[PBN] Philippines: Bio-ethanol plant could kill river

From: inquirer.net - 18/10/2008

The construction of a government-backed, privately-led bio-ethanol project in the villages of Bayanga and Mambuaya here could kill the Cagayan De Oro River, an environmental conservation group warned on Saturday.

Because of this, the Kagay-an Watershed Alliance (Kawal) vowed to oppose the P2.4 billion project that Alsons Consolidated Resources (ACR) plans to build on a 17-hectare area shared by the two villages.

Kawal said the city's main river system, where a 12-kilometer white-water rafting course is also found, runs through the two villages.

In a statement, Kawal said it would resort to civil disobedience if the project pushes through.

Councilor Ian Acenas, chair of the Sangguniang Panlungsod's environment committee, told the Inquirer that ACR has assured the city government that it will use a state-of-the-art water treatment facility to safeguard the environment and protect the communities around the plant.

He said public hearings in the two villages “showed a positive turnout as residents welcomed the project."

But Kawal said ACR could not possibly control contamination because it will use cassava, which has natural cyanide contents, in its production of bio-ethanol.

Mario Jose Baile, ACR business development manager, admitted they will use cassava in the production of bio-ethanol.

But Baile clarified that the plant will only process dried cassava. He said dried cassava chips do not contain cyanide anymore.

Even then, Baile said they will still treat their waste water to ensure that no contaminant will find its way to the river.

"The first stage of water treatment will be treating the water effluent to produce methane that can supplement the fuel of the boiler which will help in the reduction of carbon emission," he said.

"If there is a possibility of disposal, we assure the public that we will follow the highest standards of government regulation to prevent harming the environment," Baile said.

Maria Luisa Rubic, chair of the Southwest Watershed Alliance, told the Inquirer that ACR should have gone to an industrial area and not to the two barangays, which are part of the city's tourism map.

"Alsons should have gone there (in Misamis Oriental) and not to this agri-farm ecotourism land, where tourism is already flourishing and the protection of the environment is highly needed to sustain it," Rubic said

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20081018-167156/Bio-ethanol-plant-to-kill-river

[PBN] UN report calls for scrapping of biofuel targets

From: Business Daily - 10/10/2008

Calls to scrap biofuel targets to lower food prices are mounting with both the UN’s food agency and global businesses including Unilever urging governments this week to rethink their policies.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report this week that the rush to biofuels had done more harm, pushing up food prices, than it has good by reducing greenhouse gases.

At the same time, the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC), the business arm of the group of 53 Commonwealth countries, called on member states finance ministers meeting in St Lucia to drop mandatory targets for biofuels.

Diversion of crops to producing biofuels, as well as rising demand for food in emerging economies, has put major pressure on stocks, pushing food prices to their highest level since the 1970s.

The effects are being felt around the world, including in Kenya, which imports rice and wheat.

FAO expects the global costs of importing food to increase 26 per cent this year to $1,035 billion.

Current targets set by the US, Europe and other governments, to boost biofuel production would increase maize prices by 26 per cent within the next decade, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

“Moving away from biofuels quotas is a simple step we can take to help alleviate high food prices,” said Dr Mohan Kaul, director general of the CBC.

The group wants the UK and India in particular to scrap their biofuel targets. In the UK, biofuels must make up 2.5 per cent of transport fuel since April, increasing to 5 per cent by 2010.

India agreed last month to meet 20 per cent of its diesel demand from fuel derived from plants by 2017. If these countries agreed to remove their targets, they could provide a powerful example to the rest of the world, said Dr Kaul.

The goal is ambitious. Though the UK is said to be reviewing its target, the EU has recently re-confirmed its 10 per cent quota for biofuels in petrol and diesel by 2020 while the US, which uses more than a third of its corn crop for biofuel and the world’s leading producer, has shown no sign of rethinking its targets.

Sentiment against biofuels is increasing however with recent studies suggesting that some are not as good for the environment as once thought. Crops like corn or sugar are renewable but more fuel is needed to grow and process them into fuel.

In some cases, forest is cleared to grow new crops, releasing more unwanted carbon dioxide into the air.

“In many cases, increased emissions from land-use change are likely to offset or even exceed the greenhouse gas savings obtained,” FAO said in its report.

With multinational Unilever and other CBC members such as steel group Arcelor Mittal now also taking a stand against biofuels, policy makers may come under more pressure to review targets.

Unilever wants the focus to shift to second and third generation biofuels, or those that use non-food crops such as jatropha or algae, rather than the first generation biofuels made with maize or sugar.

Source: http://www.bdafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10549&Itemid=5847

[PBN] Biofuel boom threatens food security, UN agency warns

From: AFP - 08/10/2008

The UN food agency cast doubt Tuesday on the potential of biofuels to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions while warning that their development threatens food security.

"The expanded use and production of biofuels will not necessarily contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as was previously assumed," Food and Agriculture Organisation Director General Jacques Diouf told a news conference.

The FAO also warned that massive subsidies in wealthy countries limit opportunities elsewhere to profit from the boom in biofuels.

"Trade policies vis-a-vis biofuels discriminate against developing-country producers of biofuel feedstocks and impede the emergence of biofuel processing and exporting sectors in developing countries," the FAO's annual flagship report said.

Diouf, unveiling the report, urged a review of policies on subsidies, tax incentives, tariffs and mandated blending of biofuels with fossil fuels.

The FAO also predicts that food prices will continue to rise as demand grows for biofuels despite their limited importance in terms of global energy supply.

"The risks for food security concerns loom large," Diouf said.

"While some of the other factors may subside, growing demand for agricultural products for the production of biofuels will continue to put upward pressure on food prices for a considerable time to come," he added.

Biofuel production using agricultural commodities more than tripled from 2000 to 2007, and now covers nearly two percent of the world's consumption of transport fuels.

The report, titled "Biofuels: Prospects, Risks and Opportunities," finds that while biofuels will offset only a modest share of fossil energy use over the next decade, they will have much bigger impacts on agriculture and food security.

"We hope that, in general, countries that are pushing for rapid expansion of biofuels will reconsider the pace of that expansion," said FAO expert Keith Weibe.

Diouf also voiced concern that the financial crisis sweeping the world will divert attention as well as "capacity, willingness (and) priority that governments will be giving to the issue of food security."

Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol is the only biofuel that can compete with fossil fuels, the report said, noting that its production costs are the lowest.

"Even taking into account recent rises in oil prices, among the major producers only Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol currently appears to be competitive with fossil fuel counterparts without subsidies."

Wiebe told the news conference: "Our analysis shows that if support measures (subsidies) were reduced or eliminated, global levels would fall but Brazil's would increase."

"The challenge is to reduce or manage the risks while sharing the benefits more widely," Diouf said. "The outcome depends on the specific context of the country and the policies adopted."

The FAO chief wrote in the report: "The emergence of biofuels as a new and significant source of demand for some agricultural commodities -- including maize, sugar, oilseeds and palm oil -- contributes to higher prices for agricultural commodities in general, and for the resources used to produce them.

"For the majority of poor households who consume more food than they produce, higher prices can pose a serious threat to food security -- especially in the short term," he said.

Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5her-gZiTL5BsPQCzYvBAYi5ZXl1Q

[PBN] Clean and Green, but is biofuel a winner?

From: Times on Line - 07/08/2008

THE simple logic behind biofuels sounds appealing — a liquid motor fuel that is clean and made from a crop as renewable as next season's harvest.

Huge investments are chasing biofuel profits, but doubts are emerging about the sustainability of a business that is being promoted on its supposed green credentials.

Commodities that once were thought dull and obscure are being pursued by hedge funds and speculators. Last month, hedge funds piled into Malaysian palm oil futures, driving up the price after signals from Kuala Lumpur that it would set aside six million tonnes of palm oil each year — as much as 40 per cent of the nation's crop — to produce biodiesel.

Investors have noticed that Europe is setting ambitious targets, but simple arithmetic dictates that there is not enough farmland in the European Union to grow the rapeseed needed to fill all its cars with 5 per cent biodiesel. Sleepy Malaysian plantation businesses have gained a new life and companies are rushing to build biodiesel refineries.

So many applications were received that the Malaysian Government has been forced to cap the number at 30 plants.

Meanwhile, Indonesia says that it will invest heavily over the next five years to promote alternative fuels using palm oil. Last week the Energy Minister outlined ambitious plans.

Indonesia's crude oil reserves have dwindled; it is now an importer and the price is weighing heavily on an impoverished nation. By 2009-10, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, the Energy Minister, said, "we have plans for six million hectares of development, worth about $20 billion (£10.5 billion)".

This is of great interest to Genting Berhad, an Indonesian conglomerate, which has a large plantations business. It has asked the Government for a one million hectare allocation of land for palm oil and sugar cane production — and it will get it. "Indonesia is a large country and we have the land in Sumatra, in Kalimantan, in Papua, in other places," the minister said, "so we can handle a request for one million hectares."

The plans are ringing alarm bells at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the wildlife conservation lobbyist, which has raised concerns that biofuel production could be the death knell for the orang utan, already endangered as a result of slash-and-burn farming in Kalimantan, an annual toll of deforestation that every year creates a hideous smog stretching across South-East Asia.

WWF is not against biofuel development, but it wants it to be carefully controlled. Fitrian Ardiansyah, co-ordinator of WWF's forest programme in Indonesia, said that the risks are great if biofuel development is allowed unchecked in virgin forest.

"There is an increased risk of environmental disaster from fires and drought. We are facing fires in Kalimantan. There is also risk of conflict between communities over land resources and the risk of human-wildlife conflict," Mr Ardiansyah said.

He would like the Government to restrict development to abandoned land and to increase productivity on existing plantations. The conservation lobby wants the EU to impose mandatory certification of all biofuels used in Europe to ensure that they are genuinely sustainable.

Classifying all biofuels as "renewable" is counter-productive, says Dr Stephan Singer, head of the organisation's climate and energy policy unit.

Meanwhile, the risks are huge for food manufacturers, according to Mark Lynch, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who reckons that the rapid expansion of biofuels is bad news for food processors: "We estimate that to achieve a 20-80 biofuels/fossil fuel mix would use at least 87 per cent of current crop land in the UK. Even a more modest 5.75 per cent target would use 26 per cent."

Last week, Unilever suffered a sharp fall in its share price as investors took fright at signs of profit-margin erosion. The cause of the squeezed margin was additional investment in advertising and promotion as the company tried to push sales forward. The underlying problem was rising costs, including sharp increases in prices for edible oil, which wiped out all the savings the company had made in running the business.

Alan Jope, vice-president of Unilever, finds a curious irony in the emerging crisis over biofuels, which is making the company new friends in unusual places. "We find ourselves on the same side of the fence with NGOs that have been our critics in the past. This is about ethics, it is about public health and it is about sustainable agriculture."

Crops for fuel bolster agribusiness

AGRIBUSINESS companies are rushing to invest in a new market that links crops and the soaring demand for energy. Biodiesel manufacturers are thought to have used a fifth of the European Union rapeseed crop in 2004, while ethanol production used 1 per cent of EU sugar beet.

British Sugar, part of Associated British Foods, is building a 55,000-tonne ethanol plant in Wissington, Suffolk, that will use sugar beet as a feed stock. Argent Energy operates Britain's first biodiesel plant at Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, making 45,000 tonnes of fuel from used cooking oil and tallow. On Teesside, Biofuels Corporation aims to make 250,000 tonnes of diesel from vegetable oils. Greenergy is building a plant at Immingham, Lincolnshire, with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes of biodiesel using rapeseed.

The United States Government also backs the industry. It offers huge subsidies for the production of ethanol from corn.

Source: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article1073074.ece

[PBN] Jatropha - What The Public Should Know

From: Inquirer .net - 09/08/2008

An interesting article - opinion on jatropha and jatropha biodiesel from Professors Ted Mendoza, Oscar Zamora and Joven Lales are on the Faculty of Crop Science, the College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna.

Article can be sourced from the following link: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/talkofthetown/view_article.php?article_id=87461

[PBN] 'Oil From Algae' Promises Climate Friendly Fuel; Environmentalists Remain Cautious

From: The Guardian - 31/07/2008

A liquid fuel made from plants that is chemically identical to crude oil but which does not contribute to climate change when it is burned or, unlike other biofuels, need agricultural land to produce sounds too good to be true. But a company in San Diego claims to have developed exactly that - a sustainable version of oil it calls "green crude".

Sapphire Energy uses single-celled organisms such as algae to produce a chemical mixture from which it is possible to extract fuels for cars or airplanes. When it is burned, the fuel only releases into the air the carbon dioxide absorbed by the algae during its growth, making the whole process carbon neutral.

Major investors are already opening their cheque books: Sapphire has raised a total of $50m (£25m) in venture capital in recent weeks, the highest amount ever for an algae biotech company, including a significant investment from the UK's Wellcome Trust.

Algae are seen by many experts as promising a source of green fuel in the future: ranging from single-celled organisms to large seaweeds, they are the world's most abundant form of plant life and, via photosynthesis, are extremely efficient at using sunlight and carbon dioxide from the air to make organic material such as sugars, proteins and, under the right conditions, oils.

Yusuf Chisti at Massey University in New Zealand estimates that algae could produce almost 100,000 litres of biodiesel a year per hectare of land, compared to 6,000 litres a hectare for oil palm, currently the most productive biofuel.

'Green gasoline'

The money for Sapphire came flooding in after the company recently reached its most significant milestone yet, refining high-octane gasoline from their green crude. "The resulting gasoline is completely compatible with current infrastructure, meaning absolutely no change to consumer's cars," said a Sapphire spokesperson.

An added advantage is that their gasoline does not have contaminants such as sulphur, nitrogen and benzene that are contained in standard crude oil and the company believes the cost of their fuels will be comparable to standard fossil fuels on the market.

Many biotech companies around the world are working on using algae to produce ethanol or biodiesels that could replace traditional transport fuels while avoiding the problems raised by traditional crop-based biofuels, such as displacing food crops. A Sapphire spokesperson said that, with algae, there was no need to use valuable farmland to grow the basic resource. "In fact the process uses non-arable land and non-potable water and delivers 10 to 100 times more energy per acre than cropland biofuels."

Where Sapphire departs from other algae companies is that their aim is not to produce standard biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. Instead, they take their inspiration from the way crude oil was created in the first place, millions of years ago.

"Way back when, when the algae were responsible for creating the long-chain hydrocarbons like diesels and heavy oils, the biomass just got buried and compressed and formed crude oil," said Steven Skill, a researcher in how algae can be used to make organic chemicals at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and who is familiar with Sapphire's work. "Algae synthesise these long-chain hydrocarbons within the cells."

Sapphire would not reveal details of the type of algae they are using but Skill thinks it is probably using genetically-modified cyanobacteria, which used to be called blue-green algae. These organisms can grow quickly (some blooms can double their mass in just an hour), operate in high temperatures and some strains can even fix nitrogen from the air to make their own fertilisers.

"Sapphire claim they can engineer whatever they like now on the strain of algae they're working with," said Skill. The next step, he said, depended on developing the engineering and cultivation systems to grow the algae economically.

Commercial production

John Loughhead, executive director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said that research on algae was a crucial part of the work to develop green energy sources in the future. "I'd say it's a very sound idea but the question is, are they able to do anything practical in an efficient way? The key questions are the efficiency with which this process happens."

He added: "They also have the classic renewables problem in that you're dealing with the ultimate energy source, the Sun, which is quite diffuse, so you're only getting in peak conditions around 0.5KW per square metre. You need vast, great big farms."

Algae can easily be grown in open ponds, but these result in very low-density blooms and are therefore an inefficient way to produce lots of fuel. Skill said that Sapphire would need advances in technology called photobioreactors to make a successful leap to commercial production.

Photobioreactors are closed vessels that would provide plenty of light and carefully tuned conditions that could intensively grow the microorganisms. Several teams around the world are testing designs for growing algae in them but none have so far made it to market.

Also crucial to making the green crude commercially viable is to use the byproducts other than oil from the algae. "You can probably derive 40% of the algae's weight in oil and you've got 60% of other stuff and there's a lot of valuable components in that in terms of chemical feed stocks."

These extra ingredients, which include fats, sugars and proteins, could be used for animal feeds or even as replacements for other petroleum products used in everything from cosmetics to plastics.

Sapphire said it expects to be at a stage of commercial production of green crude within three to five years. Geoffrey Love, head of venture capital at the Wellcome Trust, said the investment was made with this in mind. "There was already in place a very strong scientific and management team.

"They'd already made milestone-based progress to proving they could make not just biodiesel, which plenty of other companies out there can do, but proper crude oil."

He added that the biomedical charity had its own scientific diligence work done before making the investment and that the backing of another investment group that Trust often worked with, Arch Ventures, swung their own decision.

Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: "We urgently need to find ways of consigning the fossil fuel economy to history. Algae could offer promise, but to get a real grip on what this technology could offer we need far more information at our fingertips.

"The crucial requirement is that the end product can be produced in large quantities in a sustainable way, otherwise we're simply jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/31/biofuels.travelandtransport?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

[PBN] WB report on biofuels - 'A Note on Rising Food Prices'

From: World bank - July 2008

Summary: The rapid rise in food prices has been a burden on the poor in developing countries, who spend roughly half of their household incomes on food. This paper examines the factors behind the rapid increase in internationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimates the contribution of various factors such as the increased production of biofuels from food grains and oilseeds, the weak dollar, and the increase in food production costs due to higher energy prices. It concludes that the most important factor was the large increase in biofuels production in the U.S. and the EU. Without these increases, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably, oilseed prices would not have tripled, and price increases due to other factors, such as droughts, would have been more moderate. Recent export bans and speculative activities would probably not have occurred because they were largely responses to rising prices. While it is difficult to compare the results of this study with those of other studies due to differences in methodologies, time periods and prices considered, many other studies have also recognized biofuels production as a major driver of food prices. The contribution of biofuels to the rise in food prices raises an important policy issue, since much of the increase was due to EU and U.S. government policies that provided incentives to biofuels production, and biofuels policies which subsidize production need to be reconsidered in light of their impact on food prices.

Source: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2008/07/28/000020439_20080728103002/Rendered/PDF/WP4682.pdf:

[ PBN] IIED & FAO Report: Fuelling exclusion? The biofuels boom and poor people's access to land

From: IIED newsletter - 22/07/2008.

The report, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that biofuel production can also allow poor groups to increase their access to land and improve their livelihoods if the right policies are in place. It points out that all biofuels are not equal and recommends policies that would increase the social benefits biofuels production can bring to the rural poor in developing countries. "Despite the highly polarised debate, biofuels are not all good or bad," says lead author Lorenzo Cotula of IIED. "Biofuels can either help or harm the world's poor depending on the choice of crop and cropping system, the business model, and the local context and policies." Biofuel production is set to expand in the coming years despite growing concerns about the role of biofuels in mitigating climate change, promoting deforestation and taking land formerly used to produce food. Land rights The report shows that that large-scale biofuel production is affecting poor people's access to land in African countries such as Mozambique and Tanzania), and in Asia and the Pacific, where farmers in India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea are suffering. It is also having a negative in countries such as Colombia in Latin America. Elsewhere, however, small-scale farmers have been able to increase their access to land to seize opportunities that the biofuels boom brings. "Biofuels can benefit poor producers but only if they have secure land rights," says Cotula. "In many places the rush to produce biofuels takes place where local land rights are insecure, which results in poorer people losing out. What are often lacking are both adequate land laws and the local people's capacity to claim and secure their rights." The report shows that large and small-scale biofuels producers can co-exist, if governments and the private sector have the right policies and practices. African smallholders Commenting on the issue, IIED president, Camilla Toulmin, said "We must avoid treating all biofuels as equal in their environmental, social and economic impacts. As always the devil is in the detail. Cutting down rainforest to plant oil palm for biodiesel makes no sense if you want to save carbon and protect the livelihoods of local forest dwellers. But Brazil’s ethanol derived from rainfed sugarcane in the far southeast of the country makes a lot more sense. "Does biofuel production offer opportunities for smallholders in Africa to improve incomes and get a better return on their land and labour? After decades of falling prices for most agricultural commodities, rising prices are welcomed by many. Yet most smallholders are net food purchasers so lose out from price rises along with other consumers. The key issue is whether smallholders will be able to access high-profit markets and hold on to their land — which becomes more valuable by the minute as revenues from farming rise. This highlights the ever-more pressing need to help strengthen local rights to land and water resources so that agricultural growth brings benefits to the many not the few." The full report: 'Fuelling exclusion? The biofuels boom and poor people's access to land' is available as a free download (PDF 1Mb) "http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/12551IIED.pdf"

Source: http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3342

[PBN] OIL PALMS CALLED THREAT TO PAPUA FORESTS

From: Radio Australia - 29/07/2008

The Papua NGOs Forum is calling on Indonesia’s government to stop issuing permits for oil palm plantation in Papua province.

Indonesia’s government is looking to expand its oil palm plantations in its vast easternmost provinces in Papua where it has three to four million hectares of land suitable for plantations.

The Forum is urging both central and provincial governments to consider preserving Papua’s native forests and allowing secondary forests to be cleared for oil palm instead.

The Forum’s executive secretary, Septer Manufandu, says that whatever way you look at it, deforestation has disastrous enviornmental and social impacts on Papuan communities.

"Logging companies or oil palm companies destroy the forest. Papuans respect the forest. Forest is the mother. Forest can give everything they want: food, water, vegetables, everything."

Source: http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2008/July/07-29-12.htm

[PBN] Tropical Biofuels Getting Less and Less Green

From: Science NOW Daily News - 9/07/2008

A new analysis suggests that biofuels grown in the tropics are not a much greener source of energy than drilling for oil--at least in the short term. The research paints an even gloomier picture of biofuels than previous studies, which have begun to cast doubts on the greenhouse gas benefits that these alternatives to petroleum might provide.

Proponents see plant-based biofuels as a carbon-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. That's because plants that produce, say, palm oil or corn ethanol recycle carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. In contrast, petroleum production introduces new carbon into the air that was previously sequestered deep within Earth.

Two studies published earlier this year in Science, however, suggest that the carbon benefits from biofuels are delayed for centuries when farmers knock down carbon-absorbing forests in order to grow the plants. One paper, for example, estimated that cutting down Brazilian rainforest to grow soybeans for diesel fuel would result in a so-called carbon debt that would take 319 years to repay--essentially rendering the fuel as carbon-unfriendly as gasoline in the short term.

But critics, including the U.S. Department of Energy, have charged that such analyses underestimate the yield of biofuel crops, especially those grown in the tropics.

To get a better sense of just how green biofuels are, Holly Gibbs, a tropical land-use scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues used newly available data on the yields of 10 crops in various seasons and ecosystems within South American, African, and Asian rainforests. Even when Gibbs assumed that the plants would perform in the top 10% of all global varieties--with corn ethanol varieties, for example, producing more than seven times as much ethanol as current species in Africa--the picture remained gloomy. For example, corn grown with high yields in tropical forests (thanks to fertilizer, irrigation, and sophisticated farming) repaid its carbon debt in 100 years: five times faster than corn grown at normal yields. But the improvement is still a "losing proposition," Gibbs says, given the goal of stemming carbon emissions immediately. What's more, she notes, such yields would be hard to achieve throughout the developing world anyway given the cost of world-class agriculture.

To make biofuels more efficient, Gibbs suggests growing biofuel crops in places where trees wouldn't have to be cut down, such as in West African scrublands where cocoa plantations once grew. Otherwise, growing, say, oil palm trees on land that was previously carbon-rich peatland forests in Southeast Asia can create a nearly millennium-long carbon debt, the team reports online today in Environmental Research Letters. The paper highlights the short-term risk of ramping up production of tropical biofuels and cutting down carbon-rich forests to grow them, says Gibbs.

The new studies offer a set of estimates more precise than before for the carbon tradeoff that biofuels entail, says Princeton University agricultural expert Timothy Searchinger, an author of one of the Science papers. "Forests and grasslands have a lot of carbon, so there is really no way to transform those lands into biofuel crops that produce net benefits," he says.

Source: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/709/1

[PBN] Carbon payback times for crop-based biofuel expansion in the tropics: the effects of changing yield and technology

From: Environmental Research Letters - 9/07/2008

Abstract. Biofuels from land-rich tropical countries may help displace foreign petroleum imports for many industrialized nations, providing a possible solution to the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. But concern is mounting that crop-based biofuels will increase net greenhouse gas emissions if feedstocks are produced by expanding agricultural lands. Here we quantify the 'carbon payback time' for a range of biofuel crop expansion pathways in the tropics. We use a new, geographically detailed database of crop locations and yields, along with updated vegetation and soil biomass estimates, to provide carbon payback estimates that are more regionally specific than those in previous studies. Using this cropland database, we also estimate carbon payback times under different scenarios of future crop yields, biofuel technologies, and petroleum sources. Under current conditions, the expansion of biofuels into productive tropical ecosystems will always lead to net carbon emissions for decades to centuries, while expanding into degraded or already cultivated land will provide almost immediate carbon savings. Future crop yield improvements and technology advances, coupled with unconventional petroleum supplies, will increase biofuel carbon offsets, but clearing carbon-rich land still requires several decades or more for carbon payback. No foreseeable changes in agricultural or energy technology will be able to achieve meaningful carbon benefits if crop-based biofuels are produced at the expense of tropical forests.

Link to Full Report (PDF Format) - http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1748-9326/3/3/034001/erl8_3_034001.pdf?request-id=c132897f-0a75-4196-9b0b-5b94c0d66e00

Source: http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-9326/3/3/034001/

[PBN] Interesting articles on food prices and Biofuels

From: Google Search Engine

Interesting readings from the following links on food security/prices and biofuels.

1. Rising food prices: Policy options and World Bank response - http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/risingfoodprices_backgroundnote_apr08.pdf

2. Rising Food Prices in East Asia: Challenges and Policy Options - http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/Resources/EA_Rising_Food_Prices050508.pdf

3. How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change - http://www.oxfamfrance.org/pdf/rapport_oi_biocarburants_verite-qui-derange_250608_en.pdf

4. The right to food and the impact of liquid biofuels (agrofuels) - http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/hunger/general/2008/05right2food.pdf

[PBN] DIGICEL PNG TO USE COCONUT FUEL TO POWER NETWORKS

From: PNG Post-Courier - 11/07/2008

Papua New Guinea could be the first country in the world to have its mobile phone networks powered by coconut fuel. Irish company, Digicel, is carrying out trials on Bougainville amid growing concerns about soaring fuel prices and global warming threats.

[PIR editor's note: Digicel Pacific is a sister company to Digicel Group, an aggressive mobile phone company that has been operating in the Caribbean since 2001. Digicel Pacific began operations in Samoa in 2006, recently in Tonga, and currently has licenses to operate in Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands (Digicel Fij's license has not yet been granted). The company claims to have driven mobile rates down by up to 50 percent in the Caribbean.]

The trials are being carried out at one of Digicel's towers in Lontis on the far north of Buka Island.

[PIR editor's note: Buka Island is located just off the northern tip of the autonomous Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville. Buka is the second largest island in the province of Bougainville]

Digicel began operations on Bougainville in March this year and contracted a Buka-based engineering firm owned by businessman Matthias Horn, to carry out the trials. The pilot project is expected to run for about three months.

Source: http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2008/July/07-11-02.htm

[PBN] Corals: New Threat From Farmed Algae

From: New York Times - 08/07/2008

BUTARITARI, Kiribati ­ Off the palm-fringed white beach of this remote Pacific atoll, the view underwater is downright scary.

Corals are being covered and smothered to death by a bushy seaweed that is so tough even algae-grazing fish avoid it. It settles in the reef’s crevices that fish once called home, driving them away. Dead coral stops supporting the ecosystem and, within a couple of decades, it will crumble into rubble, allowing big ocean waves to reach the beach during storms and destroy the flimsy thatched huts of the Micronesians. “We are catching less and less fish, and the seaweeds are fouling our nets,” says Henry Totie, a fisherman and Butaritari’s traditional chief, in an interview in his traditionally built house in the village near the blue-green lagoon.

The area affected, about four miles long and a mile wide, lies off the island’s main village, an underwater examination showed. It looked strikingly similar to Kaneohe Bay in the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where the seaweed also has spread out of control.

“This is one of the most damaging seaweeds I have ever seen,” says Jennifer E. Smith of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has studied the Hawaiian invasion for eight years. “If there is that much Eucheuma in Butaritari, it proves it can destroy a healthy reef as opposed to a degraded one like in Kaneohe.”

Moiwa Erutarem, the Butaritari representative of the fisheries ministry, said the biggest losses were being felt by the most vulnerable: those who use nets in the shallow coral table and do not have the boats required to fish farther away. Seafood is virtually the only source of protein in Butaritari, complemented by breadfruit and coconut.

This equatorial island of 4,000 people is the latest victim of a 30-year global effort to encourage poor people in the coastal areas of the tropics to grow seaweed that, while not edible, produces carrageenan, an increasingly sought-after binder and fat substitute used in the food industry, notably in ice cream. Today, about 120,000 dry metric tons a year are produced, mostly in the Philippines and Indonesia, where the two main algae originate. Kappaphycus alvarezii is most desirable because of its high carrageenan content; Eucheuma denticulatum is less valuable but easier to cultivate.

Both were introduced in the past three decades to 20 countries around the world from Tonga to Zanzibar and the result in most of them has been failure or worse. The alga K. alvarezii invaded the Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve in south India a decade after commercial cultivation began in nearby Panban. “No part of the coral reef was visible in most of the invaded sites, where it doomed entire colonies,” the journal Current Science has reported.

In the Pacific, for example, the two algae were introduced to 10 countries and are said to be commercially cultivated in three: Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and Tonga. But in the case of Kiribati, interviews with seaweed officials in Tarawa, the capital of this nation of tiny islands sprinkled over a swath of ocean the size of India, reveal that since the first effort to cultivate algae in 1986, the industry has lost money almost every year and the farmers have shown little enduring enthusiasm for the crop.

In some places and times, low prices are blamed. In others, unreliable purchasers are. Then there are cultural factors. Some Pacific countries, like Kiribati, are populated by what ethnologists call nonconsumers: people who need just a little cash to get by and once that need is met, prefer to spend time with their family, go fishing or sleep.

There is also “pubusi,” (pronounced poo-boo-SEE) the local tradition in which one person can ask another for pretty much anything, using the magic word, and the other person has to hand it over or face public opprobrium.

“What’s the point of making money if you have to pubusi it all away?” says Kevin Rouatu, a stocky, cheerful former banker who runs the Atoll Seaweed Company in Kiribati. This state-owned company was formed in 1991 to restart failed efforts by the fisheries ministry, advised by foreign consultants, to introduce seaweed farming in the 1980s. Today, after the algae were introduced to 10 islands in Kiribati, only one, Fanning in the Line Islands, is producing anything. So the government is giving up on the other nine and moving the seaweed company to Christmas Island, which is near Fanning Island and more than 2,000 miles from Tarawa.

“The government raised the price we pay to farmers to 60 cents a kilo so we lose 27 cents a kilo by the time we’ve shipped it to the processing plant,” which is 3,000 miles away in the Philippines, Mr. Rouatu said. “The government didn’t give us the difference last year, so we were only able to buy 100 tons, and the farmers are now stuck with 250 tons.”

In Butaritari, where seaweed farming ended two years ago, Reuera Redfern, a retired seaman who became the island’s top producer and then the seaweed company’s purchasing agent, estimates there is 6 to 10 dry tons’ worth of Eucheuma ­ the variety with less carrageenan ­ on the coral reefs today, and an unknown amount off Tarawa. Mr. Redfern said he was told it was also spreading in Abemama, another island in the Gilbert group.

Today, Mr. Totie, the Butaritari traditional chief, says the only way to prevent Eucheuma (which locals call seaweeda, since it has no local name) from destroying the entire lagoon is for the seaweed company to offer to buy it. “Then the people would go out and get it and it would be gone in a few months,” he said. “If they wait, the problem will just get worse.” Mr. Rouatu agrees that some sort of noncommercial purchase plan needs to be set up to save the Butaritari lagoon, perhaps with foreign aid.

In an interview, President Anote Tong recalled going fishing with Mr. Redfern, his school friend, and said he was aware of the problem. But he displayed little interest in solving it, saying vaguely that it required a “scientific solution” ­ which he could not define.

“Buying it is something we cannot afford,” he said. “If we got a grant for that purpose, maybe, but,” he added with a fleeting smile, “it may encourage cultivation.” Dr. Smith argued that even if by world standards the damage caused by the alga is small, it adds a layer of stress to corals already dying fast because most of the algae-grazing fish that kept the reef ecosystem healthy have been eaten, leading to a much higher coral mortality when global warning sends water temperatures up. “Introduced species have had large impacts on marine ecosystems around the world,” she said. “We should avoid the intentional introduction of species that are known to harm coral, not promote it.”

In Hawaii, three kinds of algae were brought in during the 1970s by a professor of botany at the University of Hawaii, Max Doty, who developed the techniques of cultivation that were exported around the world. One species dominates Oahu’s south and the two others, mostly Eucheuma, have spread to about half of the coral heads of Kaneohe Bay. Celia Smith, the successor to the late Dr. Doty at the university, is now a leader in the effort to save the bay. “It’s not easy,” she said, for the seaweeds grow at a rate of 7 percent a week.

The university, state and Nature Conservancy devised Super Suckers, vacuum cleaners on powered catamarans that are sucking up 3,000 pounds of seaweed a day each. “At the current rate, we’ll need 10 years to clean up the bay,” says Brian Hauk, the state aquatic invasive species supervisor.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/science/earth/08seaw.html?ref=science&pagewanted=print

[PBN] Malaysia: Rising demand for palm oil puts pressure on biodiversity

From: Biofuel Review - 08/07/2008

Rising demand for palm oil will decimate biodiversity unless producers and politicians can work together to preserve as much remaining natural forest as possible, ecologists have warned. A new study of the potential ecological impact of various management strategies published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology found that very little can be done to make palm oil plantations more hospitable for local birds and butterflies. The findings have major implications for the booming market in biofuels and its impact on biodiversity.

Dr Lian Pin Koh of ETH Zürich looked at the number of birds and butterflies in 15 palm oil plantations in East Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. He found that palm oil plantations supported between one and 13 butterfly species, and between seven and 14 species of bird. Previous research by other ecologists found at least 85 butterfly and 103 bird species in neighbouring undisturbed rain forest.

Management techniques – such as encouraging epiphytes, beneficial plants or weed cover in palm oil plantations – increased species richness by only 0.4 species for butterflies and 2.2 species for birds. Preserving remaining natural forests – for example by creating forest buffer zones between plantations – made a little more impact, increasing species richness by 3.7 in the case of butterflies and 2.5 for birds.

According to Dr Koh: "Rapid expansion of oil palm agriculture onto forested lands, even logged forests, poses a significant threat to biodiversity. This study shows that to maximise biodiversity in oil palm plantations, the industry and local governments should work together to preserve as much of the remaining natural forest as possible, for example by creating forest buffer zones around oil palm estates or protecting remaining patches of forest. Even then, the industry's impact on biodiversity is enormous."

The study is particularly important because it comes at time when rising demand for both food and biofuels is putting mounting pressure on biodiversity. "The rapid expansion of oil palm agriculture in Southeast Asia raises serious concerns about its potential impact on the region's biodiversity. Unless future expansion of oil palm agriculture is regulated, rising global demand is likely to exacerbate the high rates of forest conversion in major oil palm-producing countries," says Dr Koh.

Source: http://www.biofuelreview.com/content/view/1642/1/

[PBN] Fiji: Ethanol Plant Waste to be Recycled

From: The Fiji Times - 6/07/2008

THE ethanol plant which is planned to be set up in Naitasiri by 2010 will not emit any waste into the soil and river, according to the national strategic committee on bio-fuel.

Deputy chairman Aliki Turagakula said the committee considered the environmental issues related to the establishment of the plant when it met with a Chinese delegation this year.

He said they made an assessment to see if it was addressing the Kyoto Protocol to which Fiji was a signatory and was committed to reducing greenhouse gases by at least 10 per cent by 2015.

"One of the strategies of the Kyoto Protocol was the clean development mechanism which is basically the promotion of renewable energy to replace fossil fuel which emits a lot of carbon dioxide.

"We are aware and we don't want any environment degradation. We don't want any destruction of marine life in our eco-system. That is why we are seriously considering this technology from China."

Mr Turagakula said China had an international patent to the technology which reduces, reuses and recycles waste.

"So we are reducing the release of greenhouse gases and reusing all the waste from the factory."

He said 50 acres leased for the plant would accommodate recycling machines. so waste could be recycled.

"I believe people speculate a lot on the environment impact of this plant. While we are receptive to their concerns we are also looking into it by using these technologies."

Mr Turagakula said the clean development mechanism adopts the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle and would ensure technologies used at the plant reduces green house gas emissions, reuse waste and recycles it.

Source: http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=94244.

[PBN]: World Bank report: biofuel caused food crisis

From: The Guardian - 4/07/2008

An interesting article on biofuel and its effect on global food prices

by Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian UK, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy

[PBN] Biofuel production on abandoned lands could meet 20% of global oil demand

From: Mahogony.com - 23/06/2008

Using abandoned agricultural lands for biofuel production will meet only a small fraction of global energy needs without compromising food supplies or diminishing biologically-rich habitats, reports a new study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Using historical land-use data, satellite imaging, and ecosystem models, a team of researchers estimate that 4.7 million square kilometers (1.8 million square miles) of abandoned agricultural lands could be available for producing up to 2.1 billion tons of biomass from energy crops. The biomass would yield an energy content of about 41 exajoules or roughly 7 billion barrels of oil ­ about 8 percent of current worldwide energy demand or 20 percent of annual oil consumption.

Forest cover versus palm oil production in Indonesia.

The researchers say that the United States, Brazil, and Australia have the most extensive areas of abandoned crop and pasture lands, but that Africa could see the biggest gains ­ up to 37 times current energy consumption ­ from adopting bioenergy production. Nevertheless the research suggests that biofuels are not the panacea that some policymakers had hoped for meeting future global energy demand.

"Eastern North America has the largest area of abandoned croplands, and the Midwest has the biggest expanse of abandoned pastureland. Even so, if 100% of these lands were used for bioenergy, they would still only yield enough for about 6% of our national energy needs," said Elliot Campbell, lead author of the study and a research at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University.

"The popular reaction to the recent biofuels papers in Science has been to say that we could still go big with biofuels but along a sustainable path," he told mongabay.com. "The results in this paper warn that this sustainable path leads to a small amount of energy."

"Our study shows that there is clearly a potential for developing sustainable bioenergy, and we've been able to identify areas where biomass can be grown for energy, without endangering food security or making climate change worse," added Christopher Field, director of the Department of Global Ecology and a co-author. "But we can't count on bioenergy to be a dominant contributor to the global energy system over the next few decades. Expanding beyond its sustainable limits would threaten food security and have serious environmental impacts."

Source: http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0623-biofuels.html

[PBN] Brussels: EU to assess impacts of biofuels on food supply

From: MNN - 21/08/2008

European Union (EU) leaders called on Friday (20/08/2008) to assess the impacts of using biofuels on soaring food prices.

There was a need to "rapidly assess possible impacts on agricultural products for food and to take action, if necessary, to address shortcomings," EU leaders said in a conclusion after seeking solutions to high food prices at a two-day summit.

With food crops like corn increasingly used for production of biofuels, the cleaner transport fuel has been widely blamed for the present food price hike, which ignited social unrest in some poor African and Asian countries.

"Further assessment should also be made of the environmental and social consequences of the production, and consumption of biofuels, both within the EU and outside," they said.

It was the first time that EU leaders decided to check their ambitious plan of promoting biofuels. They politically agreed one year ago to make biofuels account for 10 percent of EU's fuel consumption by 2020 in a bid to reduce greenhouse gas emission and dependence on oil.

"It is important to ensure the sustainability of bio-fuel policies, by setting sustainability criteria for the production of first-generation bio-fuels and by encouraging the development of the second-generation bio-fuels made from by-products," they said.

Source: http://www.mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=595913

[PBN]New technologies promise biofuel 'plan B'

From: Issue 2661 of New Scientist magazine, 18/06/2008, page 30-31 - 18/06/2008

TEN years ago, running your car on biofuels meant covertly topping up your tank with chip fat. Now petrol is routinely mixed with ethanol made from corn, and diesel with squeezed rape, oil palm and soya. The current generation of biofuels was rushed onto the market in response to escalating concern in Europe about climate change, and in the US about energy security. But almost before the biofuels industry has got going, it has run into major problems. It has swiftly become a victim of its own success, gobbling up land and water in a way that has frightened the world.

The charge sheet grows by the month. Biofuels are crowding out conventional crops and raising food prices. The corn required to fill an SUV tank with bioethanol just once could feed someone in Africa for a year. What's more, the environmental benefits are uncertain. In theory the growing crops soak up as much carbon dioxide as is made burning them. But in practice, the cultivation and processing of corn in particular takes a large amount of energy, resulting in additional greenhouse gas emissions that can cancel out this benefit. Cultivating soya or oil palm can also add to global warming if the crops are grown on former rainforest land or drained peat bogs.

Thankfully though, we now have a plan B, in the form of second-generation biofuels made from inedible plant material that can be grown on unused land or, even better, from plant or organic waste such as corn straw, wood chips or the contents of landfill. The theory is that such material will not require cultivation and therefore will have low carbon emissions. In recent weeks work has begun on several pilot plants aimed at bringing these fuels to a forecourt near you.

The big money at the moment is going into cellulosic ethanol - ethanol made from the bits of plants we cannot eat. Edible starch, the stuff currently turned into bioethanol, makes up only a small proportion of the total biomass of plants. Most biomass is a woody, indigestible mixture of lignin and cellulose, bound up in plant cell walls. Lignin will burn, but has so far defied efforts to convert it into liquid fuel. But cellulose, like starch, is made up of long chains of glucose that can be fermented to make ethanol. The bad news is that separating cellulose from lignin and breaking it down into its component sugars is still far more difficult and expensive than doing the same to starch. The cost of producing cellulosic ethanol from corn, for instance, is currently 50 per cent higher than for making bioethanol from starch.

Finding ways to cut those costs is the number 1 priority for biofuels technologists, and hundreds of millions of dollars are being devoted to the task. In the US alone there are 30 projects in the pipeline to develop cellulosic ethanol "biorefineries", with half a dozen of these dipping into a government development fund worth $385 million. Essentially the job is to hydrolyse the cellulose, or break it down into its sugars using water. The task requires either a chemical catalyst like acid or a biological catalyst, usually an enzyme. The biomass is first treated to dissolve the lignin, and after hydrolysis, the resulting sugars are fermented with brewer's yeast to create ethanol.

Last month, the first biorefinery designed to demonstrate the technology opened in Jennings, Louisiana. It will process bagasse - what's left of sugar cane after the sugar has been squeezed out of it. The company behind the project, Verenium of Cambridge, Massachusetts, says it is processing the bagasse using its own proprietary enzymes and will build a commercial plant next year.

It may not be the first, though. Genencor, in Rochester, New York, makes industrial enzymes and, in April, the company announced plans with chemicals giant DuPont to build a similar plant using corn husks and bagasse as feedstock. Companies aiming to convert cellulose into ethanol using the chemical process are not far behind. This technology dates back to the 1920s, when German chemists developed the Fischer-Tropsch process, which turns coal into gas and then a liquid fuel by pyrolysis - heating in the absence of oxygen.

Now the process could get a new lease of life turning cellulose into biofuels. In April, Colorado-based Range Fuels announced plans to build a plant to pyrolyse logging waste and then pass the resulting "syngas" over a proprietary catalyst to convert it into ethanol. However, the costs remain high for both methods. The chemical process is energy intensive, while the enzymes used in the biological approach are costly and inefficient, slowly converting less than half of the available biomass to alcohol.

In a bid to reduce the cost of the biological process, Mascoma of Boston has hooked up with General Motors to build a pilot plant in Rome, New York, that will deploy microorganisms to both convert switchgrass cellulose into sugar and ferment it, in a single and therefore cheaper step. The technology is based on research into the use of cellulose-converting organisms, such as the bacterium Clostridium thermocellum, by Lee Lynd and Charles Wyman at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The plant is set to begin producing bioethanol later this year.

Meanwhile other companies are investigating the use of genetically engineered microbes to improve the efficiency of the process and bring down its cost. The Canadian biotech firm Iogen, a specialist enzyme manufacturer and long-time pioneer of cellulosic ethanol technologies, has been genetically engineering tropical fungus to make enzymes that will eat straw. Other researchers believe bacteria in the guts of termites, which have had millions of years of practice at eating wood, could fit the bill. And Craig Venter, the genome-sequencing pioneer, has been collecting marine microorganisms with the aim of building new bacteria from scratch to produce the perfect enzyme.

In parallel with these developing technologies, researchers are also engineering the crops themselves for better yield, easier processing and lower environmental impact. Some are busy trying to make plants with less lignin, others are working to create cellulose that can be broken down more easily. This research raises concerns for environmentalists. Many believe that all the talk of cutting the environmental impact of biofuels by processing waste biomass will wither away as crops designed for cellulosic ethanol manufacture come on stream, leaving us back where we started.

Technologists counter that much less energy should be burned up in making second-generation fuels. Also, some biofuel plants will burn the lignin left behind when the cellulose has been liberated, providing energy for the production process. The feedstock is also either farm waste or weeds, neither of which require the use of harmful pesticides or fertilisers.So which approach will win out? There may be no single winner, says Ross MacLachlan of Canadian company Lignol Energy, which wants to use Canada's forests to make ethanol. "There will be a lot of technologies out there. Any of them will be appropriate for different feedstocks and in different parts of the world."

Source: http://technology.newscientist.com/channel/tech/mg19826616.100