Does it run on biofuel

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Does it run on biofuel?
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• BIOFUELS WHY?
• Transport fuel usage and emissions growing too
  fast
• Developed World response to worries about oil
  supplies
• Token effort to reduce carbon emissions
• Avoid confronting car manufacturers about
  efficiency?
• Keeping the US farmers happy?
• A panic move by politicians to be seen to be
  doing something?
• A false belief among politicians that there
  must be a technical solution to climate change

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• BIOFUELS GOVERNMENT POSITION
• The EU Biofuels Directive's target - 5.75 per
  cent of fuels sold in the EU should be biofuels
  by 2010, and 10 percent by 2020.
• EU Energy Policy announcements this month allow
  state aid to be given to biofuel production.
• The UK's RTFO target - five per cent of fuels,
  by volume, sold in the UK should come from
  biofuels by 2010. From April 2008, petrol and
  diesel must contain 2.5 biofuel.
• 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol mandated by the
  USA 2005 Energy Bill by 2012. The Energy
  Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires
  fuel producers to use at least 36 billion gallons
  of biofuel in 2022
•  

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• BIOFUELS THE ISSUES
• Questionable if they save greenhouse gases
• Doubts over the energy balance
• Disruptions to an already strained global
  agricultural system
• Increased demands on water supplies, fears of
  topsoil erosion
• A cause of deforestation and other land use
  change
• Habitat and biodiversity destruction
• Social upheaval impacting indigenous peoples
• Second generation technology for ethanol yet to
  be proven, may rely on genetic modification.
  Algae look promising
• Is there land and water to grow enough fuel to
  make a difference?
• Another case of the developed world exporting the
  unwanted consequences of our lifestyles?

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• BIOFUELS THE BAD BITS
• Palm oil 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions is
  caused by draining and deforesting peat lands in
  South East Asia, largely for oil palm
  plantations. Land used is often taken from
  indigenous peoples.
• Soya South America tropical rainforest is
  cleared, wiping out 80-100 per cent of the
  biodiversity. Much soya is genetically modified.
• Sugar Cane Brazil, the biggest producer of
  sugar cane has cleared huge areas of savannah
  lands, destroying much biodiversity. Labour
  conditions on sugar cane plantations are often
  appalling.
• Oil seed rape High fertiliser input means that
  the EUs preferred biofuel crop may be up to 70
  per cent worse for the climate than fossil fuels.
• Maize The big incentives to grow maize for
  biofuel in the USA have been blamed for rising
  corn prices. Production of cereals for beef
  cattle is displaced from US to other countries.

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• BIOFUELS GHG EMISSIONS
• The production of biofuels is not GHG-free
• Diesel for tractors, heat for refineries, diesel
  for ships and trucks etc to move raw materials
  and finished product all produce CO2
• No-one knows for certain if these outweigh the
  benefits.

• But fertiliser use probably tips the balance.
• Maize and rapeseed yields are typically enhanced
  by using nitrogen fertilisers in bulk. Nitrous
  oxides are then released to the atmosphere.
• Paul J. Crutzen, 1995 Nobel prize winner for
  chemistry, said in 2007
• Biodiesel produced from rapeseed can result in
  up to 70 percent more greenhouse gas emissions
  than burning fossil fuel diesel. Ethanol made
  from maize results in 50 percent more emissions.
• (nitrous oxide reflects 300 times as much heat as
  CO2)

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• BIOFUELS LAND USE CHANGE IMPACTS
• Professors Alex Farrell and Michael O'Hare from
  the University of California at Berkeley in Jan
  2008
• If corn grown on conservation reserve program
  land is used for ethanol, total lifecycle
  emissions, including indirect LUC, are
• 2.4 x gasoline
• If replacing corn used for ethanol causes
  tropical deforestation, total lifecycle
  emissions, including indirect LUC, are
• Over 6 x gasolineRenewable diesel using palm
  oil has total lifecycle emissions,including
  indirect LUC, of
• 2.3 x diesel

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THE EFFECT OF LAND USE CHANGES ON GHG EMISSIONS

• Brazilian officials said Amazon destruction
  surged during the last five months of 2007
• Deforestation rose from 94 square miles in
  August to 366 square miles in December

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Grow
Plough
Harvest
Fertilise
Ship
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy
Ship
Sell
Store
Refine
Use
Store
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• BIOFUELS ENERGY BALANCE
• Energy is needed to grow plants and turn them
  into fuels
• If greater than the energy produced by fuel
  there is a negative energy balance
• Doubts that all biofuels give a positive balance
  or a worthwhile positive balance

• David Pimentel and Tad Patzek concluded that all
  crops converted using current processing methods
  gave a negative energy balance
• return is 0.778 unit of energy in maize ethanol,
• 0.688 unit in switchgrass ethanol,
• 0.636 unit in wood ethanol
• 0.534 unit in soya bean biodiesel.

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• BIOFUELS SUSTAINABILITY CRITERIA
• European Commissions position (Jan 2008)
• Land use - old forest with no or limited human
  intervention cannot be used for biofuels
  cultivation, nor can 'highly biodiverse
  grasslands', or lands with a 'high carbon stock'
  like wetlands or 'pristine peatlands
• CO2 impact - the overall greenhouse gas (GHG)
  savings from biofuels production must be at least
  35 in order for cultivation to be considered
  sustainable. (EuropaBio has challenged this)
• Consultation showed general support for such
  criteria from most respondents, with many
  proposing further reinforcements to the scheme.
• Rewards for diversifying the feedstocks such as
  ligno-cellulosic material for the production of
  second generation biofuels.

But no consideration of the impact of Biofuels on
food production, water supplies and on indigenous
peoples welfare
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• BIOFUELS THE GOOD BITS (?) ALGAE
• Biofuel yields gallons/acre
• Corns 50-60
• Soya 48
• Oil Palm 635
• Algae 5,000 - 10,000 gallon/acre
• Algae is a single celled plant - highest uptake
  of CO2
• Can double its mass in a day harvest daily not
  annually
• Can use contaminated water supplies and
  infertile land
• Power plant flue gases used to promote growth
  recover 30 of waste heat into new fuel,
  absorbing CO2 and NOx to mitigate climate change
• Suitable for making ethanol, diesel, and other
  hydrocarbons, including biomass for burning
• US companies Solazyme and GreenFuel actively
  developing

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• BIOFUELS THE GOOD BITS (?) CELLULOSE
• Plants contain starches (sugars), cellulose,
  proteins and lignin. Starches / sugars are used
  for first generation biofuels
• Second generation biofuels are made from
  cellulose and lignin
• Cellulose and lignin are structural by nature
  tough and harder to break down than starches
• Can use non-food crops like switchgrass as well
  as food-crop waste and wood waste
• More obvious positive net energy balance than
  corn to ethanol (five times better)
• Cellulosic biomass can produce methanol,
  dimethyl ether, Fisher Tropsch diesel, synthetic
  gasoline, hydrogen. Ethanol is almost always the
  worst possible choice due to pipeline problems.
• Conversion processes can be either
  thermo-chemical or biological

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• BIOFUELS THE GOOD BITS (?) CELLULOSE
• Thermo-chemical process
• Heat, pressure and steam turn biomass into
  Synthetic Gas Syngas
• Chemical reaction with catalyst converts Syngas
  into alcohols
• Alcohols separated by distillation
• No yeasts, microbes or GMO
• Biological methods
• Cellulase / Yeast processes
• Thermophilic bacteria look a better bet
• Possible use of GMO plant variants to increase
  yields
• Coskata (US)) has just announced a process using
  bacteria and existing gasification technology to
  generate 99.7 pure ethanol, plus water.

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• FOOD PRODUCTION IS JUST KEEPING PACE WITH
  POPULATION
• In 2006 food production worldwide rose by less
  than 1.
• Per capita food production fell by 0.2 - the
  first such decline since 1993.
• Cereal production fell for the second
  consecutive year.
• Wheat output was down 5 and coarse grains (e.g.
  Maize) were down 3 , rice production was
  virtually unchanged.
• In Australia and USA cereal harvests fell by 60
  and 7 respectively. The EU, Canada, Argentina
  and South Africa also declined.
• In the period 1996 to 2006
• Total world agricultural production increased by
  2.2 pa
• But cereals grew by just 7.4 over the same
  period
• Global population grew 13.5

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• BIOFUELS A PROBLEM WHO SAYS?
• Lester Brown the US is generating global food
  insecurity on a scale never seen before. In a
  misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by
  converting its grain into fuel for cars, the
  United States is driving up food prices
  worldwide.
• Hilary Benn We know from the evidence that we
  have currently we have some types - ethanol from
  corn which is even worse than the petrol it is
  meant to be replacing
• Chris GoodallYour 2,000 calories of food a day
  is worth about 3p to a wheat farmer, but about
  10p to a petrol retailer
• Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on Food
  the growing practice of turning crops into
  biofuel is a crime against humanity
• European Commission Joint Research Centre
  "uncertainty is too great to say whether the EU
  10 percent biofuel target will save greenhouse
  gas or not."

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• BIOFUELS A PROBLEM WHO SAYS?
• EU Environment Commissioner Dimas the
  environmental and social problems caused by
  agrofuels are bigger than we thought
• The International Water Management Institute
  "Ambitious plans in China and India to greatly
  increase domestic production of biofuels will put
  greater stress on these countries' water
  supplies, seriously undermining their ability to
  meet future food and feed demands."
• Biruté Galdikas, primate scientist "People who
  buy palm oil have orangutan blood on their
  hands."
• Rupert Furness, UK RTFO Programme Director We
  agree that biofuels are not a 'silver bullet.
  The Government is determined to support only
  those biofuels which deliver genuine
  environmental benefits
• Roger Kemp, professor of engineering at
  Lancaster University We would need to plant a
  land area twice the size of Britain to get enough
  biofuel crops to halve our emissions

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• OUR FOSSIL FUEL LEGACY
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• Carboniferous period was 280 to 345 million
  years ago
• In this 65 million year period, the remains of
  plants and animals were converted to oil,
  coal and gas
• We started using them in earnest only about 200
  years ago.
• If we carry on using them at current
  (increasing) rates, we might burn most of them in
  1000 years.
• Effectively we burn many thousands of years
  worth of fossilised biomass every year

• Can we really grow 5 or 10 of our transport
  fuel needs every year without any impacts on the
  planet?

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I don't understand bus lanes. Why do poor people
have to get to places quicker than I do?"
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• ALTERNATIVES?
• Travel less rethink lifestyles and town
  planning
• More efficient cars (the 7.5 bn gallons of
  ethanol mandated by the US 2005 Energy Bill by
  2012 could be compensated by an increase of car
  mileage by just one mile per gallon.)
• Greater use of LPG for cars 15 less CO2 than
  petrol
• Electric cars huge capital investment, too
  expensive for China / India? (although G-Wizz
  comes from India)
• Better public transport
• Grow your own food
• AND?

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www.savetheorangutan.co.uk (Borneo Orangutan
Survival UK)
www.biofuelwatch.org.uk Peaceful banner protest
on 30 January, 12.30 - 2.30 pm, outside the
Greenergy office at 198 High Holburn, WC1V 7BD.
Greenergy are one of the largest agrofuel
companies in the UK and use sugar cane ethanol
from Brazil,palm oil and soya as well as rapeseed
oil http//tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatc
h/
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QUESTIONS PLEASE
Look closely, theres still some Arctic ice