However:

(1) No more biodiesel from palm oil, because all the palm oil is going as food.

(2) Ethanol from sugarcane is a win-win for everybody because sugar is a glut on the world market. While one can eat a little of it, you’ll die of malnutrition if you attempt to just eat sugar. (Could probably use sugarbeets as well for ethanol, I just haven’t read of anybody doing this.)

(3) Poor croplands will grow undesirable, but nutritionally adequate, foods such as sweet potato and casava. Both make fine bio-fuel feedstocks. Rural people in Africa, how need both food and fuel, use the best cropland for food and the less good cropland to grow those foods, yes, foods, as bio-fuel feedstock. They are paid to deliver the biofuel feedstock and also can afford to buy the resulting product (much less expensive than importing petroleum products, whose price has sky-rocketed.)

(4) The plantings and the southern hemisphere returns for the 2008 crop year make it appear to become the largest on record. This will build up the world’s food reserves and help eliminate the current speculation which is also helping to drive up prices.

There is ample crop land to feed everybody in the world, and in a much healthier way than currently. [Did you know that obesity is a worse malnutirion problem, world-wide, than insufficient calories is?) There is enough extra, lower grade land to grow enough bio-energy feedstock for the entire world’s current energy needs, four times over, without touching the world’s forests even. [Probably better to use only about a quarter of that.]

Here is a link to the papers in which the bio-energy estimates are developed:

http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2815

(1) Sugarcane does not grow well on (ex) tropical rain forest soils. In Brazil, the sugarcane growing areeas are all south of the Amazon basin.

(2) The tropical rain forest distruction cycle goes like this (in Brazil):

(i) Legal, semi-legal and illegal cutting of trees. Very lucrative.

(ii) Squatters then raise a few years of crops on the cleared areas until the soils are depleted.

(Iii) Ranchers then move onto that land for a few more years until the soils are destroyed.

(iv) Go back to (i) and repeat.

Look at the numbers:
Beef, pork, and lamb contain about 3 grams of embodied Carbon per gram of product and cost about US$1500 to $2000 per gram CO2 emitted (Jones, Kammen, and Horvath, in press).

Better conversion of cellulose to ethanol would only make hemp more attractive as a biofuel.

And even if we put the entire world on a minimum ration of grain, putting all the rest, and all fruit, vegetables, sugar and oilseed into biofuels, and if we had a Magic Energy Fairy that could do all the conversion without using a single joule of energy, we’d still only get a single barrel of biofuel each - compared to the 4.7bbl used per person annually around the world (0-2 in impoverished countries, 2-7 in developing countries, 7-15 in efficient developed nations, 15+ in inefficient ones).

Biofuels will only ever supply a small part of our fuel needs, and will make a very large part of climate change and resource depletion along the way.

Like hydrogen cars, they’re just another excuse for delaying real action, an attempt to pretend to solve the problem while continuing our current wasteful business as usual. It’s adjusting the seat belt while we’re driving off the cliff.

Suppose that the livestock sector was covered by a carbon price. This would most probably lead to reductions in production and less greenhouse intensive production. As well as being a relatively cheap way of reducing emissions, and decreased production (especially for beef), would lead to less demand for grain, and reductions in grain prices. It may also be a relatively cheap way of reducing emissions. It will also be a necessary part of reducing methane concentrations, which we need to do in order to reduce the greenhouse gas concentration down to the CO2 concentration (which we also need to bring down).

Reducing direct and indirect emissions from livestock could also take up a significant portion of a ‘wedge’. Some countries have very high emissions from livestock and/or land clearing. In Australia for example, there are more emissions from livestock than there are from passenger cars.

1) 5-day or 7-day/week Veganism
2) Test-tube “meat”
3) Bio-engineered non-methanogenic (word?) bacteria for livestock rumens
4) Shifting to chicken and aquaculture from mammalian livestock

There are a few wedges in there, given that supposedly as much as 20% of GHGs are attributable to livestock. Numbers 1,2, and 4 would go a long way to alleviating food shortages and the non-GHG environmental costs of keeping mammalian livestock.

Chefs and culinary schools could go a long way to helping us reduce the GHG impact of food by creating more satisfying low-GHG impact foods. I mean really satisfying…not just satisfaction that comes from wishful thinking and high mindedness. I had some really good vegan food at Cafe Gratitude in Berkeley which was different but was quite filling and tasty. Imagine if 3 star Michelin chefs got into the game.

Rethinking the meat guzzler NY times January 27, 2008 by Mark Bittman

A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for
granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and
a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil. It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by
the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand
as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher.
Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume
less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and
becomes increasingly visible.

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by
growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined
animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume
enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant
greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and
other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths
of the world’s tropical rain forests.

Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to
halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and
grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250
square miles were lost.

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it
was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more
than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as
fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected
to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations , says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.” Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow
and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the
world’s total.

Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied
to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge
to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the
earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock
production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture
Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates
nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than
transportation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago , calculated that if Americans were to reduce
meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched
from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.
Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and
Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is
responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the
average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a
100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

Grain, meat and even energy are roped together in a way that could have
dire results. More meat means a corresponding increase in demand for
feed, especially corn and soy, which some experts say will contribute to
higher prices.

This will be inconvenient for citizens of wealthier nations, but it could
have tragic consequences for those of poorer ones, especially if higher
prices for feed divert production away from food crops. The demand for
ethanol is already pushing up prices, and explains, in part, the 40
percent rise last year in the food price index calculated by the United
Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization.

Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or
malnutrition , the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds
cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies:
about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount
of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption,
according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at
Stanford University . It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States.

The environmental impact of growing so much grain for animal feed is
profound. Agriculture in the United States — much of which now serves the
demand for meat — contributes to nearly three-quarters of all
water-quality problems in the nation’s rivers and streams, according to
the Environmental Protection Agency .
Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain,
cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight
quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of
antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in
antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines
that treat people.

Those grain-fed animals, in turn, are contributing to health problems
among the world’s wealthier citizens — heart disease, some types of cancer, diabetes . The argument that meat provides useful protein makes sense, if the quantities are small. But the “you gotta eat meat” claim
collapses at American levels. Even if the amount of meat we eat weren’t
harmful, it’s way more than enough.
Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per
capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant),
an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume
something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal
government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein. (The recommended level is itself considered by many
dietary experts to be higher than it needs to be.) It’s likely that most
of us would do just fine on around 30 grams of protein a day, virtually
all of it from plant sources .

What can be done? There’s no simple answer. Better waste management, for one. Eliminating subsidies would also help; the United Nations estimates
that they account for 31 percent of global farm income. Improved farming
practices would help, too. Mark W. Rosegrant, director of environment and
production technology at the nonprofit International Food Policy Research
Institute, says, “There should be investment in livestock breeding
and management, to reduce the footprint needed to produce any given level of meat.”

Then there’s technology. Israel and Korea are among the countries
experimenting with using animal waste to generate electricity. Some of
the biggest hog operations in the United States are working, with some
success, to turn manure into fuel.

Longer term, it no longer seems lunacy to believe in the possibility of
“meat without feet” — meat produced in vitro, by growing animal
cells in a super-rich nutrient environment before being further
manipulated into burgers and steaks.

Another suggestion is a return to grazing beef, a very real alternative
as long as you accept the psychologically difficult and politically
unpopular notion of eating less of it. That’s because grazing could never
produce as many cattle as feedlots do. Still, said Michael Pollan , author of the recent book “In Defense of Food,” “In places where you can’t grow grain, fattening cows on grass is always going to make more sense.”
But pigs and chickens, which convert grain to meat far more efficiently
than beef, are increasingly the meats of choice for producers, accounting
for 70 percent of total meat production, with industrialized systems
producing half that pork and three-quarters of the chicken.

Once, these animals were raised locally (even many New Yorkers remember the pigs of Secaucus), reducing transportation costs and allowing their manure to be spread on nearby fields. Now hog production facilities that resemble prisons more than farms are hundreds of miles from major population centers, and their manure “lagoons” pollute streams
and groundwater. (In Iowa alone, hog factories and farms produce more
than 50 million tons of excrement annually.)

These problems originated here, but are no longer limited to the United
States. While the domestic demand for meat has leveled off, the
industrial production of livestock is growing more than twice as fast as
land-based methods, according to the United Nations.

Perhaps the best hope for change lies in consumers’ becoming aware of the true costs of industrial meat production. “When you look at
environmental problems in the U.S.,” says Professor Eshel,
“nearly all of them have their source in food production and in
particular meat production. And factory farming is ‘optimal’ only as long
as degrading waterways is free. If dumping this stuff becomes costly —
even if it simply carries a non-zero price tag — the entire structure of
food production will change dramatically.”

Animal welfare may not yet be a major concern, but as the horrors of
raising meat in confinement become known, more animal lovers may start to react. And would the world not be a better place were some of the grain
we use to grow meat directed instead to feed our fellow human
beings?

Real prices of beef, pork and poultry have held steady, perhaps even
decreased, for 40 years or more (in part because of grain subsidies),
though we’re beginning to see them increase now. But many experts,
including Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason
University, say they don’t believe meat prices will rise high enough to
affect demand in the United States.

“I just don’t think we can count on market prices to reduce our meat
consumption,” he said. “There may be a temporary spike in food
prices, but it will almost certainly be reversed and then some. But if
all the burden is put on eaters, that’s not a tragic state of
affairs.”

If price spikes don’t change eating habits, perhaps the combination of
deforestation, pollution, climate change , starvation, heart disease and animal cruelty will gradually encourage the simple daily act of eating more plants and fewer animals.

Mr. Rosegrant of the food policy research institute says he foresees
“a stronger public relations campaign in the reduction of meat
consumption — one like that around cigarettes — emphasizing personal health, compassion for animals, and doing good for the poor and the planet.”

It wouldn’t surprise Professor Eshel if all of this had a real impact.
“The good of people’s bodies and the good of the planet are more or
less perfectly aligned,” he said.

The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, in its detailed
2006 study of the impact of meat consumption on the planet,
“Livestock’s Long Shadow,” [http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.htm] made a similar point: “There are reasons for optimism that the conflicting demands for animal products and environmental services can be reconciled. Both demands are exerted by the same group of people … the relatively affluent, middle- to high-income class, which is no longer confined to industrialized countries. … This group of consumers is probably ready to use its growing voice to exert pressure for change and may be willing to absorb the inevitable price increases.”

In fact, Americans are already buying more environmentally friendly
products, choosing more sustainably produced meat, eggs and dairy. The
number of farmers’ markets has more than doubled in the last 10 years or
so, and it has escaped no one’s notice that the organic food market is growing fast. These all represent products that are more expensive but of higher quality.

If those trends continue, meat may become a treat rather than a routine.
It won’t be uncommon, but just as surely as the S.U.V. will yield to the
hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end.
Maybe that’s not such a big deal. “Who said people had to eat meat
three times a day?” asked Mr. Pollan.

Mark Bittman, who writes the Minimalist column in the Dining In and
Dining Out sections, is the author of “How to Cook Everything
Vegetarian,” which was published last year. He is not a
vegetarian.

I am a vegetarian since 1972.
- hal levin

Using corn to make ethanol is a good idea if you are only worried about getting the farming vote. It is certainly an effective way of supporting the price of corn. Which is fine if that’s what you want your policy to do. But there are side effects. There’s the water issue, the fertiliser production issue (the US is not self sufficicent in NPK and amonia fertilisers) and the fact that every bushell of corn that is used to make ethanol ties the price of corn more closely to the price of oil.

The question that I’d like an economist to answer (and I don’t know any so I can’t ask them directly) is: when will the marginal price of grains be set by the cost of oil rather than the value to the food company. Will it be when 30%,40%,50% or more of the US corn crop goes to make ethanol? And as a follow up how does the price of oil affect that point.

PS sugar beet can be used to make ethanol http://www.icis.com/ blogs/ biofuels/ archives/ 2007/ 11/ uks-first-sugarbeet-to-ethanol.html

Thom — The 700,000+ sugercane cutters in Brazil are not paid much, but IMO are better off there than in the sums of the big cities.

Kiashu — Your linked reference manages to be wrong more than right. Furthermore, by the studies linked in the site I previously posted, there is enough bio-energy potential to entirely meet all the world’s energy needs in 2050, projected to be about 800 exajoules.

To the extent you think there are problems with bio-energy, try posing questions here:

http://www.icis.com/blogs/biofuels/

One of the attractions of algae is that it might reach a couple of percent efficiency at storing solar energy (out of an approximate maximum of about 7.8%). This is still rather small compared to 30% for Stirling dishes.

That is the production side, but the story is bad on the use side too. Feeding hydrocarbons and alcohols into an internal combustion engine wastes something like 80% of the energy in the ethanol; only 20% ends up turning the wheels. In contrast, 70% of the energy from a Stirling dish would end up as wheel motion with only 30% wasted.

I suspect your numbers are off by quite a bit, however, The papers linked in here

http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=2815

claim 1545 exajoules after leaving enough for food, fiber and forestry needs for a world population of 9 billion. The goup in The Netherlands has studied the matter for several years, so probably have thought through all the details.

By all means use the most efficient systems possible. Dish/Stirling might well prove highly suitable in locations with enough sunlight.

Venture capital is the engine of deployment.

If you don’t like that, remember that Miscanthus is supposed to be 2-3x better than switchgrass, so consider the estimate on Wikipedia for Miscanthus: 7300 L ethanol / hectare / year. Since ethanol has a LHV of 21.2 MJ/L, this gives 155 GJ / hectare / year, or 0.5 W / m^2. Using the same 225 W / m^2 calculate the efficiency to be 0.2%.

Next question: have you actually read the IEA report at the link you cite, or just the graph? Strangely, 1545 EJ never occurs in the report. The text mentions 100-300 EJ from energy crop farming on Ag land, and possibly another 40-170 EJ from organic wastes and residues, and sums by saying “could amount to 400 EJ per year during this century.” This is also before conversion to a convenient fuel, such as ethanol or biodiesel. This is the raw energy in the plants in the field. Elsewhere it lists the “Technical Potential” of biomass as 200-400 EJ. 1545 EJ is overstating this by a factor of 3.9 to 7.7.

Moreover, there is still the usage efficiency, as I mentioned before.

Nor am I a fan of ethanol. I opine that much better efficiences can be obtained via biomass conversion to biodiesel.

Nor I am promoting 100% bio-energy. That would be silly.

However, out of the 800 exajoules of total energy usage by a population of 9 billion in 2050CE, 200–400 exajoules from bio-energy appears quite reasonable, at least at my current state of understanding.