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The Complicated Biofuels Proposition

By crooky | May 13, 2008

Back in February, I wrote about a New York Times story that basically heralded the death of biofuels as an alternative to gasoline. I want to follow up that post with new information that comes from another newspaper - but one from the West Coast this time. On May 3, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran this story on biofuels. In that story was this great chart (see below) that lays out some great metrics on bio-based ethanol made from corn, sugar cane, grass, soy and algae, amongst other things. The moral of the story is that biofuels might not be dead and gone yet but that we must weigh the tradeoffs very carefully if we’re to replace gasoline with any of these technologies.


(click on chart for bigger, easier to read version)

In this context, it appears that there is plenty of room for innovation in the following ares:

1. Water

If we can make more efficient use of water for agricultural uses, we can start to reduce some of the negative impacts noted on this table. There are already technologies being developed but, as I’ve insinuated in another post , water is going to be the next GHG on the public’s radar in coming years.

2. Energy

This article definitely has an American flavour to it (tastes like freedom and tobacco) so the energy metric looks different than it would in countries like Canada where coal and other dirty power sources are not so heavily used. However, their point is valid - the more power we use for crops that are turned into biofuels - the more GHGs we’re potentially releasing into the atmosphere.

Even in places like BC - where we have clean Hydroelectricity - when we run out of capacity, we buy power from jurisdictions that burn natural gas and/or coal to generate power.

3. Fertilizer/Pesticide

This is a dodgy area. It seems like every innovation we make in pesticides and fertilizers, we just seem to make things worse. Genetically-modified crops that need less fertilizer and pesticide are not popular (for valid reasons) and there are chemical solutions but these have big impacts on the groundwater table which takes us back to point 1.

So, I take back what I said about biofuels with the caveat that they’re still deader than Elvis unless we can solve some of the problems I’ve highlighted above.

(credit to Treehugger for flagging this great article)

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Topics: Cars, Policy, Technology |

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