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Biofuels make climate change worse, say studies
Sat, Feb 09, 2008 The Straits Times
WASHINGTON - THE rush to grow biofuel crops - embraced widely as part of the solution to global warming - is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, say two studies published in the journal Science. One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air - far more than the carbon spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of petrol. Even using existing farmland to grow biofuel crops instead of food increases greenhouse gas emissions because food production is shifted to other parts of the world, resulting in the destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for farmland, the second study said. It calculated that a corn field in the United States devoted to producing bioethanol would need to be farmed for 167 years before it could achieve a net reduction in emissions.

'We are rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful,' said Mr Jason Hill, an economist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the first study. 'It is a little frightening to think that something this well-intentioned might be very damaging.'

Food crops such as corn, palm oil, sugar cane and soya beans have so far been the main source of biofuels because they are already grown in abundance and are relatively easy to convert.

These plant-based fuels were originally billed as better than fossil fuels because the carbon released when they were burned was balanced by the carbon absorbed when the plants grew.

But that equation has proved overly simplistic because the process of turning plants into fuels causes its own emissions.

'Any biofuel that uses productive land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it saves,' said researcher Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University, lead author of the first study.

Calculating the actual change in carbon emissions as a result of using biofuels has been difficult because of the many factors involved, such as the energy used to produce the fuels.

The biggest source of emissions, by far, is land-use changes associated with biofuels, the new studies showed.

The clearing of grassland releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gases that would be saved by the fuel made annually on that land, said Mr Joseph Fargione, lead author of the second paper and a scientist at the Nature Conservancy.

'So, for the next 93 years, you are making climate change worse just at the time when we need to be bringing down carbon emissions.'

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production.

These latest studies are likely to add to the controversy.

LOS ANGELES TIMES, NEW YORK TIMES