New studies find biofuels worsen climate change
February 8th, 2008 by Jim JustBiofuels could be one of the biggest environmental cons because they actually make global warming worse by adding to the man-made emissions of carbon dioxide that they are supposed to curb, according to two new studies published in the journal Science:
- “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change“
- “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt“
Timothy Searchinger, the lead author of one of the studies and a researcher in environment and economics at Princeton University explained to the International Herald Tribune:
“Previously, there’s been an accounting error: land use change has been left out of prior analysis.”
Political policies of mandating biofuel usage and offering subsidies to biofuel producers foolishly fail to take carbon management into account.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the abstracts:
- “[Prior] analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels.* * * Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%.”
- “Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas reductions these biofuels provide by displacing fossil fuels.”