Bikram Lamba's Page

The role of biofuels in recent times has been rather controversial primarily because of the perceived conflict with food security. Before discussing the role of biofuels in our future energy mix, it is necessary to briefly note what we mean by “biofuels”. There are three categories of biofuels as renewable energy sources:

• the commercially available ones right now (Bioethanol, Bio diesel, Biogas, referred to as 1st generation);
• the ones that exist and/or under development, but not commercially available yet (which is generally referred to as 2nd generation);
• the ones that exist only on lab/study scale and needs certain time and technological development (which can be called “3rd generation”).

Over time, we should expect considerable progress in the following three properties of biofuels, viz.; the efficiency, availability and the added value .The role of biofuels will increase with the developments that will take place in their properties mentioned above. We already witness the penetration of 1st generation of biofuels to energy market. At the same time, we are all aware of the weaknesses and the bottlenecks of existing biofuels. The importance of biofuels will increase naturally as the developments are taking place and 2nd generation biofuels are appearing.

The role of biofuels can and should be more important in terms of locality. In other words, they can play important role in being a supplement to existing energy industries where transportation, handling, storing require too many resources or are limited. When we consider the predicted benefits that 3rd generation biofuels may create, and then I would expect some changes within the biofuel industry, shifting the market (production and use) to 2nd and 3rd and wipe out 1st generation.

The relative importance of bio-fuels would necessarily vary across countries and by end use applications. For example, in India bio-diesel may have a much larger role to play than bio-ethanol. This is because of the potential for producing bio-diesel in a relatively decentralized manner which could contribute significantly to enhancing access to energy in rural areas. Of course, the use of straight vegetable oil directly, instead of refining it into bio-diesel, itself enhances its attractiveness for its lower costs and further potential for decentralized utility. The plantation of energy crops along farm boundaries would be the most optimal route to follow.

Bio-ethanol, on the other hand, is more likely to come into conflict with other uses of the feedstock. This bio-fuel may hold a greater potential if the second-generation technologies being developed were to become techno-economically feasible. However, the attractiveness of these fuels is closely linked to international oil prices. The recent steep drop in global oil prices has forced the bio-ethanol programme in India to come to a standstill.

The portfolio of dedicated energy crops sustainably produced with low inputs on marginal lands not needed (or not suitable) for food production, offers a renewable, geographically distributed and greenhouse-gas-favorable source of liquid fuel that is realizable in less than a decade. Expansion of agriculture to provide sufficient plant biomass for fuel/feedstock production will require additions to our present repertoire of crops. Perennial crops are a promising avenue by which marginal lands might be brought into increased biomass production in a sustainable manner.

So what's wrong with biofuels, and what solutions will work? Essentially the problem with biofuels is that there isn't enough productive land to meet more than a small percentage of our transport needs by biofuels without, at the same time, creating a food shortage and putting at risk the remaining areas of rain forest. If there were a billion people on this planet then they would probably work very well, but with six billion, it's just not possible.

Biofuels tend to be inefficient in production and use. Many crops grown for fuel in temperate areas, including corn or sugar beet for bioethanol and canola for biodiesel, yield low levels of usable fuel compared to the energy and fertiliser input required to produce them. And to compound the problem, most biofuels are then burnt in relatively inefficient internal combustion engines – leading to a terrible well to wheel net efficiency. The UK Government (Defra) published a report summarising research, which suggested that at best savings of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas were only 54% compared to conventional mineral oil based fuels. And other studies, including those from the IEA and the World Bank, put the savings as low as 10-20% for grain-based bioethanol, and no more than 40% for the same fuel derived from beet.

On the face of it, there are better savings if sugarcane is the primary source of the fuel. But most cane currently comes from Brazil, and land switched to cane production tends to displace cattle, which in turn moves onto the fringes of the Amazon rain forest… Palm Oil, which remains one of the cheapest biofuel feedstocks, often comes from Southeast Asia and is implicated in deforestation. Among other environmental problems, using the "fossil water" of the Ogallala aquifer in the US Midwest to grow soybeans or corn for biofuels is simply replacing the use of one non-renewable resource (fossil fuel petroleum) with another.

Of course, not all biofuels are equally damaging. Using waste cooking oil – for example from British fish & chip shops – is wholly sensible. Proponents of jatropha point out that it tends to grow on marginal land that may not have been in production, and can provide much needed income for poor communities in Africa or South Asia. That is true, but there is nowhere near enough available land to make more than a tiny dent in the global demand for fuel.

So what are the alternatives? Well, to start with, there may be a limited role for biofuels when an easily transportable source of energy is required, most commonly in aviation. Hydrogen or battery power seems less likely to be able to be used here, although it is possible that a synthetic kerosene created from water and atmospheric CO2 using renewable energy could be a viable alternative to biofuels .

In the longer term, the Western world – in particular – is going to have to think very hard about how it travels and, to some extent, how much. So there may need to be some limitation of demand, as well as a move towards alternative non-fossil fuels. Demand management measures, although politically hard, will have to be imposed whether or not the future is largely biofuel powered.

One reason for my concern is that if the general public believes that biofuels will solve environmental or climate change problems, then there is little or no incentive for them to consider their own behaviour. Low biofuel blends, including those typically sold as "biodiesel", which contain as little as 5%, may make the problem even worse, lulling the public into a false sense of security. The biofuels may not only fail to provide a long term solution, but they could actually make the problem even worse.

Biofuels have much to recommend them in terms of having lower emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants compared to petroleum and other fuel types. Considerable uncertainty remains, however, on the health benefits of biofuels in our urban environment. There could also be some downside in terms of water use and biodiversity loss if we clear new land for biofuel crop production.

The benefits of shifting from gasoline and the current generation of food- and feed-based biofuels to next-generation cellulosic biofuels are approximately twice as large as previously thought, as long as the carbon debt from land-use change is minimal. Other environmental advantages of properly produced cellulosic biofuels (e.g., lower emissions of ozone precursors and reduced pesticide and nitrate loading of surface and ground water) may make the economic benefits to society of this transition greater still.” Although these estimates face several uncertainties, the general finding flows from three reliable projections. First, farmers will replace most of the grain diverted from food and feed by ethanol because the demand for overall food and feed — as opposed to any particular grain — is inelastic.

Second, increases in cropland will provide most replacement grain because they are cost-effective and fast, the yield effects of biofuel demands are both positive and negative, and the world has many convertible acres – up to 170 million hectares in Brazil alone and perhaps 2.8 billion hectares worldwide. Most significantly, the potential emissions per hectare of land conversion greatly exceed the annual greenhouse reductions per hectare of biofuels.

Moreover the implicit threat to the indigenous people can not be discounted. The natives of Indonesia and Malaysia are among 60 million indigenous people facing the threat of being driven off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, as stated by Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chairperson of UN permanent forum on the indigenous Issues. Indonesia and Malaysia are among those most at risk because together they produce 80 per cent of the world's palm oil - one of the crops used to make biofuels.
Tauli-Corpuz said that in one Indonesian province, West Kalimantan, the UN had identified five million indigenous people who were likely to be displaced because of the expansion in the production of biofuel crops. Can we afford to ignore this major human disaster?

There has to be some compromise. It must be ensured that biofuels use does not exceed 25% of our total fuel use. There has to be another restraint as well. All biofuel should be produced not from food crops, nor should land be diverted from food use. The researchers have identified that perennial grasses like miscanthus, switchgrass and native prairie grasses, have a small initial carbon release associated with planting, but after that they start acting as a carbon sink very quickly.

Notwithstanding the limited use of biofuels, we need to continue to develop the technologies required to produce, refine and deliver hydrocarbon resources in an effective, economic and environmentally responsible way. Any use of biofuels in a major way is likely to be devastating to a large section of humanity. However a positive discount rate should be applied to greenhouse gas reduction technologies, such as biofuels, because investing in them today represents an opportunity cost to save that money and invest in cleaner technologies at a later date.

From a technical perspective, biofuels are a good, low greenhouse gas replacement for fossil fuels. However providing the enormous quantity of biofuels needed to significantly impact fossil fuel use presents serious socio-economic problems. Biofuels are a false dawn in the fight against climate change. In the long term they may have a limited application in aviation and as a high density energy source for use in remote areas, but they will not solve the main issues of providing environmentally benign mobility

Until the technology is available for large scale production of feedstocks for biofuels without a corresponding large scale commitment for land, biofuels must necessarily remain on the sidelines as supplements or additives to fossil fuels. Alcohol added to petrol and biodiesel added to diesel fuel have technical benefits as well as resulting in some reduction on fossil fuel dependency and may have justifiable benefits both for developed country fuel users and for developing country agriculture. However, the replacement of a high percentage of fossil fuel use by biofuels that are based on food competitive crops cannot take place without unacceptable environmental, social and economic adjustments.

Biofuels will never replace fossil motor vehicle fuels under present conditions. One-third of the U.S. corn crop is diverted to bioethanol for about the equivalent of 400,000 bpd displacement of gasoline out of a total consumption of 9 million bpd. This is a proverbial drop in the bucket considering the impact on food prices. We should de-emphasize bioethanol and biodiesel from food crops.

This article is based on the points put forward by Dr. Lamba in the debate on role of biofuels in future energy mix. This debate was organized by Euronews and European Voice in collaboration with Shell who has undertaken a new initiative for promoting new concepts relating to Environment, Sustainable development et al. Their avowed aim is to debate the challenges of future. Apart from Dr. Lamba the panelists included Mr. Michel Barnier, Minister of agriculture and fisheries, France; Mr. José Esquinas-Alcázar, former Secretary of the FAO Intergovernmental Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; Mr. Jean-Luc Demarty, Head of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development.