Naturally Interesting

Here’s the summary: Biofuels are bad. Government mandated biofuel demand drives increased prices for crops and increased cultivation. The result is increased deforestation, or in the U.S. removal from CRP programs, and a net increase in GHG emissions. In addition food prices are soaring because of competition from biofuels.

Time Magazine has a well-written piece, The Clean Energy Scam, some highlights:

• An explosion in demand for biofuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate. “You can’t protect it. There’s too much money to be made tearing it down, out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work.”
• Using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon. Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions.
• [Last November] Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled an eye-popping plan that would require all stations to offer ethanol by 2017 while mandating 60 billion gal. (227 billion L) by 2030. “This is the fuel for a much brighter future!” she declared. Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream about future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill.
• Someone is paying to support these environmentally questionable industries: you. In December, President Bush signed a bipartisan energy bill that will dramatically increase support to the industry while mandating 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuel by 2022.

But as noted at Grist there is some good news:

The rapid increase in ethanol production has demonstrated how quickly the nation can mobilize to produce new energy resources. With the right policies — such as a stable production tax credit — we might mobilize the economy just as quickly to create and sustain a boom in wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, low-impact hydro, and bioenergy from feedstocks that have positive net carbon and energy benefits. Among them are cellulosic materials grown on degraded and untillable land, organic municipal and agricultural wastes, and algae.

Read more at:

• Climate Progress
• Grist