If biofuels are the answer, we are asking the wrong question
Many agricultural crops can be turned into fuels. Diesel substitutes can be made from the oil in seeds. The sugars in cereals and tubers can be fermented into ethanol.
At first examination, biofuels look as though they might significantly reduce carbon emissions. An agricultural crop takes carbon from the air through the photosynthesis process. When the harvest is processed, and the output used as a fuel, the carbon returns to the atmosphere. Proponents sometimes said that agricultural crops make ‘carbon-neutral’ fuels.
Over the last two years, this simple optimism has been eroded. Two further blows have fallen in recent weeks:
- Nobel winner Paul Crutzen and his team showed that we may have been underestimating greenhouse gas emissions from using fertiliser. The work suggested that emissions of nitrous oxide may be far higher than previously thought.
- Richard Doornbusch, who is attached the OECD, wrote a paper which said: ‘The conclusion must be that the potential of the current technologies of choice – ethanol and biodiesel – to deliver a major contribution to the energy demands of the transport sector without compromising food prices and the environment is very limited.’
The balance of evidence is that biofuels produced from crops grown in temperate climates save very small amounts of emissions. Moreover, the land used for biofuel crops could be used for food or biomass for energy. In tropical lands, biofuel crops may save carbon emissions. But the energy policies of richer countries may be incentivising tropical farmers to cut down forest to grow fuel crops. The effect of this almost certainly outweighs any emissions reductions.
Despite the increasingly prevalent view that biofuels are little or no improvement on fossil fuels, both the EU and the US are obliging retailers to increase the percentage of motor fuels derived from agricultural sources. This is a mistake.
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The Advertising Standards Authority is struggling to hold the line on the advertising of environmental benefits. In June, the Authority put out a series of instructions trying to impose clearer conditions on advertisers. But it continues to have to adjudicate on a series of difficult decisions. Last week saw a wind power developer taken to task for over-estimating the carbon savings from turbines. The Authority had to decide which type of power station would produce less power as a result of a new wind farm – coal or gas. It took advice from the National Grid and proceeded to tick npower off, even though the power company was following rules previously set down by the ASA itself.
In at least one other country, the advertising regulator has thrown in the towel and told some advertisers simply to stop advertising green claims. Reuters reports that Norway’s Consumer Ombudsman has told car advertisers that ‘We ask that…phrases such as “environmentally friendly”, “green”, “clean”, “environmental car”, “natural” or similar descriptions not be used in marketing cars.’
Many companies selling to UK families have a strong sense that consumer demands are shifting rapidly. M&S recently talked to Carbon Commentary about its perceptions of changes in attitudes and behaviour. This article compares its results with those of a survey by the Henley Centre in summer 2007.
During the last year or so, the percentage of 'green zealots' in M&S research has risen from 3-4% to nearer 8%. Henley also sees a figure of 8% for the two greenest groups 'principled pioneers' and 'vocal activists'. A further 31% (Henley Centre) or 30-35% (M&S) are actively concerned and want to adjust their behaviour. There has also been a big growth in this group in the last year.
Some scientists think that the world's halting attempts to reduce carbon emissions are bound to fail. So they have proposed various schemes for counteracting the global warming impact of fossil fuels. The Gaia scientist James Lovelock proposed an unusual and untested idea in a recent paper. He suggested that we install millions of pipes to bring nutrient-rich water to the surface to feed carbon sequestering organisms. Other scientists are working on schemes as diverse as mirrors that reflect part of the sun's energy, increased aerosol pollution to stop sunlight getting to the earth, and improving plankton growth by adding iron to the oceans.
All these schemes are 'offsets'; they seek to counter-balance the impact of human activities with schemes to reduce CO2 elsewhere. The technology optimists believe that one or more of these techniques can completely counteract human effects. The cost often seems very reasonable – in the billions rather than the trillions – and the technological challenges seem not insuperable. The pessimists say these schemes will have huge unintended effects, possibly worse than climate change itself, and that toying with 'geo-engineering' projects, as they are called, simply delays the day that the world starts to realise it must cut fossil fuel use. Geo-engineering deals with the symptoms, not the causes, of global warming. And none of the proposed schemes deal with the adverse effects of higher CO2 concentrations, such as increased ocean acidity.
New UK housing has insulation standards that do not come close to matching the best northern European levels. Individual homeowners and ethical investors have built single 'eco-homes' but a small new development in Bladon, Oxfordshire is among the first to be speculatively built by a mainstream housebuilder.
The new houses are not 'zero-carbon' and do not use the Passiv Haus technologies pioneered for low-emissions housing in Germany. But they are a substantial improvement on most mass-produced homes. Will they make the builder more money? No, says the company, but the experience it has gained will enable it to build eco-homes at a more competitive price in the future. These nine houses each cost over £40,000 more than their draughty Persimmon equivalents. The builder expects the price premium to be slightly less.
Both the Conservative and Lib Dem parties have produced position papers on climate change in the last few weeks. The Conservative document is over 500 pages long but contains very few specific proposals. To be harsh, it is little more than a prolonged agonising over whether the climate change problem can be addressed using conventional free-market mechanisms. The Lib Dem paper is a tenth of the length but does contain the outlines of a coherent set of policies.
This article analyses the Lib Dem proposals. It shows that the Lib Dems are prepared to use the price mechanism to choke off increasing demand for aviation. The party also contemplates extending the Emissions Trading Scheme beyond the 50% of the economy currently covered. On the other hand, it makes completely clear that it has no intention of raising the prices of energy and fuels to domestic consumers.
The rivalry between Tesco and Wal-Mart is well known. Tesco's imminent entry to the US heartland of the world's largest retailer may have created an extra edge to the battle. And, unsurprisingly, the two giants are squaring up over carbon issues as well as over such things as employee conditions and global sourcing policies.
Tesco said earlier this year that it would eventually put carbon labels on all its 70,000 food lines. It has been trying to find way of doing this using Life Cycle Analysis, putting a greenhouse gas cost on every element of a product's move from farm to plate. This was always a hugely over-ambitious project and recent weeks have seen the company drift back from its early optimism. Now Wal-Mart has come up with a similarly impossible dream – to use the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) to assess and manage the energy footprint of its suppliers. These big retailers know that they have to be seen to be doing something about greenhouse gases, so they have both launched incomplete schemes that will achieve little.
British Gas has launched a consumer gas and electricity tariff that will cost 10% more than its standard rates but which offers better green credentials than any other consumer utility tariff in the UK market.
The product has the following important features:
In early September, researchers from the Tyndall Centre in the UK put out a report that said that incorporation of the airline industry into the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will not provide significant incentive to cut emissions. The big polluters today are paying about €20 per tonne for their emissions. When aviation joins the scheme in 2012, this price would add about €5 for a flight to Barcelona. Tyndall argues that the EU and national governments cannot escape the conclusion that the ETS is not enough and that aviation must be constrained by other fiscal or legislative measures as well as by inclusion in the carbon tax net.
Tyndall has acquired an excellent reputation for its informed and passionate stance on aviation. Broadly speaking, its view has been that continued expansion of aviation is incompatible with the tight emissions targets that the EU and other bodies have set for the years to mid-century. It has consistently said that by 2050 unconstrained air travel will be using up most of the total carbon emissions that the world can allow itself. Aviation expansion will drown out emissions reductions in other areas.
The evidence is not quite clear enough that organic food is better for the atmosphere.
The debate on whether organic agriculture reduces greenhouse gas emissions is a lively and sometimes acrimonious affair. The calculations are complex, the results depend on myriad factors that are difficult to quantify, and much research remains to be done. Those who give unequivocal answers to the question 'is organic better?' may not be recognising the extraordinary uncertainty that still surrounds many aspects of agriculture. Rather than produce a simple answer, this note offers a statement of the competing cases.
E.ON UK has recently announced a plan to build a second power station using 100% energy crops as fuel. The first investment – a £90m power plant at Lockerbie in Scotland – will open within the next few months. The second plant, still only in the planning stage, will be in Sheffield on the site of a previous generating station. Both power plants will use wood from forestry and specially planted willow but Sheffield will also burn waste wood from other sources, such as industrial pallets. These are the first two large-scale plants in the UK if we exclude the ill-fated Arbre plant of several years ago. (Arbre was an extremely advanced wood chip gasification plant built in Yorkshire. It was never fully commissioned.)
HSBC's July 2007 survey entitled the Climate Confidence Index contained many surprising results. Carried out in nine major countries around the world, it showed that concern about climate change is far higher in developing countries than in the UK or the USA. As importantly, the inhabitants in these countries also think that the world is more likely to find ways to avert climate change problems.
Photo: the glacier at Ilulassit in Western Greenland
Drawing: the Indian treadle pump backed by Climate Care