Document Title: Increasing corn for biofuel production reduces biocontrol services in agricultural landscapes

Author(s): Douglas A. Landis, Mary M. Gardiner, Wopke van der Werf, and Scott M. Swinton
Organization: Michigan State University

Summary: Abstract:

Increased demand for corn grain as an ethanol feedstock is altering U.S. agricultural landscapes and the ecosystem services they provide. From 2006 to 2007, corn acreage increased 19% nationally, resulting in reduced crop diversity in many areas. Biological control of insects is an ecosystem service that is strongly influenced by local landscape structure. Here, we estimate the value of natural biological control of the soybean aphid, a major pest in agricultural landscapes, and the economic impacts of reduced biocontrol caused by increased corn production in 4 U.S. states (Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin). For producers who use an integrated pest management strategy including insecticides as needed, natural suppression of soybean aphid in soybean is worth an average of $33 ha−1. At 2007-2008 prices these services are worth at least $239 million y−1 in these 4 states. Recent biofuel-driven growth in corn planting results in lower landscape diversity, altering the supply of aphid natural enemies to soybean fields and reducing biocontrol services by 24%. This loss of biocontrol services cost soybean producers in these states an estimated $58 million y−1 in reduced yield and increased pesticide use. For producers who rely solely on biological control, the value of lost services is much greater. These findings from a single pest in 1 crop suggest that the value of biocontrol services to the U.S. economy may be underestimated. Furthermore, we suggest that development of cellulosic ethanol production processes that use a variety of feedstocks could foster increased diversity in agricultural landscapes and enhance arthropod-mediated ecosystem services.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online before print December 15, 2008

Date Released: 2008-12-15

Web site: The complete article is at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/12/15/0804951106.full.pdf+html

This is proof that biofuels have reached the level of mania. Like coals to New Castle, we’re now importing vegetable oil to the Middle East to make biodiesel

United Arab Emirates to Host Region’s First Biodiesel Plant

Dubai: The first UAE-based biodiesel plant in the GCC region will produce 3 million gallons annually of environmentally-friendlier diesel to power vehicles, drastically reducing greenhouse gas emission due to its less toxic content, by next year.

Biodiesel is made from a variety of organic sources such as vegetable oils, inedible oils and other biomass and can be blended with petrodiesel by up to 20 per cent for use in vehicles without any alteration to the engine.

Constant supply

Emirates Biodiesel LLC (EmBio) will establish the first constant supply of commercial grade biodiesel in the UAE and the GCC countries. The plant will be located in Al Ain Industrial City.

Karim Aly, founder and executive director of EmBio describes the company as a national initiative established to support the GCC’s increasing energy demand and mounting pressure on the environment.

Embio will use only inedible oils as the raw material, also called feedstock, as opposed to diverting edible crops to satisfy energy demands, said Aly. “Our aim is to highlight the true environmental as well as economic benefits of biodiesel,” he said.

The EmBio facility is planned to be operational by end of 2009. It will be designed to process multi-feedstock oils for the production of biodiesel.

“We will be focusing largely on waste vegetable oil as feedstock; discarded oils which are derived from crops harvested for human consumption as the primary purpose. Once utilised, the waste oils are then channelled to EmBio.”

“At this stage, we have not yet initiated any proprietary projects for cultivation of feedstock crops. However, if and when we do, we will strategically select inedible crops which are capable of being grown on arid land - therefore not cannibalising on any fertile agricultural soil that may otherwise be used for harvesting food crops,” said Aly.

Buoyant

“As global demand is set to remain buoyant on the back of sustained demand from emerging economies as well as the growing consensus to diversify global energy pools, EmBio will also explore supplying other markets in the future,” said Aly.

Many vehicle companies with models that can use biodiesel include Audi, BMW, Chevrolet, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, General Motors, Isuzu, Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Peugeot, Saab, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo.

Even George W Bush has hinted so much. But research from his US Dept of Ag doesn’t point to that.

Here’s what a researcher had to say:

You could remove the extra residue,” she said, “but it still provides surface cover and will eventually become organic matter; this residue layer is especially important if you rotate with low-residue crops legumes and canola.”

If residue were harvested, she said, soil fertility would drop and farmers would have to find other ways to increase the amount of organic matter in their soils.

“We need to constantly replenish organic matter-so removing valuable residue, especially in areas with low rainfall, may not be the best practice.”

Read the whole story here Newswise — July 15, 2008 — In the rush to develop renewable fuels from plants, converting crop residues into cellulosic ethanol would seem to be a slam dunk.

However, that might not be such a good idea for farmers growing crops without irrigation in regions receiving less than 25 inches of precipitation annually, says Ann Kennedy, a USDA-Agricultural Research Service soil scientist and adjunct professor of crop and soil sciences at Washington State University.

“With cultivation, organic matter tends to decline in most places around the world,” she said. “In the more than 100 years that we have been cultivating soils in the Palouse,”-the wheat growing region of Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho and Northeast Oregon-”we have lost about half of the original organic matter.”

Ideally, according to Kennedy, soils in the Palouse should have about 3.5 percent organic content. In most farm fields, she said, it is now closer to 2 percent.

She said organic matter provides nutrients crops need, helps the soil hold water and contributes to the formation of soil clods that help prevent wind erosion. The percentage of organic matter in a given soil varies naturally from region to region, depending on climate, soil disturbance, moisture and vegetation. Generally speaking, more moisture leads to more vegetation, which is the feedstock for the microbes that break down residue into organic matter.

“A lot of people think residue is part of organic matter,” Kennedy said, “but that is not correct. Organic matter is well-decomposed plant material and microbes. It is black and rich and gives soil its dark color.”

Kennedy, who researches the composition of cereal crop residues and the amount of residue needed to maintain soil quality, said that the tillage system used to prepare the soil for planting has a big effect on the conversion of residue to soil organic matter. In no-till (direct seed) or one-pass tillage systems, she said, at least a ton of residue per acre per year is needed to build soil organic matter over time. In these minimum tillage systems, the intact and slowly decomposing roots also add to organic matter. She found that the percentage of organic matter in no-till research plots at the Palouse Conservation Field Station increased from 1.9 percent to 3.6 percent over the course of 20 years.

In fields with multiple tillage passes, on the other hand, organic matter may not increase even if all the drop residue is left in the field.

Kennedy thinks multiple tillage may mix the soil and residue too well, in essence over-feeding the microbes. The microbes will consume the incorporated residue too quickly and release most of it into the air as carbon dioxide.

“It is like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant every day and eating too much,” she said “You cannot adequately metabolize all the food you ate. Cultivated soil is like a ‘pig out’ for microbes.”

For the long-term health of the soil, leaving residue on the soil surface works best.

“It will tend to stay around longer, and the microbes will slowly invade it and convert it into organic matter with less lost as carbon dioxide,” said Kennedy.
And about proposals to bale off crop residue for production of biofuels?

“You could remove the extra residue,” she said, “but it still provides surface cover and will eventually become organic matter; this residue layer is especially important if you rotate with low-residue crops legumes and canola.”

If residue were harvested, she said, soil fertility would drop and farmers would have to find other ways to increase the amount of organic matter in their soils.

“We need to constantly replenish organic matter-so removing valuable residue, especially in areas with low rainfall, may not be the best practice.”

Agra Europe Weekly
Wednesday July 16 2008

A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development argues that existing policies for biofuels in OECD countries are costly, and that their impact on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is limited, writes Dr Alan Bullion, deputy editor of F.O. Licht’s ‘World Biofuels Report’.

Futhermore, the report fuels the debate over food prices by suggesting that existing support mechanisms are having a significant impact on global commodity prices, although concluding that this should not be exaggerated, as some recent press reports have done.

The OECD report, ‘Economic Assessment of Biofuel Support Policies’ contends that alternative policy approaches may offer greater benefits. It specifically argues for the accelerated introduction of ’second-generation’ biofuels that do not rely on current commodity feedstocks, such as cellulosic sources, algae, waste and forestry, as well as fuel cell and hydrogen vehicles.

It also recommends that existing trade barriers to biofuels should be lowered or removed, chiming with similar calls from Sweden, a large importer of ethanol, and Brazil, a leading producer and exporter.

With record gasoline prices in the United States, there is a growing clamour for the removal of the 54 cents a gallon import tariff currently applied to Brazilian ethanol. Opponents of existing US policy, such as Republican Presidential contender John McCain, are arguing that it would make much more economic sense for the US to import more ethanol from Brazil and drill more offshore oil, a stance vigorously opposed by his Democrat rival Barack Obama.

Looking seven years ahead, the report calculates that policies in the United States, Canada, and the European Union would only save between 0.5% and 0.8% of GHG emissions from transport in 2015. It further estimates that these mechanisms would cost some US$25 bln a year in 2015. In effect, the OECD says that these supports cost between $960 to $1,700 per tonne of GHG (CO2 equivalent) saved, and are thus expensive to maintain.

The report is also critical of blending policies and mandates. It argues that while these measures generally are neutral for public budgets, the higher production costs of biofuels result in increased fuel prices for the final consumer who therefore makes a transfer payment to biofuel producers. This of course overlooks the argument from the International Energy Agency and others that without biofuels petrol prices would actually be higher.

“Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,” the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

A friend of mine jokes that green lobbying groups love any and every form of energy–as long as there is no market for it. As soon as a market develops–even a government-contrived market–the greens decry the environmental impacts and organize opposition. For example, Rober Kennedy, Jr. professes to love renewable energy–until somebody tries to build a wind farm in Nantucket.  Greens were once keen on corn-ethanol and bio-diesel, but now many condemn these so-called first-generation biofuels for contributing to deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Will their love affair with cellulosic ethanol similarly grow cold? 

May 21, 2008
New Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, New York Times

ROME - In the past year, as the diversion of food crops like corn and palm to make biofuels has helped to drive up food prices, investors and politicians have begun promoting newer, so-called second-generation biofuels as the next wave of green energy. These, made from non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses, would offer fuel without the risk of taking food off the table, they said.

But now, biologists and botanists are warning that they, too, may bring serious unintended consequences. Most of these newer crops are what scientists label invasive species - that is, weeds - that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process, they now say.

At a United Nations meeting in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday, scientists from the Global Invasive Species Program, the Nature Conservancy and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, as well as other groups, presented a paper with a warning about invasive species.

“Some of the most commonly recommended species for biofuels production are also major invasive alien species,” the paper says, adding that these crops should be studied more thoroughly before being cultivated in new areas.

Controlling the spread of such plants could prove difficult, the experts said, producing “greater financial losses than gains.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature encapsulated the message like this: “Don’t let invasive biofuel crops attack your country.”

To reach their conclusions, the scientists compared the list of the most popular second-generation biofuels with the list of invasive species and found an alarming degree of overlap. They said little evaluation of risk had occurred before planting.

“With biofuels, there’s always a hurry,” said Geoffrey Howard, an invasive species expert with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. “Plantations are started by investors, often from the U.S. or Europe, so they are eager to generate biofuels within a couple of years and also, as you might guess, they don’t want a negative assessment.”

The biofuels industry said the risk of those crops morphing into weed problems is overstated, noting that proposed biofuel crops, while they have some potential to become weeds, are not plants that inevitably turn invasive.

“There are very few plants that are ‘weeds,’ full stop,” said Willy De Greef, incoming secretary general of EuropaBio, an industry group. “You have to look at the biology of the plant and the environment where you’re introducing it and ask, are there worry points here?” He said that biofuel farmers would inevitably introduce new crops carefully because they would not want growth they could not control.

The European Union and the United States have both instituted biofuel targets as a method to reduce carbon emissions. The European Union’s target of 10 percent biofuel use in transportation by 2020 is binding. As such, politicians are anxiously awaiting the commercial perfection of second-generation biofuels.

The European Union is funding a project to introduce the “giant reed, a high-yielding, non-food plant into Europe Union agriculture,” according to its proposal. The reed is environmentally friendly and a cost-effective crop, poised to become the “champion of biomass crops,” the proposal says.

A proposed Florida biofuel plantation and plant, also using giant reed, has been greeted with enthusiasm by investors, its energy sold even before it is built.

But the project has been opposed by the Florida Native Plants Society and a number of scientists because of its proximity to the Everglades, where giant reed overgrowth could be dangerous, they said. The giant reed, previously used mostly in decorations and in making musical instruments - is a fast-growing, thirsty species that has drained wetlands and clogged drainage systems in other places where it has been planted. It is also highly flammable and increases the risk of fires.

From a business perspective, the good thing about second-generation biofuel crops is that they are easy to grow and need little attention. But that is also what creates their invasive potential.

“These are tough survivors, which means they’re good producers for biofuel because they grow well on marginal land that you wouldn’t use for food,” Dr. Howard said. “But we’ve had 100 years of experience with introductions of these crops that turned out to be disastrous for environment, people, health.”

Stas Burgiel, a scientist at the Nature Conservancy, said the cost of controlling invasive species is immense and generally not paid by those who created the problem.

But he and other experts emphasized that some of the second-generation biofuel crops could still be safe if introduced into the right places and under the right conditions

“With biofuels we need to do proper assessments and take appropriate measures so they don’t get out of the gate, so to speak,” he said. That assessment, he added, must take a broad geographical perspective since invasive species don’t respect borders.

The Global Invasive Species Program estimates that the damage from invasive species costs the world more than $1.4 trillion annually - five percent of the global economy.

Jatropha, the darling of the second-generation biofuels community, is now being cultivated widely in East Africa in brand new biofuel plantations. But jatropha has been recently banned by two Australian states as an invasive species. If jatropha, which is poisonous, overgrows farmland or pastures, it could be disastrous for the local food supply in Africa, experts said.

But Mr. De Greef said jatropha had little weed potential in most areas, adding: “Just because a species has caused a problem in one place doesn’t make it a weed everywhere.”

The planned $12.5 billion in new outlays on bio-refineries seemed to make sense when crude-oil prices began rocketing last year. But the price of palm oil - produced widely in Southeast Asia - has climbed even more steeply, making biodiesel plants that use the commodity commercially unviable.

 Costlier Palm Oil, Europe Oversupply Cast Cloudy Outlook

By TOM WRIGHT
April 30, 2008

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Plans to invest billions of dollars in biodiesel refineries across Southeast Asia have been put on hold as the prices of key raw ingredients - particularly palm oil - have shot up amid surging food demand in China and India.

An oversupply of biodiesel fuel in Europe thanks to a wave of heavily subsidized U.S. imports and growing concern in the West about the adverse environmental impact of oil-palm cultivation have added to the bleak outlook, Asian producers say.

That is an unexpected reversal of fortune for the industry. Just a year ago, Asian companies were rushing to build biodiesel plants to take advantage of subsidies in Europe and the U.S. aimed at promoting the consumption of cleaner-burning fuels.

Projects being built or planned were forecast to pump out five million metric tons of biodiesel a year upon completion, or about half of Europe’s total refining capacity in 2007. The Indonesian government boasted that $12.5 billion in new biofuel investments were in the pipeline for that country alone.

Biodiesel, refined from vegetable oils, is mixed with regular diesel and sold at the pump in Europe and the U.S. In theory, the blended fuel reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by stretching how far a vehicle can travel on gasoline or regular diesel.

The planned outlays on refineries seemed to make sense when crude-oil prices began rocketing last year. But the price of palm oil - produced widely in Southeast Asia - has climbed even more steeply, making biodiesel plants that use the commodity commercially unviable.

At the same time, the European Union - by far the world’s largest consumer of biodiesel - is tightening its subsidy program to specifically exclude biodiesel produced from palm oil grown on recently destroyed natural forest. Razing forests to plant palm oil - a common, if often illegal, practice in places like Indonesia - releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, negating any benefit from cleaner-burning fuels, recent studies have found.

Biodiesel makers in Asia are also complaining that U.S. exporters have flooded the European market with biodiesel fuel up to 30% cheaper than they are able to produce. U.S. producers of soybean-derived biodiesel get a $1 per gallon tax credit and then export their product to Europe, benefiting from subsidies there as well. Last week, an association of European biodiesel producers filed an official complaint to the European Commission claiming the U.S. export of subsidized biodiesel constitutes unfair competition.

The result: Some Asian palm-oil producers have scrapped their plans for biodiesel refineries, and only a few new plants have come on line. In Malaysia, for instance, the industry produced just 80,000 metric tons of biodiesel last year, much lower than the country’s annual capacity of one million tons, Malaysian Commodities Minister Peter Chin said last week.

“At current high palm-oil prices, palm biodiesel is not viable,” says Au Kah Soon, a spokesman for Wilmar International Ltd, a Singapore-based palm-oil plantation owner. Last year, Wilmar completed Southeast Asia’s largest biodiesel plant on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. But the plant, which has the capacity to produce around one million tons of biodiesel each year, is running only to meet current contracts. “We foresee a very small percentage of our revenue coming from biodiesel this year,” Mr. Soon says.

Sinar Mas Agro Resources & Technology Ltd., an Indonesian palm-oil company, has also suspended plans to invest $5.5 billion to build a huge biodiesel complex in Indonesia’s remote Papua province with China National Offshore Oil Corp., says a Sinar Mas Agro spokeswoman. The plan to develop one million hectares of virgin rainforest for the plantations has drawn complaints from environmentalists.

Biodiesel producers who don’t own oil-palm plantations have been hardest hit because they must fork out ever higher prices for their raw materials. Crude-palm-oil futures on the Malaysian Derivatives Exchange have climbed 12% so far this year after jumping 50% in 2007.

Mission Biofuels Ltd., which runs a refinery in Malaysia and is listed in Australia, warned investors recently that core earnings for its financial year ending June will be less than half an earlier forecast. Swaminathan Mahalingam, the company’s managing director, says the 100,000-tons-per-year plant is operating at only 40% capacity. “We’re only producing biodiesel if we have an order which makes sense,” he says.

To be sure, biodiesel could still play an important role if fossil-fuel output is unable to keep up with growing world energy demand. Many biodiesel producers in Southeast Asia say they might kick-start production again if crude-oil prices remain above $115 per barrel.

Goldman Sachs estimates that palm-oil-derived biodiesel exports to the EU can break even at current prices if crude remains above $100 a barrel. To be commercially viable, similar biodiesel exports to the U.S. would require crude oil to trade at above $120 a barrel, Goldman estimates.

Some biodiesel producers that buy palm oil from third parties say they can still make their expansion plans work. Finnish company Neste Oil Corp., for example, is moving ahead with an $800 million biodiesel plant in Singapore, which is expected to start operations in 2010.

Simo Honkanen, a vice president at Neste, says sales of the company’s high-performance biodiesel are strong. Neste is confident it will be able to pass higher palm-oil prices to customers. “Those that survive will be companies that have a superb product,” he says.

Meanwhile, some Southeast Asian palm-oil producers are refocusing on more traditional products and markets. Palm oil is still much more widely used to make cooking oil, margarine and cosmetics than it is for biodiesel. With diets improving in China and India, cooking-oil demand has soared, driving up prices. With subsidized U.S. and European soybean oil still flowing into biodiesel, some palm-oil producers, including Wilmar, have switched gears and are trying to exploit the opportunity to supply China and other Asian markets with cooking oil.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120950216587953897.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

“Taking these together — the environmental damage, the human pain of food price inflation, the failure to reduce our dependence on oil — it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed.” - Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis

Ethanol’s Failed Promise
By Lester Brown and Jonathan Lewis
Washington Post, Tuesday, April 22, 2008; A19
The willingness to try, fail and try again is the essence of scientific progress. The same sometimes holds true for public policy. It is in this spirit that today, Earth Day, we call upon Congress to revisit recently enacted federal mandates requiring the diversion of foodstuffs for production of biofuels. These “food-to-fuel” mandates were meant to move America toward energy independence and mitigate global climate change. But the evidence irrefutably demonstrates that this policy is not delivering on either goal. In fact, it is causing environmental harm and contributing to a growing global food crisis.
Food-to-fuel mandates were created for the right reasons. The hope of using American-grown crops to fuel our cars seemed like a win-win-win scenario: Our farmers would enjoy the benefit of crop-price stability. Our national security would be enhanced by having a new domestic energy source. Our environment would be protected by a cleaner fuel. But the likelihood of these outcomes was never seriously tested, and new evidence has shown that the justifications for these mandates were inaccurate.
It is now abundantly clear that food-to-fuel mandates are leading to increased environmental damage. First, producing ethanol requires huge amounts of energy — most of which comes from coal. Second, the production process creates a number of hazardous byproducts, and some production facilities are reportedly dumping these in local water sources.
Third, food-to-fuel mandates are helping drive up the price of agricultural staples, leading to significant changes in land use with major environmental harm. Here in the United States, farmers are pulling land out of the federal conservation program, threatening fragile habitats. Increased agricultural production also means increased fertilizer use. The National Academy of Sciences reported last month that meeting the congressional food-to-fuel mandate by 2022 would lead to a 10 to 19 percent increase in the size of the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone” — an area so polluted by fertilizer runoff that no aquatic life can survive there.
Most troubling, though, is that the higher food prices caused in large part by food-to-fuel mandates create incentives for global deforestation, including in the Amazon basin. As Time magazine reported this month, huge swaths of forest are being cleared for agricultural development. The result is devastating: We lose an ecological treasure and critical habitat for endangered species, as well as the world’s largest “carbon sink.” And when the forests are cleared and the land plowed for farming, the carbon that had been sequestered in the plants and soil is released. Princeton scholar Tim Searchinger has modeled this impact and reports in Science magazine that the net impact of the food-to-fuel push will be an increase in global carbon emissions — and thus a catalyst for climate change.
Meanwhile, the mandates are not reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Last year, the United States burned about a quarter of its national corn supply as fuel — and this led to only a 1 percent reduction in the country’s oil consumption.
Turning one-fourth of our corn into fuel is affecting global food prices. U.S. food prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation, hitting the pocketbooks of lower-income Americans and people living on fixed incomes. Globally, the United Nations and other relief organizations are facing gaping shortfalls as the cost of food outpaces their ability to provide aid for the 800 million people who lack food security. Deadly food riots have broken out in dozens of nations in the past few months, most recently in Haiti and Egypt. World Bank President Robert Zoellick warns of a global food emergency. The immediate necessary step is a major increase in global food aid. But beyond that, America must stop contributing to food price inflation through mandates that force us to use food to feed our cars instead of to feed people.
Taking these together — the environmental damage, the human pain of food price inflation, the failure to reduce our dependence on oil — it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed. Congress took a big chance on biofuels that, unfortunately, has not worked out. Now, in the spirit of progress, let us learn the appropriate lessons from this setback, and let us act quickly to mitigate the damage and set upon a new course that holds greater promise for meeting the challenges ahead.
Lester Brown is founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute. Jonathan Lewis is a climate specialist and lawyer with the Clean Air Task Force.

Opinion of the EEA Scientific Committee on the environmental impacts of biofuel utilisation in the EU

 Greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector are rising steadily, caused by the continuing growth of transport volume. More than 90% of the total transport emissions are due to road transport.
Policies and measures have so far not been sufficient to stop further emission growth.
Owing to the increasing urgency of these problems, mandatory biofuel quotas have been introduced in the expectation that in the medium term the growth in transport emissions can be reduced and that the emissions can be subsequently stabilised. In 2003, the Biofuels Directive set the objective of replacing 2% of vehicle fuel supply by 2005 and 5.75 % by 2010. The 2005 target was not met and it seems unlikely that the 2010 target can be reached. Nevertheless in 2007 the EU target for biofuels was increased to an ambitious 10% level by 2020, under the conditions of production being sustainable and second generation technologies being commercially available.
Despite the fact that the first targets were missed, the pace of biofuel production in the EU and of biofuel imports from third countries is picking up. This gives rise to increasing concern by the Scientific Committee regarding additional environmental pressures inside and outside the EU. Our concerns can be summarised as follows:
• Biofuel production based on first generation technologies does not optimally use biomass resources with regard to fossil energy saving and to greenhouse gas reduction. Technologies for direct heat and electricity generation should be preferred because they are more economically competitive and more environmentally effective than biofuel production for vehicles.
• Biomass utilisation implies combustion of very valuable and finite resources from our living environment. These resources ought to be preserved wherever possible. Therefore biomass utilisation must necessarily go hand in hand with energy efficiency improvements. This is not yet the case for the majority of applications in the automotive and residential sectors.
• The EEA has estimated the amount of available arable land for bioenergy production without harming the environment in the EU (EEA Report No 7/2006). In the view of the EEA Scientific Committee the land required to meet the 10 % target exceeds this available land area even if a considerable contribution of second generation fuels is assumed. The consequences of the intensification of biofuel production are thus increasing pressures on soil, water and biodiversity.
• The 10 % target will require large amounts of additional imports of biofuels. The accelerated destruction of rain forests due to increasing biofuel production can already be witnessed in some developing countries. Sustainable production outside Europe is difficult to achieve and to monitor.

The overambitious 10% biofuel target is an experiment, whose unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control. Therefore the Scientific Committee recommends suspending the 10% goal; carrying out a new, comprehensive scientific study on the environmental risks and benefits of biofuels; and setting a new and more moderate long-term target, if sustainability cannot be guaranteed.
– EEA Scientific Committee

[NOTE: The Scientific Committee assists the EEA Management Board and the Executive Director by providing scientific advice and delivering professional opinions on any scientific matter in the areas of work undertaken by the Agency. The committee is composed of 20 independent scientists from 15 EEA member countries, covering a variety of environmental fields relevant for the Agency's areas of activity.]

Adrian Bebb, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: “[EU Commission President José Manuel] Barroso is looking increasingly isolated in holding this view [that biofuel programs don't aggravate world hunger]. He is living in a different world if he thinks that he knows better than all of the experts on food policy. The 10 percent target is untenable.”

ENVIRONMENT: Scientists Ask EU to Drop Biofuel Targets
By David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Apr 12 (IPS) - Scientists tasked with advising the European Union’s policy-makers have called for a target on promoting the greater use of biofuels to be dropped.

As part of a battery of measures officially aimed at addressing climate change, the EU’s governments agreed in 2006 that 10 percent of the bloc’s transport needs should derive from agricultural crops by 2020.

In a new paper, the European Environment Agency’s scientific committee describes the goal as “overambitious” and recommends it should be suspended until a comprehensive study on the pros and cons of biofuels is completed.

According to the paper, meeting the 10 percent objective will necessitate large-scale import of biofuels from outside the EU. With the growing production of biofuels such as palm oil already accelerating deforestation in poor countries, the scientists argue that it will be difficult to monitor whether crops destined for use in European vehicles are being cultivated in an ecologically sustainable manner.

They also suggest that the production and use of biofuels may not lead to major cuts in the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main substance triggering global warming, when compared to conventional petrol or diesel. They express concern that an upsurge in biofuel production will put increasing pressure on water, soil, flora and fauna. And they query if the EU’s target is realistic, given that a previous one — set in 2003 — of ensuring that biofuels comprise 2 percent of transport fuels by 2005 was not attained.

Chaired by Hungarian professor László Somlyódy, the committee is the second EU scientific body this year to query the wisdom of the 10 percent target.

In January, a leaked paper from scientists in the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre said that the costs of reaching the goal will “almost certainly outweigh the benefits.” The JRC called into question the EU’s decision to focus its target on transport, contending that it would be more efficient to use agricultural resources for generating electricity than as biofuels.

The EEA’s position contrasts with the stance taken by José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission’s president, earlier in the week. Barroso claimed that the EU should “remain attached” to its target, adding that the alternative to biofuels is to continue running most cars on conventional petrol.

He dismissed, too, recent statements by the World Food Programme and the World Bank that the ballooning demand for biofuels is contributing to rising prices of food and the prospect of a major hunger crisis in poor crisis. Barroso’s comments were similar to those made by Andris Piebalgs, Europe’s energy commissioner, who complained last month that biofuels have been made a “scapegoat” for rising commodity prices, suggesting that poor harvests and higher living standards among the middle classes in India and China are more to blame.

Adrian Bebb, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said: “Barroso is looking increasingly isolated in holding this view. He is living in a different world if he thinks that he knows better than all of the experts on food policy. The 10 percent target is untenable.”

Bebb alleged that the Commission’s position is being influenced more by lobbying from firms with a vested interest in biofuels than in a desire to protect the environment. “The only winners from the 10 percent target will be the big agro-chemical companies, those who sell seeds and chemicals,” he said. “Everyone else will be losers.”

Gerard Choplin from the European Farmers Coordination said: “Biofuels are not a scapegoat (for rising food prices). In the U.S., corn is being increasingly grown for biofuels, so the U.S. is exporting less corn. This has put a new pressure on the world market. It is directly linked to biofuels.”

Despite Barroso’s comments, Choplin noted that other senior EU figures have been less obstinate in defending the 10 percent target. In March, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, whose country holds the Union’s rotating presidency, said that the possibility of revising or amending the target has not been excluded.

Barroso has also argued that criteria should be devised in order to ensure that biofuels are produced in a way that does not cause large-scale ecological damage.

However, environmental activists have branded as too weak a set of criteria prepared in late March by officials at the Council of Ministers, which bands together the EU’s 27 governments.

While the officials recommended that the Commission should analyse the ecological and social effects of biofuel production, it only recommended that “corrective action” should be proposed “if appropriate”. No suggestions were made about addressing concerns that biofuels may be exacerbating global hunger.

Greenpeace, the European Environmental Bureau, Friends of the Earth and BirdLife International have written jointly to EU governments urging them not to rush into devising criteria. A hasty EU agreement on standards that fails “to prevent potentially devastating outcomes for climate protection, biodiversity and vulnerable peoples would severely undermine the credibility of EU efforts to tackle climate change and to address emissions from transport in a sensible way,” the organisations said. (END/2008)

Business of Green: An appeal to slow down on biofuel
By Elisabeth Rosenthal

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
ROME: Last Friday an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency issued an extraordinary scientific opinion: The European Union should suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020.

The European Union’s biofuel targets were increased and extended from 5.75 percent by 2010 to 10 percent by 2020 just last year. Still, Europe’s well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had produced a slew of harmful ripple effects - from deforestation in Southeast Asia to higher prices for grains.

In a recommendation released last weekend, the 20-member panel, made up of some of Europe’s most distinguished climate scientists, called the 10 percent target “overambitious” and an “experiment” whose “unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control.”

“The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem,” Laszlo Somlyody, the panel’s chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, said in a telephone interview.

He said that part of the problem was that when it set the targets, the European Union was trying desperately to solve the problem of rising transportation emissions “in isolation,” without adequately studying the effects of other sectors like land use and food supply.

“The starting point was correct: I’m happy that the European Union took the lead in cutting greenhouse gasses and we need to control traffic emissions,” Somlyody said. “But the basic problem is it thought of transport alone, without considering all these other effects. And we don’t understand those very well yet.”

The panel’s advice is not binding and it is not clear whether the European Commission will follow the recommendation.

It has become increasingly clear that the global pursuit of biofuels - encouraged by a rash of targets and subsides in both Europe and the United States - has not produced the desired effect.

Investigations have shown, for example, rain forests and peat swamp are being cleared to make way for biofuel plantations, a process that produces more emissions than the biofuels can save. Equally concerning, land needed to produce food for people to eat is planted with more profitable biofuel crops, and water is diverted from the drinking supply.

In Europe and the United States, food prices for items like pizza and bread have increased significantly as grain stores shrink and wheat prices rise.

The price of wheat and rice are double those of a year ago, and corn is a third higher, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said this week.

“Food price inflation hits the poor hardest, as the share of food in their total expenditures is much higher than that of wealthier populations,” said Henri Josserand of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Biofuels are not, of course, the only reason for high food prices. Fuel to transport food is more expensive with oil more than $100 a barrel. There have been unexpected droughts this year as well.

But the rush to meet biofuels targets has put our “need” to drive a car to the mall in direct competition with the need to eat in some of the poorest countries in the world.

A global analysis performed by forestry experts at the Australian International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a scientific study group, found that biofuels were “in conflict with the reduction of deforestation” and also had negative effects on farming intensity and food security.

It also concluded that the rush to make biofuels from crops like corn, soy and rapeseed did not do much to reduce global greenhouse gasses anyway, producing an “ambiguous effect on greenhouse gas emissions.” This is partly because of land use changes like the clearing of forests and partly because the process of converting plants into fuel takes a lot of energy itself.

The European Union started promoting biofuels for use in transportation in 2003 as emissions from road transportation had been growing rapidly.

It required that 2 percent of transport fuel come from biofuel by 2005 and 5.75 percent by 2010. The first goal was not met and the 2010 goal is expected to be missed as well. Even so, the goal was raised to 10 percent by 2020, raising the pressure for countries to comply.

Should we conclude that all biofuels are bad?

No. But motivated by the obvious problems now emerging, scientists have begun to take a harder look at their benefits.

For example, the European Environment Agency advisory panel suggests that the best use of plant biomass is not for transport fuel but to heat homes and generate electricity.

To be useful for vehicles, plant matter must be distilled to a fuel and often transported long distances. To heat a home, it can often be used raw or with minimal processing, and moved just a short distance away.

Likewise, the ambitious 10 percent target has led to destruction of vital natural resources, the European Environment Agency recommendation said, “increasing pressures on soil, water and biodiversity” in Europe and elsewhere.

“We felt we need to understand more about biofuels and to integrate these various goals before just moving ahead,” said Somlyody, the panel’s chairman.