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By Gail Schickele
The biofuel industry is growing at an explosive rate, as oil companies to “green” upstarts race to find fossil fuel alternatives to lower carbon emissions and help curb global warming. But critics allege we may be moving too fast in the wrong direction.
The two most common forms of biofuel are ethanol (usually made from corn and intended for use in gasoline-powered engines) and biodiesel (made by chemically combining any natural oil or fat with an alcohol, usually methanol, for use in diesel engines). Ethanol is commonly mixed with petroleum-based gasoline, with the standard blend a mixture of 10 percent ethanol to 90 percent gasoline, known as E10. Biodiesel is commonly mixed with petroleum-based diesel in a blend of 5 to 20 percent (B5-B20). These blend levels reduce particulate matter, keep fuel costs low, and abate concerns about engine performance in this relatively new mass technology.
In 2003 Berkeley paved the way in the Bay Area by converting all city diesel vehicles to 100 percent biodiesel (B100), but later switched to a B20 blend.
In 2004, the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Measurement Standards, in response to the standard set by the American Society for Testing and Materials, prohibited the sale of fuel containing more than 20 percent biodiesel to the public, pending further testing. Waivers were awarded to maverick biofuel stations such as Berkeley’s worker-owned cooperative Biofuel Oasis, which sells B100 on the condition they file quarterly reports on vehicle types, the amount of fuel used, and any fuel related problems.
“B20 maximizes most environmental benefits of biodiesel,” explained Shelby Neal, director of State Governmental Affairs for the National Biodiesel Board, a trade association representing the biodiesel industry. “Over B20 you start to see diminishing returns except for carbon reductions, which are maximized at B100,” he said, adding, “We see a lot of municipal fleets that use B20 for this reason, including San Francisco.”
Other Bay Area municipalities are following the biofuel path as well.
In 2007, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act stipulating a Renewable Fuel Standard Program, which required nine billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels blended into gasoline last year. The amount will rise annually toward 36 billion gallons a year in 2022.
Now, new business and investment opportunities are expected to result from the Obama Administration’s plan for biofuels research, its directive to the Agricultural Department to preserve biofuel industry jobs, and the appointment of an interagency group — led by the secretaries of the Energy and Agriculture departments and the administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — to explore ways to get automakers to produce more ethanol-fueled cars and fueling stations.
Yet despite the momentum toward replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, critics point out that there’s trouble in biofuel paradise.
On May 5, the EPA reported findings about what kind of greenhouse gas emissions might be expected from a massive increase in the usage of biofuels. Over a 100-year timeline, the agency projected corn ethanol producing 16 percent less greenhouse gases than gasoline; however, corn ethanol will likely be replaced by more efficient fuels before the beginning of next century. Therefore, it may be more realistic to look at a 30-year timeline — which the EPA also did, calculating that corn ethanol would account for five percent more greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline during this span. Either way, both projections fail to meet the requirement for renewable fuels: bettering gasoline by a margin of 20 percent.
The EPA’s findings were not universally accepted; controversy has surrounded the fact that it accounted for the possibility that domestically, corn grown for ethanol may displace food crops, which in turn could drive agriculture to other countries, resulting in the loss of carbon dioxide-capturing forestland. Proponents in the ethanol industry argue that such inclusion is unrealistic and undermines competitiveness, while some scientists contend that it gives a misleading profile of biofuels, and that proper management of land after it’s turned to cropland is key to offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. But other experts disagree, maintaining that growing enough crops to meet the demand for food, animal feed, and renewable fuels will require converting too much of the world’s remaining forests and open spaces over to agricultural land.
According to Matthew Brown, an energy consultant and former energy program director at the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, replacing only five percent of the nation’s diesel consumption with soy-based biodiesel would require diverting about 60 percent of today’s soy crops to biodiesel production. (The National Biodiesel Board, on the other hand, claims this figure is closer to 30 percent.) On the ethanol side of the equation, according to Cornell professor David Pimentel, about $6 billion in annual government subsidies is spent for corn ethanol, 1,700 gallons of water are used for every gallon of ethanol produced, and corn is the primary cause of soil erosion in the U.S. Such independent studies on ethanol by Pimentel (former chairman of the Gasohol Panel of the Department of Energy) and by U.C. Berkeley professor Tad Patzek (a former Shell Oil scientist) indicate that ethanol is a net energy loser.
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who chairs the Senate Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, questioned whether the current U.S. market could absorb annual increased ethanol supplies. “As [gasoline] consumption decreases our biofuels standard increases,” he said in an April hearing. “Are we moving too fast for our infrastructure and engines to handle the biofuels safely?”
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has purchased over 63,000 gallons of B20 to fuel diesel-powered equipment such as generators and pumps and diesel vehicles for NASA Ames Research Center in Santa Clara County’s Moffett Field. Now, NASA scientists are suggesting using algae-based biodiesel, considered by some to be a promising new kind of “clean energy” process that cleans waste water, removes carbon dioxide from the air, retains important nutrients, and doesn’t compete with agriculture for land or freshwater. Algae plants are oil-rich and easy to grow but they need freshwater to thrive, so NASA research scientist Jonathan Trent proposes using offshore membrane enclosures to grow algae.
“We’re going to deploy a large plastic bag in the ocean, and fill it with sewage,” he said. “The algae use sewage to grow, and in the process of growing they clean up the sewage.” NASA is testing these membranes for recycling dirty water on future long-duration space missions. According to Trent, the system does not pose a risk of introducing an invasive species to the ocean, because if the bag leaks, the enclosed freshwater algae will die in the saltwater. The bags are expected to last two years, and will be recycled afterward.
In the meantime, it appears that biofuels are here to stay as we make the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, which is competitively researched and created each day from a combination of sources including wind, solar, hydrogen, hydroenergy, and geothermal, along with one integral component upon which everyone agrees: conservation.
Further reading online from the EPA, NASA, and Tad Patzek:
www.epa.gov/otaq/renewablefuels/420f09024.htm
www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/greenspace/clean-energy.html
http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/patzek/BiofuelQA/qatop.htm