Study Warns of Biofuels’ Effect on Climate: Land-Use Changes Hurt More Than Products’ Use Helps
By Dennis Lien, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
Feb. 8–ENVIRONMENT — Converting healthy grasslands, forests and other native ecosystems into farms for biofuel crops worsens global warming, a new study says.
That’s because huge quantities of carbon stored in the plants and ground are released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas causing global warming, according to the study by the University of Minnesota and The Nature Conservancy.
Those conclusions, published online Thursday and in the upcoming issue of Science, could influence an evolving debate about renewable fuels. As more corn and other crops are planted to produce ethanol, a fuel used to replace gasoline, more critics are questioning the impact on food prices and asking how better fuel alternatives can be developed.
A key, according to the authors, is to make smarter choices about which crops to plant and where to plant them.
Converting existing prairie or peatlands to corn or other crops for use as biofuels, they said, is clearly a net loser, sending much more carbon into the atmosphere than is saved by cutting back on such fossil fuels as oil.
Planting corn on already tilled land is less of a problem because no native habitat is lost, but it has side effects such as driving up pressure elsewhere to convert land for crop use to keep up with the dual demand for food and fuel.
“You can’t ask world farmers to feed 6 billion people and also to produce energy without using more land, and that land has to come from somewhere,”
said lead author Joe Fargione, a scientist for The Nature Conservancy.
Other approaches, such as cutting native prairie grasses in the fall and using that material for fuel, actually helps fight global warming, it said. Other biofuels that don’t add to global warming include waste from agriculture and forests and woody biomass from lands unsuitable for crop production.
The study said all fuels should be fully evaluated for their impacts on global warming, including their effects on habitat conversion.
“The clear policy implication of this work is any climate change policy that does not take land-use change into account will not work,” Fargione said.
That could play out in a big way this year.
Fargione said 7 million of 36 million acres enrolled in the U.S. Conservation Reserve Program could be converted to cropland this year. Most of that conversion from grassland is expected to occur in Great Plains states such as Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Texas.
“What most people don’t understand is there is almost three times the carbon in plants and soil as there is in the air,” Fargione added. “There is a lot of carbon in our natural ecosystems, and if we protect those natural ecosystems, they can provide an incredibly valuable service of carbon storage and climate stabilization.”
The Renewable Fuels Association, a national trade organization representing the ethanol industry, called the study simplistic.
“By adopting the use of biofuels today and encouraging the development of next generation technologies for the future, the road can be paved for the future fuels and technologies to come,” association president Bob Dinneen said in a statement. “The alternative is to continue to exploit increasingly costlier fossil fuels for which the environmental price tag will be great.”
Jason Hill, a university research associate in applied economics and ecology who contributed to the study, said it offers a promising option.
“There are systems that not only can be used for biofuel production, but that restore soil and soil fertility,” he said. “In Minnesota, that’s prairie.”
Fargione cited two local efforts as being especially beneficial: A biomass plant in downtown St. Paul that uses waste wood to produce energy for downtown buildings and a plan by Rahr Malting in Shakopee to burn its own waste products to produce heat and electricity.
“There is no silver bullet for climate change, but there are many possible silver BBs: renewable energy, wind, solar and some biofuels, in addition to energy conservation,” Fargione said.
The study said lost habitat is even more critical in such places as Indonesia, where peatlands are being converted to palm oil plantations, and the Amazon, where parts of the forest are being cut down for soybean production.
Fargione began the work as a University of Minnesota researcher with applied economics professor Stephen Polasky and Regents Professor of Ecology David Tilman. He completed it after joining The Nature Conservancy. Hill and Peter Hawthorne contributed to it.
Dennis Lien can be reached at dlien@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5588.
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