Jennifer Marohasy

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EU Did Not Foresee Biofuel Problems

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Europe’s environment chief has admitted that the EU did not foresee the problems raised by its policy to get 10% of Europe’s road fuels from plants.

Recent reports have warned of rising food prices and rainforest destruction from increased biofuel production.

The EU has promised new guidelines to ensure that its target is not damaging.

BBC Website: EU rethinks biofuels guidelines

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  3. Aaron Edmonds says

    Cellulosic Ethanol and Fertilizer Demand
    Aaron Edmonds
    http://www.agweb.com

    It sounds all too perfect for grain producers. Not only are grain prices going through the roof but now a significant end user of crop wastes like corn stover and wheat straw is emerging – the cellulosic ethanol industry. This offers the additional promise of even more financial windfalls in the game of crop production for farmers. But there will be major ramifications for the sustainability of grain production once we commit to remove not only grain but every skeric of plant residue our crops push out of the soil. There will be a major and significant increase in the amount of fertilizer nutrients farmers annually mine from the soil substrate.

    Potash demand in particular is likely to soar to unprecendented levels as this particular mineral fertilizer is essential for plant structural integrity. The removal of 1 tonne of wheat or barley straw will see the potassium equivalent export of 12kg of muriate of potash. If you remove 3 tonnes per hectare of straw (an average global yield) that is a cumulative potash export of 36kg /ha on top of what is removed in the grain. Can our global potash resources stand up to such a major ramp up in demand?

    The story for nitrogen is somewhat similar. Again if we look at quantifying nutrient removal. 1 tonne of cereal stubble will contain the nitrogen equivalent from 13kg of urea. So a cumulative removal of 39kg/ha of urea on top of that removed in the grain portion in a 3 tonne yield. Are our global natural gas resources up to this gearing up of the demand base?

    For phosphate there is also bad news as we see additional phosphorus units being lost from the cropping system. 3 tonne of stubble removed sees the equivalent phosphorus export of around 33kg of superphosphate.

    With these figures in mind, there is the potential for fertilizer prices to soar to levels not ever seen nor even imagined as this demand base kicks in. Yet again we saw more significant rises in the last week with DAP surging past the US$700 per tonne mark.

    What happens to our soils as they are left exposed to the vagaries of extremes in weather with no physical defences from erosion? I shudder to think. Soil organic carbon levels will likely plummet as the practise of straw retention becomes a major short term opportunity cost. The need for perennial based agricultural systems will become a very important drive if we are to maintain some level of resiliance in our agricultural production base. The only problem being that apart from pigeon peas in India, there are no other perennial grain crops that are close to commercial exploitation.

    Quite clearly cellulosic ethanol is likely to push agriculture to the brink of its true sustainability limits. And it is likely to stretch demand for fertilizers to a new level where existing and planned new capacity may struggle to satisfy the hunger of nutrient cleansed soil profiles from the Pampas of Argentina to the Prairies of the United States.

  5. Mark says

    Given that neither nitrogen or phosphorus ends up in the final fuel output, is it possible to recycle the residue from the cellulosic fuel process to address the need to return nutrients to the soil?

  6. Mark says

    I guess the other key question is as this organic matter is removed from the soil, what will happen to its ability to retain water?

  7. Mark says

    This is an interesting issue that Aaron has brought up and after thinking about it a bit I’m a bit less worried in the sense that I would hope that most farmers recognize their land as an asset and would apply economic common sense in how they manage it. In other words, using too much stubble off the fields would degrade the quality of their land and would degrade its economic value both in terms of future production capability and perhaps sale value at some point doen the road. The biggest danger would be ignorance of the potential problem but I would think most farmers are smart enough and have enough common sense to avoid such problems. Perhaps the biggest danger would be farmers suffering through a period of economic hardship where given no other options, might decide they have to ‘mine’ their land just to keep their heads above water.

  8. gavin says

    Mark: “Perhaps the biggest danger would be farmers suffering through a period of economic hardship where given no other options, might decide they have to ‘mine’ their land just to keep their heads above water”.

    We can guess that practice started way back round the Middle East. Mining fragile soils for shout term profit is high risk. It means we must focus on what keeps all lands fertile.

    Stripping a country of native woods in general is risky, replacement with mono cultures even more risky, besides we eat best in a cottage garden. In this part of the world, brick walls are better shelter than pine plantations.

    I’m reminded of the move in cool climate grapes.

  9. Pinxi says

    On Mark and farmers managing land well: what’s the flow on effect? The story is the Eu and mentions disappearing rainforest, poor people, palm etc. Good economic management can mean that Africa or Asian countries grow biofuel crop that can replace food crops or forest etc.

    Problems rely on the area of concern.

  10. Helen Mahar says

    The peak oil crowd say we are going to run out of oil, so the price of fuel will go up. Well, let it. That will produce the results that governments are trying to fsst track with regulations, subsidies, tarrifs, and corporate welfare – ie “green” businesses on the goverment (taxpayers) t-t.

    Results like: an increasing frugality of power and fuel use in ordinary people, and an increasing market incentive for businesses to economically develop alternative fuels and power sources.

    The above post is about regulators imposing a half baked idea, realising some unintended consequences, and proposing to tweak the edges of the regulations. Which will, of course employ more regulators. Scrap the whole idea, and let the markets work it out.

  12. Helen Mahar says

    An example from history demonstrates a market solution. Instead of ‘peak oil’, think whales and whale oil.

    Whaling was a huge industry in the 19th Century. Their oil was used to light street lamps in the cities of Europe and Nth America, and the houses of the well-to-do. But through hunting, whale numbers diminished and whale oil prices shot up.

    Now think Texas, oil, and John D. Rockefeller. Born poor, by age 24 he had saved enough to buy a couple of oil wells with two partners. They ran a very efficient business, managed to coax more kerosene from a barrel of crude oil than their competion could, produced the cleanest burning kerosene, seriously undercut the competition on price, and still made profits – which were largely ploughed back into the business.

    During the 1870’s kerosene replaced whale oil as the primary lighting oil. And it was so cheap that for the first time, the less well off could afford to light their homes by night. This revolutionised the lives of millions. But that’s another story.

    By the 1890’s they had their production costs and kero prices so low that they had pretty well gutted the market for whale oil – and gutted some of their less efficient competitors too. Who began to lobby politicians for help against Rockefeller.

    Rockefeller was a “market entrepreneur”. He and his parners built their business without government help, and passed their efficiencies onto their customers.

    The competitors who eventually broke up his business through political action and legislation, were “political entrepreneurs”. Businesses which sought protection from competition through tarrifs, subsidies, madated quotas, etc – eventually at the customer’s expense.

    Market entrepreneurs are better at meeting market needs than political entrepreneurs. The subsidies and favours chucked at political entrepreneurs distort markets, and produce unintended consequences, as seen in the above post.