Options for Reversing Climate Change

Mrs. F and I are seriously considering replacing our lil' flounder of a car (a '91 Honda Civic named Gunter Grass, which gets a very good 30 to 32 miles per gallon) with a diesel Volkswagen so that we can take advantage of a nearby biodiesel fuel depot. But, as this post from WorldChanging.com reminds us, biofuels aren't the final panacea--though they are a good stopgap until we come up with a better solution.

Biofuels such as biodiesel may prove to be a useful transition technology for the move away from fossil fuels and into the Bright Green world. While they currently cost more than fossil fuels, a new process from the Tokyo Institute of Technology may bring down production costs dramatically. But attractive as they are, biofuels pose some sticky problems. Fortunately, a solution may be at hand.

There's much to like about biofuels. They can replace fossil fuel uses without requiring significant modification of machinery. Since they are generally derived from vegetation, they're close to carbon-neutral (as the next crop of plants will take up the carbon dioxide released from burning the previous biofuel crops). Biofuels like biodiesel produce significantly fewer particulates and carbon monoxide than regular diesel, and produce few of the sulfur emissions leading to acid rain. And while some regions hope to become biofuel powerhouses, the ability to make biofuels is not limited by geography, so cartels and "peak production" won't become problems.

But biofuels have some notable drawbacks, too. Making biofuels from plants already in demand for food, such as soy, corn and canola/rapeseed, raises the prices of the food versions and reduces available supplies. And increased demand for biofuels is triggering the expansion of agricultural land, with devastating results in some areas. According to this week's New Scientist, the clearing of land in south-east Asia for palm oil production is the leading cause of rain forest destruction in the region; Brazil faces a similar problem with soya plants, already the primary cause of deforestation prior to the biofuel boom.

The solution may be to stop looking at new crops for biofuels, and to start looking at waste biomass.

The use of agricultural material for food and industry is not 100% efficient. Tons of biomass waste remains after the "useful" plant products are gone. Take sawdust -- wood product manufacturing produces millions of tons of sawdust every year (the state of Missouri alone produces around 760,000 tons of sawdust, while British Columbia produces over two million tons annually). Some of that can be reused, but much of it simply goes to waste. A new German process, however, could turn sawdust and other biomass wastes into high-quality synthetic fuels.

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We should be careful not to imagine that biofuels alone will replace our use of fossil fuels. We need a much bigger change -- a combination of high-efficiency systems, redesigned communities, and energy produced from clean, renewable sources. But changes of that scale take time. Biofuels, like hybrid cars and rooftop solar panels, are a kind of bridge technology, helping us get to where we need to go without cutting us off from our existing systems. It's crucial that our use of them doesn't make things worse in other ways.