The default values assigned to the biofuels compare to those from Canada’s oil sands – also known as tar sands – according to the figures, which should be released along with long-awaited legislative proposals on biofuels in the spring.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said she could “not comment on leaked documents, such as impact assessments which have not been published.”
But industry and civil society sources described the data as credible and in line with other studies. One said it would sound a death knell for the biodiesel industry, if published.
“I think the science has proved clearly that because of the link to deforestation in places such as South East Asia, a lot of the biodiesels have significantly negative impacts on the climate,” Robbie Blake, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth, told EurActiv.
Indirect land-use change
ILUC happens when forests and wetlands are cleared to compensate for lands taken to grow biofuels elsewhere.
One recent report predicted that all of Malaysia’s tropical peatswamp forests would be destroyed by the end of the decade because of ILUC - with alarming consequences for greenhouse gas emissions - unless the expansion of palm oil production was halted.
To measure the climate impact of fuels, Brussels favours assigning default values based on a calculation of their full lifecycle emissions, hence the debate over ILUC factors and biofuels.
In its recent review of the Fuel Quality Directive, the EU proposed a default value of 107g CO2 equivalent per megajoule of fuel (CO2/mj) for oil from tar sands, as compared to 87.5g CO2/mj for crude oil, reflecting the greater environmental harm that its production causes.
Yet while advanced ‘second generation’ biofuels comfortably outperform fossil fuels in the EU’s new data, palm oil is ascribed a value of 105g, soybean 103g, rapeseed 95g, and sunflower 86g, once ILUC is factored in.
The data propose ILUC-incorporating CO2/mj values for biofuels as follows:
- Palm Oil - 105g
- Soybean – 103g
- Rapeseed – 95g
- Sunflower – 86g
- Palm Oil with methane capture – 83g
- Wheat (process fuel not specified) – 64g
- Wheat (as process fuel natural gas used in CHP) – 47g
- Corn (Maize) – 43g
- Sugar Cane – 36g
- Sugar Beet – 34g
- Wheat (straw as process fuel in CHP plants) – 35g
- 2G Ethanol (land-using) – 32g
- 2G Biodiesel (land-using) – 21g
- 2G Ethanol (non-land using) – 9g
- 2G Biodiesel (non-land using) – 9g
Biodiesel
Isabelle Maurizi, a spokesperson for the European Biodiesel Board, told EurActiv that data such as the leaked biofuels values, and recent reports by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, the European Environmental Agency, and the International Food Policy Research Institute, were not consistent with research in the US.
“We do not recognise the validity of the science due to discrepancies in the results. The science is not grounded yet and is still immature so we would favour incentives in policy-making rather than punitive proposals,” she said.
Any application of the leaked values could severely hamper the ability of biodiesel manufacturers to enter into the EU’s new biofuels certification plan, announced last August.
This stipulates that certification only be awarded to biofuels which emit 35% less greenhouse gas than petrol, with the figure rising to 60% from 2018.
Advanced biofuels producers believe they would meet this standard and Rob Vierhout, the secretary-general of ePURE, a renewable ethanol association, said that the EU needed “a different shade of ILUC factor.”
“If indeed the effects on land use change depend on the feedstock that they’re using, then this has to be recognised in the policy,” he told EurActiv.
In April 2009, the EU legislated that renewable energy sources such as biofuels should make up 10% of Europe’s transportation fuels mix by 2020, and this has legal as well as financial consequences.
Market signals
Nusa Urbancic, of the Transport & Environment pressure group, called for the EU to “send a clear signal to the markets about which are the future biofuels that we want.”
“We have enough biodiesel to meet the current target which is a problem for the sector, because they overinvested following a different policy signal and to some extent their investments should be protected,” she told EurActiv.
But with scientific knowledge of the climate advantages that advanced biofuels offered “there is no excuse now not to act to resolve that [problem],” she added.
A report published by the French national auditor on 24 January found that although farmers gained from the EU’s current biofuels policy, environmental benefits were ‘questionable’ and motorists ended up having to consume more fuel and pay high prices.
COMMENTS
Ill executed research, that is for sure: Plants do take in CO2 as well, in contradiction with fossil fuel mining, which takes out ALL carbon and removes the ability to regenerate in the same time.
No doubt that CURRENT agricultural practices do emit gasses which are multiple times stronger GHG than CO2, especially when those gasses are a result of artificial fertilizers, for a large part derived from fossil fuels.
This type of tail-pipe research (only looking at emissions) is of no use at all, distorting views again and again.
RSOP and such do address those land change issues and are required by 2015 to be fully implemented.
Time that those researchers take their head out of that bucket full of shit and start looking around what is ongoing.
It IS important to have a ratings index for biofuels and this attempt is a good first step.
But that's all it is. It lacks much, so much so, that it risks irrelevancy.
For example, why are the very best biofuel crops omitted from the rankings? Only the lower performers are taken to task!
Crops like Jatropha, Millettia, Camelina, various Switchgrass breeds and other high performance biofuel crops are not ever mentioned.
Should we compare the lower ranked petroleum with lower ranked biofuel crops? Yes, obviously.
Should we compare higher ranked petroleum with higher ranked biofuel crops? Yes!
Should we then factor in all the costs of supertanker oil spills at sea, including the Exxon Valdez, and the recent deep-water drilling platform spills in the Gulf of Mexico fiasco - one of many such spills over the decades?
As for cutting down forests to grow biofuels: India recently set aside a territory the size of England (!) to grow Jatropha biofuel. Does the Earth really care if all those millions of hectares of land are covered in green foliage of the tree type - or the jatropha tree type?
It simply doesn't matter. A million hectares of green is a million hectares of green!!!
But in the case of biofuel "forests" they provide many thousands of jobs per million hectares and millions of gallons of much cleaner than petroleum biofuels.
Let's start by comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.
johnbrianshannon.com
Sirs: THis report alleges but does not confirm.
The Science is bad and badly presented.
All flora absorbs carbob Dioxide, but I cannot see the evidences here.
Disassenbling the Diesels from Flora like this is like walking on water. There is obviously some concern over the displacement of Tropical and Arboreal Forests and quite rightly so. How then has the calculations of Petro-Diesel been calculated? UNtil you show the relevance of these nothing can be added.
When it comes to the substitutes for gasoline and the substitutes therein the questioning must be referenced a little wider. You have missed entirely what is happening with those projects in Hardenberg and Malta and South Milford Yorkshire - using waste to make ethanol as genesyst is doing. And there is the similar missing link of the macro-algae which is being used to capyure greenhouse gases from power stations which is about to be added to projects in the UK and the EU by the same company.
Something is wrong with these figures.
Sirs, when short term crops are grown for energy purpose there is not much of benefit by way of reduction in pollution as the energy used to cultivate and application of fertilizer takes a large amount of energy.
When the energy crops are like trees are grown in developing countries and only seeds are collected for its oil there is no energy used for cultivation and hence the reduction in pollution is 100%.
What is required is global cooperation for replacing fossil with renewables.
Sirs, when short term crops are grown for energy purpose there is not much of benefit by way of reduction in pollution as the energy used to cultivate and application of fertilizer takes a large amount of energy.
When the energy crops are like trees are grown in developing countries and only seeds are collected for its oil there is no energy used for cultivation and hence the reduction in pollution is 100%.
What is required is global cooperation for replacing fossil with renewables.
What is not considered in these discussions is the fact that biofuels are - to a large extent - simply additional fuels, instead of replacement fuels. After ILUC, rebound is the next nail to the coffin of the biofuels industry.
The original goal was to lower GHG-emissions by replacing fossil fuels. However, fossil fuels "freed up" by introducing biofuels do not stay in the ground. They are burnt elsewhere in the global market, because demand is high enough to keep oil prices above USD 100 per barrel.
This rebound effect is well-known, and estimated by most people at 35-60%. Under current market conditions, it is likely to be closer to 100%, as higher prices are simple not tolerated by the world economy. Thus, almost all emissions from biofuels are additional, and completely counterproductive.
The effect may still be under the radar, but as soon as it is factored in NO single biofuel from a dedicated crop will qualify.
This article was referenced the Biofuels Digest and Jim Lane in the USA.
Stop scaremongering.
Making Biofuels from Non-food sources as they are doing in Malta(Ethanol and Butanol) and Yorkshire (Ethanol and Butanol) Hardenberg (Ethanol) Finland (Ethanol) is by far the cheapest and most attractive way ahead. Making Ethanol from these sources can only be effective if the costs are less than those in Brazil, and because they are made locally from I assume wastes they do not impact the GHG debate. Now we are also hearing that the same company in Malta is developing a Macro-Algae to Ethanol (yielding 10 times as much Ethanol per hectare as sugar cane) and Butanol facility as well using wasted carbon disoxide from Power Stations and from the atmosphere. So as these do not use Food Crops or Land to Grow Foods for their source materials they cannot be lumed together as these.
Bio-fuels will ALWAYS take more energy to produce than they yield. This is simple high school science, & is self-evident: if anyone could get more energy from a bio-fuel than it took to produce it they would have an endless supply of free energy. If this is possible, why isn't anyone doing it? All biofuel production is heavily subsidized precisely because such production requires more energy than it yields.
Since extra energy is needed to produce bio-fuels, net emissions MUST be higher. We have to use more hydrocarbons to produce the biofuel than if we just used the hydrocarbons as fuel in the 1st place, so obviously emissions are higher with bio-fuels. There are other inefficiencies too, for example, hexane (gasoline) has 6 carbon atoms, as does the sugar that is used to make ethanol; both result in 6 molecules of CO2 production but you drive 35% farther on a gallon of gasoline than ethanol!
So let's use legislation to force people to use bio-fuels which increase emissions & hydrocarbon consumption so that a few producers can get rich off taxpayers money. Read more in Kids Before Trees, get a copy free with coupon code BL52H at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80505
Even the current certification process does not exclude additional GHG emissions as actual practise is proving. Rendered animal fats are currently supported by DG Energy and thus by certain Member States as "waste or residues". These are clearly on purpose made raw materials requiring capital, energy, labour et al. Taking them away for fuel and subsidize with double counting GHG emission savings leads to their substitution by palm oil products as the only technical alternative in many applications for consumer and industrial products. This means an indirect, indirect land use change costing jobs in Europe and making Europe again more depending on raw material imports. Wake up Mr. Oettinger!
It is important that we see what the most common feedstocks for biofuel are causing, and that they are not a solution to our energy problems, instead creating more problems. And at the same time, yes, I agree that the headline generalizes, as the content is about certain feedstocks and not the ones that offer another outcome. Pongamia and switchgrass as mentioned would likely give other numbers. On my site www.best-alternative-fuel-sources.com I actually focus on this problem, that some feedstocks are destructive, but that there are others that got potentials, based on ethical guidelines.
Geoff Sander's comment fails to take into account the painfully obvious fact that crops grown in order to produce biofuels convert solar energy. So while, yes, they cannot contain more energy than goes into them, you also need to count the solar contribution - and that is what can shift the energy balance in favour of biofuels.
Hi all,
We are a Dutch company Holland Innovation Team based in Rotterdam. We are promoting bio-lng (liquid bio-methane) which in our opinion is by far the cleanest and cheapest biofuel.Everything which can rot, can be turned into bio-lng. The process of liquefction is even cheaper than turning natural gas into LNG because you do not have to remove mercury, propane, ethane and so on. Bio-LNG is the first biofuel that is of better quality than the fossil counterpart (LNG). Production of bio-lng does not cope with food production, simply use waste as feedstock (landfill, sewage sludge, agricultural waste). We are setting up bio-lng bunker terminals, we are trying to build bio-lng small scale carriers and a chain for for trucks. It is very easy to have 10% of bio-lng in the tansportation chain by 2020.
Second generation biogas production is easy and cheap (AD of lignocellulosis). Our largest ennemies are
1) oil and gas ompanies (you do not need them in a bio-lng chain)
2) politicians
3) environmentalsts
Both 2 and 3 are not interested in clean technology and like to discuss only.
Regards the HITTeam www.hollandinnovationteam.nl
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