With both the worldwide demand for energy and concerns about global warming increasing, many people have turned to biofuels as an alternative method of fuel for transportation. While biofuels are a good alternative to fossil fuels, there are many risks to the environment and vulnerable groups of people if the demand for biofuels leads to unsustainable practices. In the future, biofuel policy should consider net CO2 increase as a result of deforestation and increased food prices.
The majority of the biofuels in the US are made from corn, but they can also be made from other food crops like palm oil, soybean and sugarcane. The problem with this new industry that it has created a demand for more land to produce enough corn for both biofuels and food. This leads to deforestation, or land use change, as result of demand for this new product. The creation of biofuels puts pressure on farmers to produce more of these products. For example, in Brazil the demand for ethanol from sugarcane caused sugarcane producers to expand their growing operations into areas that were previously used for grazing cattle. The cattle grazers also had to shift where they were grazing cattle, leading to more deforestation.
The switch from animal feed crops like soybeans to corn won’t lead to much deforestation in the US. However, this change may lead to indirect land use change in order to fill both the demand for biofuel and the demand for food. In this case, the US may start importing soy or other displaced feed crops. Increasing the demand for soybeans in other countries may increase the value of land where there are currently forests, wetlands or other important ecosystems.
One reason that biofuels have gained in popularity is a new push to be eco-friendly. However, the increase in land use change should be a concern for consumers who are looking for an environmentally conscious product. According to the World Resource Institute, land use change contributes up to 12.2 percent of CO2 emissions. Pressure on land usage as a result of increased demand for biofuels could increase the overall amount of CO2 attributed to land use change.
Land use change is not the only concern with increasing the prevalence of biofuels in the energy system. Since biofuels are extracted from food crops, researchers expect that an increased demand for biofuels will have a negative effect on food prices as well. Since corn is a major component of animal feed it is likely that as demand for biofuels increases, the price of corn will rise. Without intervention from the government, the price of meat may also increase. Price increases may not be significant for most households, but for lower income families that spend a greater percentage of their budget on food, even small increases can have an impact on their purchasing power.
Some anti-hunger advocates believe that using food for fuel when there are still hungry people in this country (and in the world) is immoral. While this is an extreme point of view, it is critical that we are not trying to solve one problem with a solution that exacerbates another. There are many ways that biofuels can be more environmentally and socially responsible. Biofuels can be re-used in other parts of the agricultural system. For example, one byproduct of making biofuels is glycerin, which can be used as animal feed. This allows the use of biofuels to continue and partially reduces the pressure on land use change. Having a secondary market for the byproducts should also reduce the potential impact on food prices.
Secondly, alternative sources of biofuels can reduce the environmental impact. Biofuels can be extracted from agricultural waste, like stems, leaves and husks of plants — all which are already being produced by the current system. These parts of the plant are not being used for food, so extracting biofuels from them would have less of an impact on food prices. The one downside to this is that it takes a more intensive process to extract fuel from these substances, but with more research, alternative biofuels could play a bigger role in the biofuel industry.
Biofuels are a step towards greener energy, but they aren’t perfect. It is important that the current method of biofuel production does not prevent other more environmentally aware methods from being developed. Biofuels may be the answer to becoming coal and fossil fuel free, but that goal is not worth the loss of forests and an increase in world hunger. Paying attention to how biofuels are produced should be a concern until the externalities are fully understood.
Contact Asha Brundage-Moore at ashab1 ‘at’ stanford.edu.