WSJ Jan 2008
The University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center told the California Air Resources Board that ethanol could be twice as bad as gasoline, from a carbon-emissions point of view.

False Hope of BioFuels 2007

Washington Post July 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001480.html


But as we've looked at biofuels more closely, we've concluded that they're not a practical long-term solution to our need for transport fuels. Even if all of the 300 million acres (500,000 square miles) of currently harvested U.S. cropland produced ethanol, it wouldn't supply all of the gasoline and diesel fuel we now burn for transport, and it would supply only about half of the needs for the year 2025. And the effects on land and agriculture would be devastating.

2007 Biofuels Article - Biofuels Myths

Hearld Tribune June 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/10/opinion/edholt.php

Some highlights include:

The world's poorest already spend 50 to 80 percent of household income on food. They suffer when high fuel prices push up food prices.

They obscure the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food, and fail to help us understand the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems.

These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70 percent of its farmland with fuel crops. The entire corn and soy harvest of the United States would need to be processed as ethanol and biodiesel.

Every ton of palm oil generates 33 tons of carbon dioxide emissions - 10 times more than petroleum. Tropical forests cleared for sugar cane ethanol emit 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.

Soybeans supply 40 percent of Brazil's biofuels. NASA has correlated their market price with the destruction of the Amazon rainforest - currently at nearly 325,000 hectares a year.

Rush for biofuels threatens starvation on a global scale

Unfortunately we may see the "perfect storm" in food. While biofuels may not be the 100% cause, the use of foods for biofuels may have removed a buffer from the worlds food supply. Thus, a little extra pressure from some other cause, leads to extensive shortages. A small upset in some area may also then have catastrophic consequences.

Times UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3500954.ece

“It’s very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food,”

"Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Programme, told the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday: “The shift to biofuels production has diverted lands out of the food chain. "

"The US now devotes more acreage to growing corn than at any time since 1944. Farmers planted 90.5 million acres in 2007, 15 per cent more than a year before."

"Critics have been angered by the loss of tropical rainforests, which have been cleared to allow farmers to grow biofuel crops."

Food to Fuels 2006

Potential issues with biofuels were raised several years back. We often find that when governments get involved there are unintended consequences on a severe scale.

Times UK late Summer 2006

An an interview with The Times, he said that the U.K. faces soaring food prices, a shortage of staple foods and declining public health if the country's government forges ahead with plans to promote the use of biofuels.

Unilever is worried that European plans for a dramatic increase in use of vegetable oils in the manufacture of automotive fuels will drive up the cost of foods such as margarine and lead consumers to switch to less healthy animal fats. "The scale is dramatic. To meet current EU quotas would require between 50% and 80% of rapeseed production. Ultimately, there could be supply shortages," said Jope.

The price of both rapeseed and palm oil has also risen more than 20% as some Asian countries set aside their crops to produce biodiesel. Jope believes this price increase will have knock-on effects on food, and eventually, pubic health. For every 1% rise in the price of margarine, there is a 1% fall in consumption, says Jope. "The switch from healthy vegetable oils (to butter and animal fat) will have a dramatic impact on public health," The Times quotes Jope as saying.

The best vegetable oil for use as a biofuel is thought to be rapeseed, which is relatively thin, cheap to produce and easy to get hold of. Palm oil is also becoming increasingly popular.

The European Commission's enthusiasm for biofuels--it wants to increase the proportion of biofuel used in road transport to 5.75% by 2010 from 0.8% now--could be causing deforestation in South America and Asia, where rain forests are felled to clear land for crops used to produce ethanol.

"Superficially, it looks politically altruistic for a politician to say we are going to replace dwindling reserves of fossil fuels with renewable biofuels. We are now seeing the prospect of very material deforestation," said Jope.

"Biofuels have been presented as universally good thing," a Unilever spokesman told Forbes.com. He said that a "food versus fuel" debate could emerge as huge areas of land are needed to grow the crops necessary for biofuels, adding that the energy industry used land in a "terribly inefficient" way.

Focusing efforts on "second-generation" biofuel technologies such as wood chips, straw and pulp would have less environmental impact than claiming vast swathes of land for growing crops destined to be digested by cars, added the spokesman.