From the “road to hell is paved with good intentions” department:
Biofuels not as ‘green’ as many think
Go back to basics when calculating the greenhouse impact and carbon neutrality of biofuels, researchers urge
Statements about biofuels being carbon neutral should be taken with a grain of salt. This is according to researchers at the University of Michigan Energy Institute after completing a retrospective, national-scale evaluation of the environmental effect of substituting petroleum fuels with biofuels in the US. America’s biofuel use to date has in fact led to a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions, says lead author John DeCicco in Springer’s journal Climatic Change.
The use of liquid biofuels in the transport sector has expanded over the past decade in response to policies such as the US Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and California’s Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). These policies are based on the belief that biofuels are inherently carbon neutral, meaning that only production-related greenhouse gas emissions need to be tallied when comparing them to fossil fuels.
This assumption is embedded in the lifecycle analysis modelling approach used to justify and administer such policies. Simply put, because plants absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, crops grown for biofuels should absorb the carbon dioxide that comes from burning the fuels they produce. Using this approach, it is often found that crop-based biofuels such as corn ethanol and biodiesel offer at least modest net greenhouse gas reductions relative to petroleum fuels.
Field data for assessing the net carbon dioxide emission effect of biofuels has been available since the Renewable Fuel Standard was passed in 2005. DeCicco’s team evaluated the data up to 2013, using the Annual Basis Carbon (ABC) accounting method he previously developed. It takes a circumscribed look at the changes in carbon flows directly associated with a vehicle-fuel system, and does not treat biofuels as inherently carbon neutral.
Instead, the ABC method tallies carbon dioxide emissions on the basis of chemistry in the specific locations where they occur. The system takes into account motor fuel consumption, fuel processing operations and resource inputs, including the use of cropland for biofuel feedstocks. Unlike lifecycle analysis, ABC accounting reflects the stock-and-flow nature of the carbon cycle, recognizing that changes in the atmospheric stock depend on both inflows and outflows.
DeCicco’s team found that the gains in carbon dioxide uptake by feedstock, such as corn, were enough to offset biofuel-related biogenic emissions by only 37 percent, rather than 100 percent, during the period 2005 to 2013.
“This shows that biofuel use fell well short of being carbon neutral even before considering process emissions,” says DeCicco.
In this regard, the researchers concluded that rising US biofuel use has led to a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2 emissions. This finding contrasts with those of lifecycle analysis models which indicate that crop-based biofuels such as corn ethanol and soy biodiesel lead to a modest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
DeCicco’s work demonstrates that it is possible to empirically evaluate the necessary condition for a biofuel to offer carbon dioxide mitigation benefits.
“Doing so provides a bounding result that suggests a need for much greater caution regarding the role of biofuels in climate mitigation,” DeCicco concludes.
Reference: DeCicco, J.M. et al. (2016). Carbon balance effects of U.S. biofuel production and use, Climatic Change. DOI 10.1007/s10584-016-1764-4
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Over at Climate Central, they interviewed the lead author. And they had this to say:
“The question, ‘How does the overall greenhouse gas emission impact of corn ethanol compare to that of gasoline?’ does not have a scientific answer,” DeCicco said. “What I can say definitively is that, whatever the magnitude of the emissions impact is, it is unambiguously worse than petroleum gasoline.”
Ouch! That’s going to leave a mark.
Predictably, the Renewable Fuels Coalition files an “Is too!” response while doing some “big oil” labeling:
Click to access RESPONSE-TO-DeCicco.pdf
Paper or plastic? Sorry, the rules state you only get ethanol super container wonder bag and no other choice. Move along or get out of the line.
Here is you free guide to the advocacy over reach policy manual.
1) Ethanol is a contrived non-market mandate for the benefit of the farm lobby packaged as sustainable bio fuel.
2) Carbon taxes are a non-market, major revenue source policy play packaged as saving the world out of the abundance of caution. (Such large over reach steps for revenue will be ingrained in the budget and social spending by the time cyclical cooling becomes obvious that “good public policy” will be pushed to keep the revenue coming to avoid financial catastrophe…in the midst of global cooling.)
3) Excessive tax credits for non-market products like ethanol, all electric cars, and rooftop solar are for the benefit of lobby groups and donors at the expense of the common budget. This excess is best seen in the preferential treatment at the expense of low bid processes and deferral of consumer protection at regulated utilities for the benefit of high cost variants. Rooftop solar and its mining of tax credits comes alongside utility scale solar with one fourth the LCOE of large scale solar. Likewise government sponsored demonstration projects in solar CSP and cellulosic ethanol are orders of magnitude more costly than the competitive options available already within each segment of the industry.
4) Cellulosic ethanol was a joint government and lobby group effort to distract the public on the inefficiencies of ethanol with a hyped alternative and untested technology that wasted public funds on industrial scale projects that subsequently failed. The distribution of these projects looks a lot like Congressional district vote buying, again at taxpayer expense.
Make that 4x the LCOE of utility scale solar, unless someone is trying the advocacy ploy of pointing to averages instead of cost leaders and lowest bids.
I would guess the market for ethanol would shrink with out the mandate. The idea of saving the environment by farming millions of acres of land is completely retarded. I have not seen any evidence government intervention has resulted in a reduction of carbon emissions. Shifting manufacturing overseas has resulted in a great reduction in the energy needed here. China’s 2 billion tons of burning coal every year helps us look pretty.