of logging.

I am troubled by the fact that environmentalists are turning against each other to point this out and also feel slightly guilty that I have joined in this attack. I present this article in the hope that it can explain if not excuse my actions and perhaps even help to facilitate engagement. I’d prefer our campaigns and environment intact, not fragmented.

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4 November, 2007

Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)

Despite evidence of the harmful effects of biofuel expansion, the British and European Governments are pushing ahead with legislation to increase biofuel use particularly in transport. I was sufficiently agitated by this development to instigate discussion with my MP and MEP.The correspondence began with a standard letter produced by the biofuelwatch ‘take action’ page. I was impressed that my MEP wrote back and so took the opportunity to engage in more personal dialogs in the form of the following text:

* * * * *

Dear Richard Corbett, many thanks for taking the time to reply to me on the subject of biofuels and the RTFO.

Despite your assurances I am concerned that the British and European Parliaments are mistaken in promoting biofuels as a measure to reduce CO2 emissions. Legislation designed to increase biofuel use in transport seems designed to ease our conscience whilst allowing us to continue with business as usual.

I am working on conservation related projects in Malaysia at the moment and am seeing first hand the effect that rising demand for biofuel feedstock is having on land use policies here. We know that growing biofuels is less effective at reducing CO2 than conserving or replanting rainforest Science 17th August 2007) so why is Britain and Europe promoting CO2 reduction policies that create an economic incentive to clear more rainforest?

These policies are also having a negative effect on the environment at home in Europe, where our set-aside land has been an early casualty. If as Peter Kendall (president of the National Farmers’ Union) has suggested, we plant all Britain’s set-aside with Oil See Rape for biofuels, we risk compromising land that is a last refuge for biodiversity and provides valuable eco-system services such as flood mitigation.

I hope that you can see how obvious this policy mistake is and help to argue for meaningful reductions in transport emissions through policies which will reduce the overall volume of transport. Examples which I support are congestion charging and high fuel efficiency targets.

Doubtless detractors will point at the economic cost of these measures but we need to face up to the fact that tackling climate change is going to cost us. However as The Stern Report has convincingly concluded; the cost of tackling it will not be nearly as high as the cost of not tackling it.

Yours Sincerely

Ian Hall

* * * * *

Dear Ian Hall,

thank you for your well-put arguments. In my view, it reinforces the case for being very careful with biofuel but not for ruling it out entirely.

Best wishes,

Richard Corbett MEP
Labour Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and Humber

* * * * *

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13 November, 2006

Mengaris Tree

I was stripped down to my boxer shorts and with my bare hands was clawing great clods of mud out from under the wheel arch. Occasionally I would take a rest from cleaning and lie down in the shallow water to cool myself off. Even with the help of a second tow truck it had taken us nearly an hour to free an old Landcruiser that had got stuck on the way into Imbak Canyon. All three vehicles were now parked in the middle of the Imbak River to receive a much needed wash.

By way of taking a holiday from Maliau Basin I had decided to pay a visit on my old friends in Imbak Canyon. A lot had changed since I was last there, not least the troublesome new access road extension. At the end of these three kilometres of mud I was pleased to find the rangers happily ensconced in their expansive new basecamp quarters. The shiny tin roofs and plywood floors were a big improvement on the tarpaulin and packed earth that they had put up with for the previous three years. Apart from a few new faces they were much the same if not slightly more mature than I remembered! Maybe this was due to the more homely feel (two of them had even moved in their wives and children), or maybe it was because my visit fell during Ramadan. No doubt after the end of the fasting month they’ll be back on the beer and fags and cheating at cards all night long.

Some readers may question that all this new road and basecamp construction may seem at odds with a pristine virgin rainforest. However think of the infrastructure as a big rubber stamp which says ‘conservation area’. This stamp needs to be as strong as possible because worrying changes are taking place in the world at large.

On this trip I was dismayed to see the encroachment of palm oil plantation right up to the boundary of Imbak. The change had taken place on land which I had had to walk through to reach Imbak on my first visit. On that occasion we had followed an overgrown logging road through mature secondary forest. In order to make way for palm oil any existing vegetation must be clear cut, then burned and finally hillsides are bulldozed into terraces. Trees which I had first known for their protective shade were now charred stumps on naked earth.

With Malaysia’s hardwood exports fast diminishing, palm oil is a viable economic alternative. It will grow almost anywhere and will start to bear fruit three to five years after planting. The market for palm oil is huge, particularly in China where there are a lot of people who like to fry their food. It also sees widespread use in cosmetics and lately in an ironic twist palm oil is being marketed as a bio-fuel that will help reduce our dependency on carbon emitting fossil fuels!

I have spent enough time driving for hours through seemingly endless palm oil plantations to have become almost inured to their presence. Occasionally on the long drive from Lahad Datu to Kalabakan the numbness of the plantations is broken by tall slender mengaris Trees. The Mengaris is an emergent species which means that they rise above the main rainforest canopy, often reaching heights of seventy metres or more. They have broad spreading crowns and smooth silver bark and are said to be the strongest of the rainforest trees. Rangers will happily build their camps under them secure in the knowledge that they are not likely to fall down. Their strength is said to derive from the potent spirits which they harbour. It is out of respect for these spirits that logging contractors will never fell a Mengaris tree. Even once a forest has been logged two or three times and finally clear cut for plantation they will not fell a Mengaris tree. The spirits of a Mengaris tree you see are exceptionally cunning as well as strong; they have ensured that the timber is brittle and of little commercial value and that the high silica content wears a chainsaw blade at a dangerous rate.

Sadly when seen emerging from a canopy of oil palms these magnificent trees are now a symbol of what has been lost. That this is now so close to Imbak gives me fresh cause for concern.

It seems to me that the proliferation of oil palm should be checked immediately. Of course it’s existence is now irreversible but it is not too late to enforce sensible controls on where it is planted and how it is farmed.

Some key concerns that should inform this legislation are; biodiversity conservation, wildlife corridors, riparian reserves, visual amenity (Planner speak for nice views), water catchment protection, soil erosion, siltation and above all protection of remaining primary and secondary forest. There is also a strong economic and agricultural science argument which says that monoculture tends to result in more resilient pests and diseases specific to that crop. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Unfortunately legislation that exists is often not enforced and calls for consumer led regulation, such as to introducing sustainably certified palm oil, are going unhindered.

Of course all of the above concerns are potentially outweighed by the global climate change issue and the question of where are we going to get our energy from? We know that burning fossil fuel produces greenhouse gasses and that this is bad for the climate, but what are the alternatives?

One of them is use biofuel i.e. fuel oil that comes from plants. Burning biofuel still produces carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) but the emission of CO2 is exactly equal to the amount of CO2 absorbed by the plant as it grew. This is called carbon neutral i.e. there is no net increase or decrease in carbon emissions.

This would be great if all biofuel crops were grown on existing agricultural land. Unfortunately they are not. In Sabah most biofuel (in this case Palm Oil) is grown on land that was formerly rainforest. The subsequent re-absorption of CO2 by oil palms will not equal the amount that was released by chopping down the rainforest in the first place. In this case the biofuel is neither carbon neutral nor environmentally friendly.

To exacerbate matters, much of the lowland rainforest grows on thick peat swamp. By planting oil palm here you also loose the peat due to fires and erosion. Peat is effectively young coal and destroying it releases an enormous quantity of additional CO2. In this case the net emissions of CO2 by the biofuel may actually be greater than that of coal or petroleum!

The alarming twist is that the European Commission is advocating a switch to biofuel as a means to meet our obligations to cut carbon emissions. Actually this may cut emissions from Europe but unless the biofuel can be certified carbon neutral, there may be a net increase in carbon emissions elsewhere.

Unfortunately this point seems to have been missed by a large number of people, even some of those very clever bureaucrats, politicians and climate change scientists who dreamed up the Kyoto Protocol and Mechanisms such as Carbon Trading.

If you’re interested to read more there is a very good online resource at http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/ which also includes stuff you can do to help if you’re so inclined.

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