Aviation Industry sees Green Light

This is an update on stories earlier last year. The take home message is that the aviation industry is unexpectedly a possible earlier adopter of algae based fuels. They simply have the flexibility to make a swift conversion and the ability to finance supply.

Once others wake up to this fact it is certain that many other potential suppliers will get their act together. It is easy to envisage hauling truckloads of fuel to the airlines. It is much harder to believe that the local Exxon petrol station will welcome your appearance for half a truck load.

With the industry actively looking for a real answer to their fuel exposure, it is going to be solved fast. Recall that they were nearly bankrupted by $140 oil and the industry was thrown backwards by years on their business models.

These guys are totally motivated to exit the oil industry just as soon as possible, the devil take the hindmost.

If I were operating any form of biofuel business today, I would down tools and focus on this niche right now.

The airlines want long term contracts for supply at fixed prices which is exactly what a biofuel producer can produce.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/flying-on-vegetables/

January 7 2009
Flying on Vegetables
By Matthew L. Wald

Crude oil from algae manufactured by Sapphire Energy for Continental Airlines. Converting the airline industry to biofuels may be easier than converting the car market.

The scheduled flight on Wednesday of a Continental Airlines 737 fueled in part by biofuels made from jatropha and algae was experimental (see my report on the state of biofuels in the airline industry from Wednesday’s paper here). But if the fuel can be certified by international standards agencies, it could become as common as, say, ethanol added to gasoline.

It might be even more so, because the goal is a “drop-in” substitute that can be used at any percentage, in any jet or any airport fueling system.

In theory, people in the industry say, replacing petroleum in airplanes could be easier than replacing it in cars, even though jet fuel has to meet specifications that are of little concern on the highway, like weight (hauling fuel is a major use of fuel, after all), or how well it flows at 40 degrees below zero, which is a temperature big planes face for hours as they cruise in the stratosphere.

Because fuel quality has such importance to safety, some energy experts thought aviation would be the last to switch. “For 40 years we had the philosophy we’d be the ones using the last drop of oil,’’ said Carl E. Burleson, director of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Environment and Energy.

But compared to the market for gasoline or diesel, the market for jet fuel is simpler, industry experts say.

The number of fueling stations and customers are both much smaller than for motor vehicle fuel, making marketing easier. The number of engine manufacturers is smaller, too, so there are fewer parties to convince when switching to something new. And unlike the specifications for gasoline, which vary from state to state and country to country, there is a single standard for jet fuel, regardless of where it is sold.

As with substitute motor fuels, though, substitute jet fuel has mixed environmental implications. European carriers have tested fuel made from palm oil, but recent studies have persuaded some environmentalists that clearing tropical jungle to make space for palm plantations is a mistake, releasing more greenhouse gases than the new fuel will save. And the only petroleum substitute in common use now is made from coal, a switch that can save money and petroleum but makes greenhouse gas problems worse.

The precise carbon effect of using algae, jatropha or other substitutes will be studied closely and probably litigated, because airlines say they want to use such fuels to meet European regulations taking effect in the next few years, which will force them to cut carbon output or buy carbon allowances.

Oil Age Ends

This article is yet another encouraging eye opener. Far too much of our knowledge, taught to us with good intentions is often wrong. Here we expand our understanding of the nature of cellulose and also learn of a fantastic production strategy that literally mocks all the other methods been pursued. Those methods would have been still born if this possibility was understood or even guessed at.

This protocol allows a fermenting process like that of alcohol to produce sugars and free cellulose that can also be easily converted to glucose. The production fluid is an obvious feedstock for the production of ethanol.

This is obviously conducive to industrial manufacturing and eliminates most of the whole problem of utilizing the by product of spent algae. This is also early days again and the whole process lends itself to major optimization that will hugely lower the footprint. Their first calculations are back of the envelope worst case scenarios that can be safely ignored. They will get much better.

Most encouraging is the suitability of using saline water for the process. There are surely additional ways of optimizing the system by drawing sea borne organics into the mix. Perhaps while we are at it we can design in a fresh water byproduct system that can support local direct agricultural on arid coastlines. It all takes a bit of imagination but the desert coastlines are locales in which the beginning of a living productive ecosystem is necessary for further movement inland.

We can now expect one step continuous production of a charged fluid that can then be pumped into fermenter to produce ethanol as a second step. The main input will be sunlight and CO2. The output will be ethanol with little wastage and the fluids all been easily recycled. I do not think that it will be possible to make transportation fuel any cheaper. Particularly if they can also add the nitrogen fixing gene to the bug. We can have a run away sugar and cellulose factory working for us on the beach on sea water and sunshine. The other nutrients would come out of the sea water.

We have looked at a lot of promising technology for replacing the fossil fuel business. We now have nanosolar for static power and we have this as the ultimate supply for transportation fuel and just maybe an efficient way to store energy by splitting out hydrogen yesterday. These are surely the three cheapest ways to get there. Nanosolar claims to be already there. The other two will still need a couple of intense years to look commercially viable.

However we look at it and whatever the time it takes to ramp production up and it will not be much, the oil age has really ended with these discoveries.

New Source for Biofuels Discovered by Researchers At The University of Texas at Austin

April 23, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas — A newly created microbe produces cellulose that can be turned into ethanol and other biofuels, report scientists from The University of Texas at Austin who say the microbe could provide a significant portion of the nation's transportation fuel if production can be scaled up.

Along with cellulose, the cyanobacteria developed by Professor R. Malcolm Brown Jr. and Dr. David Nobles Jr. secrete glucose and sucrose. These simple sugars are the major sources used to produce ethanol.

"The cyanobacterium is potentially a very inexpensive source for sugars to use for ethanol and designer fuels," says Nobles, a research associate in the Section of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology.

Brown and Nobles say their cyanobacteria can be grown in production facilities on non-agricultural lands using salty water unsuitable for human consumption or crops.

Other key findings include:

The new cyanobacteria use sunlight as an energy source to produce and excrete sugars and cellulose

Glucose, cellulose and sucrose can be continually harvested without harming or destroying the cyanobacteria (harvesting cellulose and sugars from true algae or crops, like corn and sugarcane, requires killing the organisms and using enzymes and mechanical methods to extract the sugars)

Cyanobacteria that can fix atmospheric nitrogen can be grown without petroleum-based fertilizer input
They recently published their research in the journal Cellulose.

Nobles made the new cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) by giving them a set of cellulose-making genes from a non-photosynthetic "vinegar" bacterium, Acetobacter xylinum, well known as a prolific cellulose producer.

The new cyanobacteria produce a relatively pure, gel-like form of cellulose that can be broken down easily into glucose.

"The problem with cellulose harvested from plants is that it's difficult to break down because it's highly crystalline and mixed with lignins [for structure] and other compounds," Nobles says.

He was surprised to discover that the cyanobacteria also secrete large amounts of glucose or sucrose, sugars that can be directly harvested from the organisms.

"The huge expense in making cellulosic ethanol and biofuels is in using enzymes and mechanical methods to break cellulose down," says Nobles. "Using the cyanobacteria escapes these expensive processes."

Sources being used or considered for ethanol production in the United States include switchgrass and wood (cellulose), corn (glucose) and sugarcane (sucrose). True algae are also being developed for biodiesel production.

Brown sees a major benefit in using cyanobacteria to produce ethanol is a reduction in the amount of arable land turned over to fuel production and decreased pressure on forests.

"The pressure is on all these corn farmers to produce corn for non-food sources," says Brown, the Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology. "That same demand, for sucrose, is now being put on Brazil to open up more of the Amazon rainforest to produce more sugarcane for our growing energy needs. We don't want to do that. You'll never get the forests back."

Brown and Nobles calculate that the approximate area needed to produce ethanol with corn to fuel all U.S. transportation needs is around 820,000 square miles, an area almost the size of the entire Midwest.

They hypothesize they could produce an equal amount of ethanol using an area half that size with the cyanobacteria based on current levels of productivity in the lab, but they caution that there is a lot of work ahead before cyanobacteria can provide such fuel in the field. Work with laboratory scale photobioreactors has shown the potential for a 17-fold increase in productivity. If this can be achieved in the field and on a large scale, only 3.5 percent of the area growing corn could be used for cyanobacterial biofuels.

Cyanobacteria are just one of many potential solutions for renewable energy, says Brown.

"There will be many avenues to become completely energy independent, and we want to be part of the overall effort," Brown says. "Petroleum is a precious commodity. We should be using it to make useful products, not just burning it and turning it into carbon dioxide."

Brown and Nobles are now researching the best methods to scale up efficient and cost-effective production of cyanobacteria. Two patent applications, 20080085520 and 20080085536, were recently published in the United States Patent and Trade Office.

For more information, contact: Lee Clippard, College of Natural Sciences, 512-232-0675; Dr. R. Malcolm Brown Jr., 512-471-3364; Dr. David Nobles, 512-471-3364.

Biodiesel Processing

This report was extracted from a commercial site and nicely makes the case for the ongoing rapid expansion of processing capacity for the delivery of biodiesel. This is extremely important, because without this capability already in place, no one can build out production capacity.

Most of this is oriented toward various plant oils, but can be processing algae oil just as easily. A bit of their perspective is also very clear. They know that they need a secure feedstock for oil production. This is not provided by oil seeds simply because of direct competition from the food industry on a priority basis.

This also suggests that the processors can readily use algae as a feedstock as one would expect and that they are encouraging its rapid development.

Other recent reports are also appearing to confirm that the by product meal is truly suitable for cattle feed. I do not think that there has been nearly enough time to generate the supporting studies and research. Quite likely the industry is picking up on the buzz and tucking it into news releases.

The business model is currently supporting a distributed processing industry, able to use locally available feed stocks with a great deal of flexibility. It also appears that more and more participants are entering the algae business.

There is already more than enough capacity out there to swiftly shake out this industry.

Within two years, we can expect large scale operations been planned to take full advantage of the steadily improving utility of algae as an oil feed stock. This report suggests that fairly modest production levels are sustainable during the early stages. In any case, this promotes plenty of growers into the business.

MARKET GROWTH

More than 40 additional plants have been proposed, over half of which have obtained funding and are in the design/construction phase. The unprecedented growth and significantly elevated interest in the biodiesel market across the entire US is being fueled by three principal drivers:

Economic & National Security

The drivers pushing the growing interest in biodiesel are the rising cost of petroleum diesel, the desire to stimulate rural economic development through value-added agricultural applications, and the desire to reduce our dependence on foreign oil for reasons of trade balance and national security. Other economic drivers that are increasing the cost of petroleum diesel fuel are the mandates from the government that require cleaner fuels that are less pollutant to the atmosphere and produce lower levels of greenhouse gasses.

Environmental & Regulatory

The benefits of biodiesel for pollution reduction and as an oxygenate are significant and well-documented. Biodiesel contains 11% oxygen by weight and reduces the emission of carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and soot through improved ignition characteristics. In addition, biodiesel is a value-added ag-based product that is easily produced and fully capable of meeting any low-sulfur diesel requirements established by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Legislative

The measures driving the biodiesel industry consist of usage mandates and incentive programs. The federal government and certain state governments have passed legislative mandates requiring compliance with renewable energy standards and alternative fuel requirements; these mandates, such as the landmark federal EP Act bill passed in 1992, have encouraged public and private sector fleet operators to utilize biodiesel blends and flex-fueled vehicles.

INDUSTRY SUPPORT FOR BIODIESEL

Biodiesel use has now been recognized, and in some cases endorsed, by engine manufactures. John Deere and Daimler Chrysler are now filling their diesel tanks with Biodiesel on their new vehicle production lines. Toyota has announced that it will support initiatives for the use of alternatives fuels in their automobiles. Nationwide, more than 500 operators of major vehicle fleets now use Biodiesel, including the Department of Defense and the National Park Service. Thousands of educational events have increased the public awareness of Biodiesel.

While Biodiesel use has received support from many different quarters, its chief supporter is agriculture. Through its considerable efforts the agricultural industry has been the leading force behind the development of the modern biodiesel industry. Members of this industry have had the strongest collective voice in advocating for biodiesel-related laws, have been involved with the founding and governance of the National Biodiesel Board, and have built more plants with more biodiesel producing capacity than any group of individuals or organizations from any other industry.

Biodiesel fuels, in combination with the introduction of clean, quiet, efficient and powerful modern diesels, is changing consumer attitudes toward diesel powered autos. This essentially opens a new market for diesel engines, which were at one time broadly viewed by the general buying public as far more dirty, noisy and pollution-causing than a similar gasoline engine powered vehicle. With the use of Biodiesel, diesel automakers can now market their vehicles as a "green" alternative to gasoline engines.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR BIODIESEL

The Federal blender´s excise tax credit is the largest program subsidizing the Biodiesel industry. It was created in the 2004 Jobs Bill. It offers a $1.00 per gallon credit for "Agri-Biodiesel" (that derived solely from virgin oils, such as Algae Oil) and $0.50 per gallon for other Biodiesel (that derived from re-cycled oils). Algae Oil qualifies for the highest tax credit rate.

The Federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was passed in the 2005 Energy Bill. This established a consumption target for renewable fuels of 4 Billion gallons in 2006, rising to 7.5 Billion gallons by 2012. Ethanol is the primary focus of this bill, but Biodiesel also qualifies.

In addition to federal legislation, 36 state legislatures passed 170 pieces of Biodiesel-specific legislation in 2005. Thirty of these were signed into law in 2006 covering such issues as state agency usage, retail mandates, economic incentives, and consumer protection.

U.S. BIODIESEL FUEL MARKET

As of January 3, 2007 there were 88 operating biodiesel facilities in the US with a combined capacity of 800 million gallons per year. These facilities are widely distributed across the US with a higher concentration in the Midwest. The vast majority of all of the facilities shown in the above figure produce less than 15 million gallons per year.

Although the production capacity in 2007 was over 800 million gallons per year, many of the operational plants this went online in 2007 did not produce at full capacity due to lack of sufficient quantities of feedstock at a cost low enough to produce biodiesel profitably.

GROWTH POTENTIAL

The domestic market for biodiesel has barely begun to be tapped. The United States consumed almost 70 billion gallons of distillate fuels in 2006; over 42 billion gallons of petroleum diesel were used in the on-highway sector alone (60%). The commercial and residential heating oil sector accounted for another 10 billion gallons per year.

The US biodiesel industry produced nearly 400 million gallons of biodiesel fuel in 2006. This is slightly over 0.006% of the total US distillate market. Today´s biodiesel industry would have to grow over 175 times its current size to capture the petroleum diesel market or over 100 times to capture only the on-highway portion.

Industry trends reflect a 35% increase in the production of feedstock such as Soy, Canola, Palm, Camelina in 2007. Analyst forecast continued crop increases going forward. The benefit of producing biodiesel fuel from these sources is greatly diminished. Algae oil production is 75% - 250% greater than Soy Beans, Camelina, Rape Seed, Jetropha, or Palm oils for the same lot of land.

Potatoes for Ethanol

I copied this from Jerry Pornelle’s web site from his quick forum on corn and ethanol.

This is the first that I have heard of displacement hydroponics. I also find the 200 tons per acre a bit hard to swallow, however achieved.

What we need, I suppose is a completely new starch crop that can prosper in this hydroponic environment. Since tomatoes work so well, then perhaps we can do this with potatoes. The only modification would be to prevent any light getting on the roots. Potatoes are also a preferred feedstock for ethanol anyway. In fact, why the hell are we producing corn to make ethanol anyway?

Corn produces ten tons of stover to produce perhaps one ton of starch in the form of corn. The complete reverse will be true for potatoes. We must be crazy!

So a hydroponics operation producing 200 tons of potatoes per acre per year certainly competes with the current state of algae production.

It also strikes me that the bulk of the nutrients will be in the plant itself and open to recovery.
So a simple hydroponic potato protocol may be just the ticket for the mass production of ethanol. It should operate with a minimized water and nutrient loss while producing essentially pure starch on a fraction of the land demanded by any other protocol.

We may even breed a consumer version with non toxic skins as they will not have to fight the soil.

This all achievable right now and ethanol producers can start by encouraging potato crops with their local suppliers since the subsidy game is not likely to last long with all this recent heat. Even field potatoes are a better production deal than corn once you decide to buy starch. Half the acreage will produce as least as much as corn.

The only problem with potatoes is storage which is much fussier than corn.

Subject: corn, food, and ethanol

Hi, Jerry - first, thank you so much for printing the entire exchange. I think you fairly represented my views, and I greatly appreciate your doing so.

I had intended to follow your site closely this week, but my evil overlord masters - AKA customers - demanded that I actually work for a living. Hence I've put in about 50-ish hours in the last 3 days, and today I am both frazzled and out of touch. But let me touch on a comment or two regarding our discussion.

Jim comments that "food availability is decreasing because food is being diverted to fuel production". I would disagree with that assertion; in fact, food is plentiful. There have been no riots due to lack of food; the riots have been caused because the food, although plentiful, was too expensive to purchase. That is a very, very important distinction. I state again: There's lots of food on the shelves. There is no shortage of food. The problem is not the availability, but the price.

In the United States, we have lots of land that is not in production, simply because there is no demand for the food that it could grow. If ethanol production increases, I would expect that the quantity of land not currently in production would decrease; but until it hits zero, diverting food to ethanol production will have no measurable impact on food costs.

Bob Ludwick offers some figures regarding the water requirements of corn growing. Well, he's right, sort of; but you wouldn't grow corn in the desert the way its grown in Nebraska.

What you would do is grow corn using a displacement irrigation hydroponics system. The way I did this, to grow tomatoes in January in my apartment 20 years ago, was to start with a tray filled with gravel. Below that, I had another sealed container with the nutrient solution; and every hour, a timer would start a pump which would pump the nutrient solution from the lower tray up to the gravel filled tray, which contained my tomato plants. When the upper tray was flooded, the air between the gravel was forced out; and when the timer kicked off, the pump would stop and the solution drained back into the lower tray. This sucked fresh air back into the spaces between the gravel, thus providing oxygen for the plants (plant roots require oxygen, or they rot).

This proved to be an amazingly efficient way to grow tomatoes. There was virtually no water lost due to evaporation; all I needed to do was add a tiny quantity of water to the lower tray every few days. (I also added fresh nutrient solution).

In fact, most conventional irrigation - just setting up a great big lawn sprinkler, which is essentially the way commercial irrigation is achieved - results in 90% water loss due to evaporation. This is why drip irrigation systems are so dramatically effective at growing plants, yet use virtually no water. And displacement hydroponics systems are considerably more efficient than drip irrigation.

Here's a quick quote from an article on hydroponics in the desert, from a quick google search:

"Naturally, the weather is hot and dry. The average yield for vegetables in the field is about 5 tons for each acre used (85,000 acres in all). Yet in the greenhouse at Riyadh, the American company gets more than 200 tons for each acre planted! No wonder the Saudis are impressed and keep urging the Americans onto higher achievements."

You can read the article at http://www.mayhillpress.com/arabian.html . There are probably better sources of information, but I'm too crusty and burned out this morning to hunt for them.

We will need water to do a lot of things, including growing crops. And given the importance of water, we should shift over to hydroponics for all our food production. If we could save 90% of the water used for irrigation currently, it would take a lot of the load off our current water woes.

But more generally: we need to confront all our challenges with a positive, 'can do' attitude. If we stop, throw down our tools and quit every time we bump into a problem, we will die. We'll die as individuals, and we'll die as a nation.

But America is a 'can do' nation. Or at least, it used to be; just a few weeks ago I was going through some old black and white photos from my youth, and discovered pictures I'd taken of the screen of our television, as one of the Apollo moonships lifted off. With the American flag billowing gently in the foreground, in the corner of the shot - I stopped, and looked at that shot for a long time. It brought tears to my eyes.

Jerry, we were once a nation that could do anything. We've walked on the soil of another planet. We've sent probes to Mars, not once, but many times. We invented nuclear plants, and every watt of power generated from nuclear energy on planet Earth today, owes its heritage to American Ingenuity.
Surely to hell we can figure out how to grow corn.

Take care, my friend - Charlie

I did some experiments with hydroponics back in survivalist days. We used hand labor -- lift the buckets by hand to make the hydroponic fluids flow -- and got amazing crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash; indeed a lot of edibles from a small shed in my back yard. The structure was plastic tubes, heavy plastic covering, some netting to provide wind strength, and some nylon line to anchor the whole system. It did use electricity in that there was an exhaust fan. I wrote it up in both Survive Magazine and in A Step Farther Out, the Galaxy Column. Hydroponics farming gives a huge return on time investment, and most of the work can be done by minor children. In my case it was labor intensive, but not horridly so. The boys were able to lift the buckets twice a day (that was our schedule as I recall; I would have to find the log books from 30 years ago to be sure). But one thing is certain, we got a lot of fresh vegetables from it. Another certainty: it wasn't worth the effort to keep it up once Lucifer's Hammer hit the best seller list and we wanted the back yard for a pool.

I still have room for a hydroponics shell (a small one) and if it comes to a real crunch on food I'll look into that again. Actually the proper time to look into it is now. The equipment isn't cheap but it's likely to be really expensive if we go into depression times. A vegetable garden in your yard is already a reasonable investment. If you want a lot of yield, look into hydroponics. It worked for me anyway.

As to whether American ingenuity can use that technology to help win us energy independence, I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants -- they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.

Of course we won't do that. - jp

Ethanol Dreaming

Chris Calder says in this posting a few things that needed to be said very loudly, particularly when we are been forcibly reminded that out agricultural output has never been designed to accept massive diversion of food ever into non food applications Total human total consumption is very inelastic as common sense will tell you. It is inconvenient to either halve consumption or to double it. It is much more elastic horizontally as usage changes. In any event, the naive diversion of corn into ethanol has apparently unbalanced the global food market sufficiently to cause the first major price run up in decades.

The good news is that every farmer will now press every resource into an increase in next season’s production, so we may now expect a major surplus in six months ending the supply threat. Which is why fertilizer is now expensive.

My interjections are in bold.

Why ethanol from cellulose is a hoax!

The biofuel zealots falsely claim that our current disastrous use of corn for ethanol production is only temporary, and is somehow a building block or stepping stone for future ethanol production from switchgrass, crop waste, wood chips, and other sources of cellulose. The problem is that the equipment (manufacturing plants) used to make corn vodka (ethanol) are of no use in making ethanol from cellulose, which is a complex and expensive two stage process requiring new plant construction and costing millions upon millions of dollars. The current cost of making ethanol from cellulose is the same as making gasoline from crude oil that costs $305. a barrel. As ethanol has 30% less energy than gasoline and thus delivers poor gas mileage, this product is currently economically dead. If we can improve our methods and cut the cost in half, that still brings us to an oil equivalent price of gasoline made from crude oil at about $150 a barrel, plus we still have the 30% loss in energy per gallon compared to gasoline. Even if they got the cost down to an oil equivalent of $100 a barrel, it is still not a good deal because of the 30% energy loss inherent to ethanol, which cannot be changed unless you make another fuel product altogether.

Mother Nature had to make cellulose incredibly resistant to biological reduction in order to do its job. The enzymes used by the termite appear promising in overcoming this barrier. Again work on this avenue has barely begun and I certainly do not think that it will bear much fruit for years. What makes cellulose totally maddening is that it is constructed from chains of glucose itself. In other words, it is practically pure sugar. And there is certainly no lack of raw material whose conversion could be nicely integrated into our agricultural and silviculture management systems. However, to think it is a near term solution to energy production is at best baseless.

As expected, many money hungry companies are making big claims about having bacteria that can make ethanol from cellulose work, but ask yourself how and at what price? If they had a bacteria that could do the job instantly it would be the ultimate anti-human life weapon, because if it got loose it would eat up the earth's biosphere and we would have nothing left but bacteria. Obviously, you can make ethanol from lots of substances given enough time and money, and "time is money." It takes time and specific conditions (usually higher temperatures) to make these bugs work, and the time it takes to rot or dissolve wood chips and switchgrass into something that can then be fermented into alcohol is a complex, time consuming, and expensive process.

A new study from three agricultural economists at Iowa State University with insider information on the latest biofuel technology says ethanol made from cellulose will likely NEVER be affordable The Federal tax credits for ethanol made from cellulose would have to be raised from the current $.51 to $1.55 per gallon, which will be unacceptable to Congress and the American public. Switchgrass, crop waste, and wood chip biofuel schemes are too expensive to ever work!

The newspaper article can be found here

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/3/3/125745/7746

The full study can be found here - pdf 180kb at:

http://www.card.iastate.edu/publications/DBS/PDFFiles/08wp460.pdf

Coming soon after the Princeton study published in SCIENCE showing that all biofuels are far worse for the environment and global warming than gasoline leaves the biofuel zealots little cover to hide behind.

Of course, the only problem with gasoline is that it is converting sequestered carbon into atmospheric carbon at a faster rate than it can be returned in some other form. Even without the panic over global warming this is an unwise and clearly unsustainable option and must be solved, which is the principal problem this blog addresses.

SEE - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1151861

Another problem with our current corn vodka infrastructure is that it is located in the wrong areas, and not near the "marginal" prairie lands" that Bush wants to grow switchgrass on. So the idea that corn ethanol is a stepping stone to anything but more corn ethanol is a BIG LIE!

Welcome to public relations or ‘American know-how’

Quoted from my web page.

"The outlook for biofuels is dismal - Growing massive amounts of switchgrass to produce ethanol from lignocellulose has most of the same drawbacks as making ethanol from corn. We will use land, water, fertilizer, farm equipment, and labor to grow switchgrass that will be diverted from food production, with soaring food prices a result. If we grow switchgrass on land currently used to graze cattle, we will reduce beef and milk production. If we grow switchgrass on unused "marginal" prairie lands, we will soon turn those marginal lands into a new dust bowl, which they may turn into anyway due to global warming. Computer models for the progression of global warming show the America Midwest and Southwest getting hotter and dryer, with much of our farm and grazing land turning into desert. We know that biofuel production will speed up global warming, so why are we pinning so much hope on an environmental battle plan that any fool can see will blow up in our face over time? We won't be able to produce enough biofuels to run our cars, or enough food to fill our bellies.

The very process of making ethanol from lignocellulose has not been proven to be economically viable (cellulosic ethanol not affordable, pdf 180kb), and the Bush energy bill assumes new scientific breakthroughs that have not occurred. Some new biofuel crops are toxic weeds which will have a destructive impact on wildlife and biodiversity around the world. In practical terms, there is not enough usable land area to grow a sufficient quantity of biofuel plants to meet the world's energy demands. Even if the USA dedicated 100% of our corn and soybean production to biofuels, we would only satisfy 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. To quote Stuart Staniford, "The biofuel potential of the entire human food supply is quite a small amount of energy compared to the global oil supply - somewhere between 15 to 20% on a volumetric basis, so 10 to 15% on an energy basis." Every year the human race burns up the equivalent of 400 years worth of planetary vegetation in the condensed form of fossil fuels. How are we going to replace all that concentrated energy by growing biofuel crops on our desperately overpopulated, pure water starved little planet?

Growing algae to make biodiesel is being touted as a cure-all for all our biofuel problems, but we are still stuck with the fact that algae need solar energy to turn carbon dioxide into fuel. To make biodiesel, algae are used as organic solar panels which output oil instead of electricity. Research reports brag that algae can produce 15 times more fuel per acre of land than growing corn for ethanol, but that still means we would need approximately 30 million acres of concrete or plastic lined algae ponds to meet 100% of projected US automotive fuel usage by the year 2022.

It is shaping up to be a lot better than that and the use of rack suspended sleeves provides a high degree of process control also. Thirty million acres sounds like a lot, but is orders of magnitude different from the five hundred million acres needed for plant oil. In fact the non agricultural lands of the west are more than suitable and sufficient to supply all the fuel oil we need.

A greenhouse closed system also allows recycling of the water. I also suspect that we produce a fifty-fifty oil/ solids product stream, and if we are really smart the solids can be used even as cattle feed or even indirectly as a source of sugar.

We are not too far away and right now our best ally is algae itself. The short life span allows a rapid cycle of experimentation. Thus a new protocol can be shaken out in months once undertaken. Therefore, I am very optimistic and with the greenhouses already built and operated, we are already into second generation production methodology.

Those algae schemes that use less land invariably call for feeding algae sugar. Sugar must be made from corn, beets, or other crop, so you are simply trading ethanol potential to make oil instead of vodka. If you grow genetically engineered super-algae in open-air ponds, the genetically modified algae will be immediately carried to lakes, reservoirs, and oceans all over the world in the feathers of migrating birds, with unknown and possibly catastrophic consequences. Using agricultural waste water for algae production is a good idea, but algae may be more logically used for making modest amounts of animal feed, as algae is very costly to turn into fuel.

Using agricultural "waste" to make biofuels has its own problems. Removing unused portions of plants that are normally plowed under increases the need for nitrogen fertilizers, which release the most potent greenhouse gas of all; nitrous oxide. Much of the residual crop biomass must be returned to the soil to maintain topsoil integrity, otherwise the rate of topsoil erosion will increase dramatically. If we mine our topsoil for energy, we will end up committing slow agricultural suicide like the Mayan Empire. Without topsoil, the world starves! Using wood chips to make ethanol sounds like a good idea until you remember that we currently use wood to make pellet fuel for stoves, paper, particle board, and a thousand and one building products. Every part of the trees we cut down for lumber are used for something, including the bark which is used for garden mulch. The idea of sending teams of manual laborers into forests to salvage underbrush for fuel would be prohibitively expensive. Our forests are already stressed just producing lumber without tasking them with producing liquid biofuels for automobiles, a scheme which will inevitably drive up the price of everything made from wood, creating yet another resource crisis."

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Please visit my page on biofuels, "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!" at:

http://home.att.net/~meditation/bio-fuel-hoax.html

You can find the latest biofuel disaster news at

http://home.att.net/~meditation/biofuel-news.html

Christopher Calder

Algae Drumming

This corporate press release drumming algae is making the best claims yet, but is lacking any substantive references to their work. Their silence since this release speaks volumes. It does explain where similar references on the net originated from.

Perhaps I have seen too many such optimistic press releases cobbled together a little ahead of the huge real investment necessary to substantiate the claims.

In any event, the next few months will see new players and expanding research effort.

The problems are not slight. We have to maximize and separate lipid oil, sugars and proteins. Better still we have to produce the oil which is the simplest cash crop component while leaving an edible byproduct that can be fed to livestock. I suspect that we can pull of this last trick.

Before all of that, we must sort out the species and husbandry of the algae, although from the demonstration plants, it appears that this may even be done for at least a good starter collection. It is the sort of empirical research program that will be ongoing and surprisingly tricky. At least it will be faster than cattle breeding.

My one reservation derives from the fact that I cannot believe that our knowledge is sufficiently advanced yet. This is not improved by frothy press releases that I could have written myself without any more reality than been friends with a biologist working with algae.

No one is going to hide successful technologies for long since everyone will want to license any viable aspect of the technology to the huge number of ready customers prepared to build out the algae oil business. It will take thousands of facilities and the money is going to be in the supply business. Exxon will still own the refining and distribution.

So, though I am very bullish on the advent of an emerging algae based oil industry, and very bearish on any use of food crops for either bio diesel or ethanol as proven by present high food costs, the fact remains that we cannot wish away the development lead times.

Remember the tar sands took thirty years of sustained development work before we were gifted with the THAI protocol. I suspect that we face fifteen years of protracted development work on Algae with encouragement along the way.

The good news with it of course, is that success will end the use of fossil fuels if we so choose. This alone supports a sustained investment. In the meantime, the headline grabbers will help spread the gospel.



Growth Rates of Emission-Fed Algae Show Viability of New Biomass Crop

Wednesday September 26, 6:15 pm ET

Results Are Catalyst for Replication at Coal Plant

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Arizona Public Service Company (APS) and its partner GreenFuel Technologies will attempt to replicate their success of creating biofuels from algae grown using carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from a power plant. This time, however, instead of using CO2 from a natural gas power plant, they will use emissions from a coal-burning power plant.

The move comes after the companies, this summer, were able to successfully grow algae at APS' Redhawk natural gas power plant at levels 37 times higher than corn and 140 times higher than soybeans--the two primary crops used for biofuel.

"At this productivity level, GreenFuel's system is ahead of other biomass production methods," said Professor Otto Pulz, president of the European Society of Microalgal Biotechnology and head of the IGV Institute's Biotechnology Department in Germany.

The growth rate -- an average productivity of 98 grams/meter sq./day (ash free, dry weight basis) and reaching a high peak value of 174 grams/meter sq./day -- surpassed previous lab growth rates and exceeded all expectations going into the project. The results provide evidence of the financial viability of using the emissions of a power plant to grow algae for the exclusive purpose of creating biofuels.

The project is now moving to APS' Four Corners Generation station, a coal power plant located in Farmington, N.M.

"It is now time to see if we can replicate this success at Four Corners," said Ray Hobbs, manager of the APS Future Fuels Program. "This project addresses two important issues in the U.S. today -- reducing greenhouse gas emissions at power plants and producing more domestic sources of alternative fuels for automobiles and power plants."

GreenFuel's Emissions-to-Biofuels(TM) technology uses safe, naturally occurring algae to recycle CO2 from the stack gases of power plants and other commercial sources of continuous CO2 emissions. At the Redhawk Power Plant, specially designed pipes captured and transported the CO2 emissions from the stack to specialized containers holding algae. In the presence of sunlight, the algae consumed CO2.

Once enough algae is grown, it is harvested, and its starches are turned into ethanol, its lipids into biodiesel and its protein into high-grade food for livestock.

While feeding CO2 from a power plant to algae is not new, turning the algae grown at a power plant into biodiesel and ethanol was ground-breaking when first accomplished in the fall of 2006 by APS and GreenFuel. The project marked the first time ever that algae grown on-site by direct connection to a commercial power plant had been successfully converted to transportation-grade biofuels. Once this was accomplished, the companies set out to prove the process' financial viability by expanding the project. It was during this ramp-up that the companies achieved the high growth rates.

Moving to a coal plant is the next progression in this evolving technology. The Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has been providing technical assistance throughout the process.

Searchinger and Fargione on Biofuels

I am posting this review article from World Changing Team by Patrick Mazza because it fully covers current efforts surrounding biofuels. This is an area that I have largely avoided because the strategy of converting food crops into transportation fuels is a case of too little and too late to actually do a lot of good.

My reservations regarding the conversion of cellulose to usable sugars and thus on to ethanol are centered on the sheer difficulty of doing this successfully in an industrial setting anytime soon. However, termites do it somehow, so perhaps it will eventually work.

I am much more encouraged with the rapid progress seen in early work on algae. This appears capable of hugely surpassing any other method in terms of deliverable fuel on a per acre basis and can even be simply deployed in the deserts.

And I would really like to see all that corn stover turned into biochar directly netting 1 to 2 tons into the soil while preserving the nutrient profile and creating terra preta soil.

What I find most difficult with current corn culture practice is the utter necessity to feed both energy and large amounts of nutrients to that particular monkey as compared to almost any other crop. Integrating terra preta promises to resolve this problem by simply converting the waste into a non-degrading soil additive that preserves most of the nutrients in the top soil. This is genius that made the rainforest soils of the Amazon sustainable to this day, while surrounded by untreated soils that could not be farmed for more than three or four years.

Growing Sustainable Biofuels: Common Sense on Biofuels

WorldChanging Team

March 3, 2008 3:53 PM

By Patrick Mazza

Biofuels received a fresh surge of bad publicity with recent publication of two studies in Science that looked at the greenhouse gas releases caused by land use changes connected to biofuels production.

The studies make complex and nuanced statements that were predictably mangled by the press, with headlines easily interpreted as a general condemnation of biofuels. Typical was the New York Times, “Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat,” The studies were creating new uncertainties even among biofuels supporters and tipping others toward a skeptical position. At very least the studies add to substantial public perception problems facing biofuels.

So it is crucial to line out exactly what the studies say, what they do not say, and what the critics are saying about the studies.

THE SEARCHINGER STUDY

The two studies appeared in the Feb. 7, 2008 of Sciencexpress. The first is by Timothy Searchinger et al, “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change.” Here is what it says:

• Prior studies “have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels.”

• The study models an increase in U.S. corn ethanol of 56 billion liters above projected 2016 production levels. This would divert 12.8 million hectares of U.S. corn production to ethanol, bringing 10.8 million hectares of new cropland into cultivation, primarily in Brazil, China, India and the U.S.

• The study assumes that land converted to farming will release 25 percent of its soil carbon, an average of 351 metric tones per hectare.

• Employing a standard GREET model lifecycle analysis which assigns a 20 percent greenhouse gas reduction to corn ethanol compared to gasoline before indirect land use changes, researchers calculated that it would take 167 years to pay back soil carbon losses. Based on this researchers calculate that corn-ethanol would emit double the greenhouse gases of gasoline over the first 30 years after 2016.

• Cellulosic ethanol has far lower net emissions of greenhouse gases. But if switchgrass feedstock crops replace corn, the displacement effect would still require a 52-year carbon payback period.

• The study assumes average corn yields will stay the same. Researchers constructed a more positive scenario in which corn yields increase 20 percent, soil carbon emissions are only half of their estimates, and corn ethanol before land use changes reduces emissions 40 percent compared to gasoline. That scenario would reduce carbon payback time to 34 years.

It is important to specify that the Searchinger study does not say that current corn ethanol production increases greenhouse gases (GHGs). Its findings reflect land use changes tied to an increase in U.S. corn ethanol production approximately six times that of today.

THE FARGIONE STUDY

The second study, “Land Clearing and Biofuel Carbon Debt,” by Joseph Fargione et al examines direct impacts of land clearing for biofuels crops. In other words, this is not about displacing food production, but about opening entirely new lands for biofuels feedstock growing. It gives carbon payback times for the following land conversions:

• Southeast Asian tropical rainforest to palm biodiesel – 86 years.

• Southeast Asian peatland rainforest to palm biodiesel – 423 years.

• Brazilian tropical rainforest to soy biodiesel – 319 years.

• Brazilian wooded Cerrado to sugarcane ethanol – 17 years.

• Brazilian grassland Cerrado to soy biodiesel – 37 years.

• US Midwest grassland to corn ethanol – 93 years.

• US Midwest conservation reserve lands to corn ethanol – 48 years.

• US Midwest conservation reserves to cellulosic ethanol – 1 year.

• US marginal croplands to cellulosic ethanol – no carbon payback time.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY ABOUT THE STUDIES

Key U.S. biofuels lifecycle researchers weighed in with a series of critiques of Searchinger et al. Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratory, developer of the GREET model, and Zia Haq of the US Department of Energy Biomass Program, gave these responses:

• Searchinger et al “correctly stated that the GREET model includes GHG emissions from direct land use changes associated with corn ethanol production.”

• Argonne and other organizations are already updating their models to reflect indirect land use conversions.

• The corn ethanol growth figures used by Searchinger correlate to 30 billion gallons a year of production by 2015. However, the new federal renewable fuel standard caps corn ethanol production at 15 billion annual gallons. The Searchinger study “examined a corn production case that is not relevant to U.S. corn ethanol production in the next seven years.”

• It is incorrect to assume no growth in corn yields. Yields have increased 800 percent over the past 100 years, and 1.6 percent annually since 1980. They could well gain two percent annually through 2020 and beyond.

• Searchinger does recognize that corn ethanol production also yields produces Distillers Grain and Solubles (DGS) animal feed byproducts but underestimates its protein value. Thus the study lowballs the contribution of coproducts by at least 23 percent, which drives up their estimates of farmland needed to replace feed corn.

• “There has also been no indication that U.S. corn ethanol production has so far caused indirect land use changes in other countries because U.S. corn exports have been maintained at around two billion bushels a year and because U.S. DGS exports have steadily increased in the past 10 years… It remains to be seen whether and how much direct and indirect land use changes will occur as a result of U.S. corn ethanol production.”

• Wang and Haq cite a 2005 Oak Ridge National Laboratory on cellulosic potentials. “With no conversion for cropland in the United States, the study concludes that more than one billion tons of biomass resources are available each year from forest growth an byproducts, crop residues and perennial energy crops on marginal land. In fact, in the same issue of Sciencexpress as the Searchinger at al study is published, Fargione et al show beneficial GHG results for cellulosic ethanol.”

Another critique comes from David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance:

• “The vast majority of corn that will be grown in 2008 will be on land that has been in corn production for many years, perhaps for generations.”

• Future corn ethanol plants will achieve 2-4 times greater GHG emissions reductions than the GREET model estimates by converting to renewable energy, while future gasoline from unconventional sources such as tar sands will produce 30-70 percent more GHGs.

• No-till cultivation of corn adds 0.4-0.6 tons of soil carbon annually, which “would offset at least part of the carbon losses from bringing new land into production.”

• Of 14 million new acres of U.S. corn cultivation in 2008, 60 percent came from soybeans, 97 percent of which goes into animal feed. Because of the DGS coproduct, only a fraction of an acre of soybeans are needed to replace an acre of corn.

• Even with 14 million acres of increased U.S. corn production in 2008, “the likely overall conclusion is that as of early 2008, ethanol production continues to reduce greenhouse gases.”

• Most land conversion is due to urban and suburban development, are 2.2 million acres per year.

SYNTHESIS: TOWARD LOW CARBON FUELS

Searchinger et al is a scenario of future ethanol growth rather than an assessment of biofuels use today. The researchers base their scenarios on an assumption virtually all observers believe is unlikely, 30 billion gallons per year of corn ethanol – 15 billion annual gallons is generally regarded as the peak, and that is why it is embodied in the federal fuels standard. The Searchinger study does seem to tend toward more pessimistic conclusions about ethanol efficiency and farm productivity, and is built on modeling assumptions about land use conversion for biofuels rather than observed real world experience. Nonetheless, both Searchinger and Fargione send a strong signal that we must take into account of the whole system by which a new economic sector is created – bioenergy. That has to account for indirect as well as direct land use impacts.

This understanding is already being developed. In fact, while the new studies came as a shock to many, they were no surprise to people who have been working in the sustainable biofuels arena. As a result of advocacy by Natural Resources Defense Council and other green groups, the new federal Renewable Fuels Standard contains greenhouse gas criteria. Corn ethanol must yield a 20 percent reduction. Cellulosic ethanol must reduce emissions 60 percent and other advanced biofuels 50 percent. The latter two represent 21 billion of the annual 36 billion gallon by 2022 standard. The lifecycle studies that measure emissions are mandated by law to include both direct and indirect land use impacts. The Environmental Protection Agency is now conducting those studies, which will be used in rulemaking to adopt the standard. (EPA can reduce goals 10 percent, for instance, corn ethanol to a net 10 percent GHG reduction.)

BOTH STUDIES POINT TO SUSTAINABLE BIOFUELS PATHWAYS

Contrary to the tone of much of the media coverage, neither of the studies counts out the potential environmental value of biofuels. Fargione’s results for cellulosic ethanol points to highly sustainable biofuels production pathways, though other considerations such as wildlife and water use must be taken into account.

“Degraded and abandoned agricultural lands could be used to grow native perennials for biofuel production which could spare the destruction of native ecosystems and reduce GHG emissions,” they write. “Diverse mixtures of native grasslands perennials growing on degraded soils, particularly mixtures containing both warm season grasses and legumes, have yield advantages over monocultures, provide GHG advantages from high rates of carbon storage in degraded soils, and offer wildlife benefits.”

One of the coauthors, David Tilman of the University of Minnesota, was lead author on a previous Science study (“Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass,” Dec. 8, 2006) which documented the environmental and productivity advantages of diverse perennials. They found that the gain in soil carbon as grasses sink deep roots more than makes up for all greenhouse gas releases in the full bioenergy lifecycle.

Fargione et al found other sustainable feedstock options: “Monocultures of perennial grass and woody species monocultures also offer GHG advantages over food-based crops, especially if sufficiently productive on degraded soils, as can slash and thinnings from sustainable forestry, animal and municipal wastes, and corn stover.”

The Searchinger study also points to sustainable options: “This study highlights the value of biofuels from waste products because they can avoid land use change and its emissions. To avoid land use change altogether, biofuels must use carbon that would reenter the atmosphere without doing useful work that needs to be replaced, for example, municipal waste, crop wastes and fall grass harvests from reserve lands. Algae grown in the desert or feedstock produced on lands that generate little carbon today might also keep land us change emissions low, but the ability to produce biofuels feedstocks abundantly on unproductive lands remains questionable.”

That last point does raise a prospective dilemma – Marginal farmland is marginal typically because it sustains lower productivity, and whether such lands can produce enough biomass per acre to be economically feasible is indeed questionable. But if farmers are financially rewarded for growing soil carbon as well as bioenergy feedstocks, biomass production could be lower. This combined growing of bioenergy and biocarbon might well be what it takes to provide incentives for both.

Today U.S. biofuel production centers on the Midwest, where well above 90 percent of all U.S. biofuels feedstocks are grown in corn fields. The Searchinger study focuses on the impacts of corn ethanol. It would be ironic if the new studies were taken as a signal to shut down biofuels development, since biofuels feedstocks in other U.S. regions will primarily come from sustainable feedstocks identified in the Searchinger and Fargione studies – waste streams, cellulose crops and algaes. For areas that have limited corn production capacity, such as the Northwest, these represent the prime biofuels opportunities. If anything, the new studies indicate a need for accelerated development of these new feedstocks and production technologies to take advantage of them.

Part 2 of “Common Sense on Biofuels” will cover the larger contexts of oil, food, carbon and politics that are shaping biofuels growth.

This is part of a series of articles on Growing Sustainable Biofuels by Climate Solutions Research Director Patrick Mazza, . Send comments to patrick@climatesolutions.org.

GM survey by Rikki Stancich

This article by Rikki Stancich gives a current over view of the state of the of the GM or genetic modification industry which though continuously controversial, has made steady strides into the agricultural industry.

It is also pointed out that the use of seed oils and other crops as a source of biofuels is naturally self limiting long before any significant impact is accomplished. This should be self evident but is often forgotten with the bleating of the corn lobby who really love high prices.

More encouraging is the fact that work is underway to develop algae based protocols, and these folks have the resources to do this right.

It is also pointed out that the solar efficiency of a solar cell is greater by orders of magnitude than that of Mother Nature. While that is surely true for the state of the art examples, I am a little skeptical that that is the final answer.

Mother Nature has to manufacture the capture its solar cells before use and the fraction we use is merely a byproduct of that manufacture. In other words we are comparing apples and oranges only on the basis of their sweetness.

The use of algae to develop a high yield per acre biodiesel protocol is the first compelling reason to develop algae production technology. Before this developing need, it was very much a solution in search of a problem. We now have a very convincing problem. Even if it is used exclusively in the short term to absorb stack gases it will be a boon. At least that can be done today.

And I very much look forward to the creation of an algae protocol that produces oil for biodiesel and tasty meal for cattle feed.

They used to comment in science fiction that we would end up eating algae as a primary foodstuff. Not very likely, but feeding it to cattle is a great idea and using the oil to keep our transportation fleet on the road is also a great idea. It is also a sufficient solution because the yields on a per acre basis is at least ten to fifty times greater than any other biological option..

Special Reports:

GM crops: Biotech agriculture – Time to take GM seriously

Biotechnology companies say their seeds offer a green answer to the threat of global food shortages. But the evidence for that claim is mixed at best

Over recent decades, western consumers have reaped the benefits of a farming revolution and its plentiful harvest. The vast economies of scale delivered by agro farming and globalization have led to a downward trend in food prices, creating the illusion that food can only get cheaper.

But the cost of cheap food has been high. Contamination, degradation and the depletion of finite natural resources have been the direct result of greater mechanization, intensive use of inputs and extensive irrigation systems. Now, as oil and gas fields near exhaustion, the days of input-dependent farming appear to be numbered.

Yet while the rest of the world contemplates the pending food scarcity and climate change crises, biotechnology companies are quietly confident that they hold the solution. The industry asserts that genetically modified crops enable better pest control, reduced spraying, and safety for non-target species, higher stress tolerance and more consistent yields. In short, the industry believes that green biotechnologies provide a secure and sustainable food and energy solution.

A widely held view is that Europe’s stance on GM greatly influences that of the rest of the world. If Europe decides to relax its rigid GM regulations, the biotech industry will see significant gains elsewhere as well. It appears that current market conditions may provide biotech companies with the leverage needed to break into these markets.

Referring to the European Union’s rejection of shipments of livestock feed contaminated with GM “Hercules Maize” last year, Nathalie Moll, executive director at EuropaBio, a European biotech industry association, says the EU’s resistance to GM produce – in particular, Europe’s “zero tolerance” on GM-contaminated grain imports – may further drive up food prices. She predicts: “The zero tolerance policy is likely to bring the European livestock industry to its knees.”

Moll says the current market share of GM technology in the Americas, from where Europe imports the bulk of its livestock grain, will be augmented by a batch of “Roundup Ready” seeds – seeds genetically modified to contain the glyphosate-based herbicide, Roundup – due to hit the markets in 2009. She suggests that EU resistance to GM may result in Europe switching from being a net exporter of meat to a net importer. This could have staggering implications for the rest of the world in terms of food prices.

Biotech and biofuels

Competing demand for coarse grain from the biofuels industry and for livestock feed has placed an upward pressure on grain prices, creating a knock-on effect of higher meat prices. The increase has been to the extent that last year, US beef and pork producers called for the non-renewal of tax credits for ethanol and import tariffs on ethanol.

In the US, 73 per cent of maize, 87 per cent of cotton and 91 per cent of soya is grown from GM seed, according to current figures published by the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture. All three are key biofuel crops.

Brent Erickson, executive director at Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), says increased demand for cellulosic ethanol has led to research into enhancing existing crops, such as maize, with enzymes specifically geared towards ethanol production.

He says that while biofuels will lower the cost of farming inputs, higher yielding GM crops will simultaneously prevent a shift in acreage out of food and into fuel feedstock production, given that biotechnology can make existing acreage more productive.

But a recent report published by Advanced Economic Solutions, a consulting company for the food industry, suggests otherwise. In the US, maize earmarked for ethanol production now accounts for 25 per cent of total maize use. In light of the 20 per cent increase in the number of maize acres planted in 2007, an “acreage battle” is highly likely, concludes the report. It also revealed that a key driver behind the inflated price of maize and other food inputs has been ethanol production.

Companies such as Inventure Chemicals are developing a variety of second-generation feedstocks, including algae, to create biodiesel and ethanol. Algae feedstock is more cost-effective than other biofuel feedstocks, says Mark Tegen, Inventure’s chief executive.

A new strain of eucalypt engineered by a team of US and Taiwanese scientists at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute has been designed to sequester three times the carbon of traditional species.

However, a research paper published in September last year casts doubts on the viability of biofuels altogether. Highlighting the area of land required to produce a unit of motive power, it revealed that sugarcane ethanol requires 214 square metres while eucalypt cellulosic ethanol requires 1,917 square metres. A photovoltaic cell – an electric solar panel – requires only three square metres.

The paper, authored by Tad Patzek at the University of California, Berkley, demonstrates that each square metre of solar cells could replace up to 650 hectares of biofuel feedstock plantations. It concluded: “Even mediocre solar cells … are at least 100 times more efficient than the current major agrofuel systems.”

In March last year, European heads of state set a target of meeting 5.75 per cent of transport fuel needs from biofuel by 2010. A study carried out by the directorate general for agriculture revealed that this would result in a switch of almost 20 per cent of currently available arable land out of food and into biofuel crops. In this respect, the promise of enhanced land productivity and second-generation biofuel crops could gain greater purchase for the biotech industry.

Last year, US president George Bush pushed through the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which contains the new renewable fuel standard. The RFS explicitly supports production of 36 billion gallons (137 billion litres) of biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol and advanced biofuels.

Jens Riese, a biochemist and biomass expert at McKinsey Consulting, estimates that the RFS will deliver revenues to the ethanol industry of up to $70 billion, with a revenue opportunity for biotech companies of up to $5 billion.

Climate change

Higher yielding crops with lower inputs improve land efficiency with lower environmental risk, the biotech industry says. But the term “higher yield” does not relate to physically higher yielding crops in the form of, say, three-headed maize stalks. Instead, it has to do with traits introduced to make the strains resistant to pests and herbicides.

“Bt crops” contain the naturally occurring soil bacterium bacillus thuringiensis, a pesticide that was traditionally sprayed onto crops as an insecticide. Given that Bt crops have this built-in protection, yields are higher than non-Bt crops in the absence of spraying. This, says the industry, also delivers environmental benefits, given the subsequent reduction in pesticide use.

In turn, lower spraying requirements result in fewer spray runs (relative to conventional crops). And so, according to EuropaBio, lower spraying requirements generate fuel savings. In 2005 this resulted in permanent savings in carbon dioxide emissions of about 962 million kg (arising from reduced fuel use of 356 million litres).

Herbicide tolerant crops are genetically engineered to contain the chemical herbicides bromoxynil, in the case of BXN cotton, and glyphosate (better known as “Roundup”, the herbicide manufactured by Monsanto) in the case of Roundup Ready (RR) cotton.

These crops are said to be higher yielding than conventional crops. This is only because conventional crops sprayed with these herbicides would die, along with all other plant life that the herbicide came into contact with. But because the herbicides form part of the plant’s genetic make-up, the BXN and RR varieties can withstand these herbicides.

Thus, the introductions of BXN cotton and Roundup Ready cotton are accompanied by an increase in the use of bromoxynil and Roundup, with a decline in the use of other herbicides that had been used previously.

Monsanto, and indeed much of the agricultural and biotech sectors tout glyphosate-based herbicides as herbicides of “low toxicity and environmental friendliness”. The biotech industry claims that GMX and RR seeds enable farmers to reduce their ecological footprint, by applying herbicides of lower toxicity at a reduced volume.

However, a paper published by Caroline Cox in the “Journal of Pesticide Reform”, October 2000, demonstrates how glyphosate-containing products are acutely toxic to animals, including humans and are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “highly persistent”.

Does GM deliver?

According to Dr Charles Benbrook, a consultant on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues, “Contrary to industry’s claims, [the] RR soyabean requires more, not less, herbicide than [a] conventional soyabean.” His research reveals RR soyabean crops to produce 5 per cent to 10 per cent less yield per acre as against other identical varieties grown under similar soil conditions.

EuropaBio’s Nathalie Moll also admitted that greater applications of Roundup herbicide were being applied. She says that is because “farmers have rotated RR crops, usually soya and maize, to the point that the weeds themselves are now Roundup resistant, which has resulted in much higher applications of Roundup along with a host of other chemicals”.

The International Survey of Herbicide-Resistant Weeds indicates that, globally, 181 species of Roundup-resistant “superweeds” can be found in about 270,000 fields. Moll added that although Roundup “kills everything”, it is far less toxic and takes half the time to biodegrade than other available herbicides.

The assertion that GM crops in general yield higher productivity has been challenged by several studies, including one carried out by the US Department of Agriculture. This particular study suggests that yields of GM crops are lower than traditional crops and that the use of inputs (herbicides and pesticides) has, in fact, increased.

Can GM feed the world?

Annette Josten, a spokeswoman for Bayer CropScience, says that from the climate change perspective, biotechnologies have a lot to offer, in particular, drought-resistant crops. She said that while Bayer was working on drought-resistant strains of canola, rice, cotton and maize, none were likely to be market-ready before 2015.

Monsanto claims that its drought-tolerant maize being trialled in South Africa may be ready for commercialisation as early as 2010 and studies on drought-tolerant soyabeans and cotton are in the pipeline.

But independent studies suggest that this is unlikely. The African Centre for BioSafety report on Monsanto’s drought-tolerant maize concluded: “The coding for drought tolerance in particular is a long way off for current scientific knowledge, with some geneticists admitting that even hoping for drought tolerance in the next 10 or 20 years may be too ambitious.”

Pete Riley at GM Freeze, an alliance of UK organisations against GM technologies, dismisses the possibility of drought-resistant crops, calling it a “load of rubbish”. He says: “If it doesn’t rain, the seed doesn’t germinate. If, by some miracle that seeds do germinate in dry conditions, it has nothing to do with the GM trait, but will be because of the parent plant.”

Neither Monsanto nor Bayer LifeSciences was willing to provide any documentation to support their claims to drought-resistant crop strains. Nor were BIO and EuropaBio forthcoming with any evidence substantiating drought resistance in crops.

The market for biofuels could unlock the global market for the green biotech industry. But current research has thrown up a raft of reasons as to why the biofuel model is inherently at odds with its goal of providing sustainable renewables. Competition for land resources, deforestation, diversion of food crops into fuel crops, to name a few. Hence the promise of significant gains for the biotech industry on the back of biofuels may yet prove tenuous.

Green biotech – going global

· By 2015, more than 20 million farmers will plant 200 million hectares of biotech crops in about 40 countries.

· At the beginning of 2007, biotech crop area accounted for 102 million hectares worldwide.

· Since its introduction in 1996, there has been a 60-fold increase in the application of biotechnology – the highest-ever adoption-rate of any crop technology.

· Worldwide, 10.3 million farmers plant biotech crops.

· More than 90 per cent of farmers growing biotech crops last year – 9.3 million – were small, resource-poor farmers from the developing world.

· The growth of biotech crop adoption was substantially higher in the developing world at 21 per cent versus the industrialised nations where adoption grew just 9 per cent.

· Developing countries now account for 40 per cent of the global biotech crop area.

Source: International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications

Top ten GM seed companies

The top three companies – Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta – account for $8.6 billion or 44 per cent of the total proprietary seed market.

Company	2006 seed sales (millions)
1. Monsanto (US)	$4,028
2. Dupont (US)	$2,781
3. Syngenta (Switzerland)	$1,743
4. Groupe Limagrain (France)	$1,035
5. Land O’Lakes (US)	$756
6. KWS AG (Germany)	$615
7. Bayer Crop Science (Germany)	$430
8. Delta & Pine Land (US) (acquisition by Monsanto pending)	$418
9. Sakata (Japan)	$401
10. DLF-Trifolium (Denmark)	$352

Source: ETC Group, action group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, Canada