Biofuels: Worse for Earth than Oil?

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The report, released February 8th, leaves a caution that biofuels could be much more hazardous to the environment now, outweighing the positives created from the actual use of the fuel.

The problem stems from the actual growth of the fuel; in addition to making food on farms, much more land is being converted to carry the increased demand on farms that grow fuel crops.

In Brazil, many environmentalists have watched the increased destruction of the Amazon rainforest precisely for these farms; in turn, the cost to make the farms carbon-wise plus the destruction of trees, which help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, creates a massive debt for each farm to reduce.

Converting land to grow corn, sugar cane or soy beans -- crops used in the production of biofuels -- creates a "biofuel carbon debt" by releasing 17 to 420 times as much CO2 into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas reductions which the biofuels provide by displacing fossil fuels.

Naturally, the problem leads back to incentives. With such an increased demand to find a solution that won't harm the economy of their nation, biofuels seems to make some sense - however, the monetary gains from growing the proper crops is lost into excessive land clearing and more carbon dioxide releases.

The researchers calculated that in Indonesia, where wetlands are being converted to grow palm oil to produce biofuels, it will take 423 years before biofuel CO2 emission savings would repay the carbon debt caused by the land conversion.

This is quite surprising to many people that support biofuels; it's already considered that biofuels can't solve all the fuel demand, so it's a flawed system to begin with. However, knowing that taking that method also brutally harms the environment makes biofuel seem even more like a worse solution.

There's many experimental methods being tried to solve the carbon dioxide problem today's world faces, including a coal-gassification system which still uses coal but in a carbon-free way, as well as biofuel, biomass waste obtaining, wind, hydro, and others. It's interesting to see which will ultimately be the system that works best, but knowing that biofuel has yet another strike against it makes it all the less appealing to people.