'Not MY job'

James Lovelock warned at least eight years ago that, collectively, we have hardly begun to get or act together on climate change and global governance. John Beddington seems to agree. And when it comes to what really matters we are still stuck in a giant game of pass the parcel. Three examples this week: Europe shows every sign of procrastination/avoidance of its commitments to poor nations; China blames consuming nations (even though it is using them to grow rich); and Shell pulls out of solar and wind.

George Monbiot wonders what is going on at Shell. But surely there is no mystery. The corporation is following its bliss, aka money. At least its interest in 'new generation' biofuels appears to be honest (and these fuels may even be relatively good news). For decency's sake, however, Shell should cease to pretend that CCS will mitigate emissions from tar sands in the foreseeable future.

Here's to civil society pressure and a heap more technology.

The 'land-use cascade'

Maribo on biofuel impacts.

Biofuel questions

On Admit it: we were right, I commented:

Should environmentalists campaign against all biofuels forever? What about jatropha and sugarcane derived fuels for local use in regions such as rural West Africa and the Caribbean? What about biofuels from algae? What about switchgrass and cellulosic ethanol?

N of the affair

Paul Ehrlich draws attention to Nitrogen pollution stomps on biodiversity, a Nature news report which says that the long-term effects of low-level pollution may have been underestimated.

Meanwhile, studies in Science here and here conclude that almost all biofuels have a negative net impact and tat land use change has been left out of analysis of the costs and benefits (NYT report here).

Swede and low carbon

Jack Guest writes to say that a trailer for the feature-length preview of A Convenient Truth: A film about the world getting better has just been released. You can see it here on YouTube.

The trailer strikes me as having at least these two messages: 1) the answer is for everyone to be more like Sweden, plus flex-fuel cars; 2) you don't have to be some posh-sounding bloke to go out and do this for yourself, and you can be happy while doing it.

In a piece about Sweden which I wrote for Director (July 06), Roger Levett says:

It would be perfectly possible for any rich, sophisticated country to reduce net greenhouse emissions to zero over 20 or 25 years. Given what we now know about the global climate, this is the only sensible course. Anything else is suicide for our civilisation, if not for our species, although quite possibly that, too.

Vis-a-vis flex fuel cars, and therefore biofuels, Bacon Butty makes a useful addition to recent commentary:

Instead of asking how to reduce transport emissions from road fuel substitution, we should be asking how to make use of land to tackle climate change in the most effective way possible. In coming up with the biofuels targets, policy-makers have asked, and answered, the wrong question.

See too Biofuels bonanza facing 'crash', Indonesia Says It May Take Until 2014 to End Illegal Logging and Vanishing forests a counterpoint to Indonesia's climate crusade, which all take us back to How to destroy a planet.

Biofooled

From Martin Wolf on Biofuels: a tale of special interests and subsidies, with help from Biofuels – At What Cost? from the Global Subsidies Initiative:

This...is a classic farm programme: a costly system of transfers looking for a rationale. Or, as the report puts it: “The bewildering array of incentives that have been created for biofuels in response to multiple (and sometimes contradictory) policy objectives bear all the hallmarks of a popular bandwagon aided and abetted by sectional vested interests.”

Biofuels and aviation

I've shared the widespread assumption that finding a substitute for kerosene is going to be one of the biggest obstacles to achieving less damaging means of air transport. "Biofuel trial flight set for 747" looks like one to watch.

Biofuels and afforestation

In all cases, forestation of an equivalent area of land would sequester two to nine times more carbon over a 30-year period than the emissions avoided by the use of the biofuel. Taking this opportunity cost into account, the emissions cost of liquid biofuels exceeds that of fossil fuels.

-- from Carbon Mitigation by Biofuels or by Saving and Restoring Forests? by Renton Righelato and Dominick V. Spracklen (Science, 17 August 2007).

Which biofuels? (2)

(Continued from 10 May post)

Since last autumn, it's been reported that Richard Branson is allocating up to three billion dollars for research into biofuels. A long article in the 14 May edition of The New Yorker fails to provide any substantial detail on the nature of the research he is supporting, despite its length.

Tom Goreau of CGRA, Danny Dan of Eprida and others recommend large scale production of biochar. Goreau and others say this may be the only way to avoid dangerous climate change because it can actually reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. 'Merely' cutting global emissions by 80 to 90% within a few decades will not be enough, they say.

An article published last summer in Nature (Black is the New Green, 10 August 2006) reported estimates by Johannes Lehmann of Cornell University that biochar in combination with biofuels could store up to 9.5 billion tonnes of carbon a year. ( Last summer I expressed an interest in investigating this claim for a widely read science magazine. The editor was actively unwelcoming of the idea.)

Goreau and collleagues were promoting char and tidal power on behalf of the Small Island Developing States at the Commission on Sustainable Development meeting in New York finishing 11 May (a background paper is here). Unfortunately I was unable to make it. Media coverage of CSD coverage seems to have been dominated by a row about Zimbabwe assuming the Commission Presidency.

Which biofuels? (1)

Another trip to the redundant restatement of the bloody obvious department, but here's a point that sometimes gets missed in much of the discussion about biofuels. It's important to distinguish a range of currently large scale aproaches that are currently available and feasible, and the conversion of cellulosic biomass - a technique that may be practicable some years hence if it gets adequate support now.

Biofuels have been high on the news agenda this week after the publication of a UN report expressing concern about their impact (see UN waffles furiously about biofuels, UN warns on impact of biofuels and the report itself).

Moving beyond generalisations such as "the worst idea humanity has had in a long time" (as one leading ecologist has put it), campaigns such as this one in the UK targetting 'deforestation diesel' are well and good.

By contast, conversion of cellulosic biomass may (and this is yet to be proven) offer part of a relatively low-impact, large-scale answer to low-carbon energy future. However a lot of basic research still has to be done. At present, note Chris Sommerville and Donald Kennedy in Science, the U.S. government spends on all of plant physiology just one-hundredth of the research budget of the National Institutes of Health. They say that the importance and the scale of the challenge means research budgets should be greatly increased.

[P.S. See also Which biofuels? (2)