OK, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to grow agricultural crops in order to be able to fuel my car. I realise that using agricultural land to grow biofuel does compete with other crops that feed man and beast. Let's call it ILUC (indirect land use change) - and make it very complicated.
What I don't understand is why biofuel crops (oilseed, oil palm, sugarcane and corn/wheat) are the only crops that are unwanted. Cotton you say is OK, because of course we need clothes, but hey we can wear clothes made from woodfibres/viscose or made from crude oil we pump out of the ground aka nylon. No need to wear these agriculturally grown fibres? When we wash our hands or hair in the bath, did anyone ever cry ILUC? As well as for biodiesel the oil crops are also the only feedstock for production of a whole range of soaps, shampoos and technical products that we like to use. We could also use products derived from mineral oil, but we prefer the natural products.
I think it is amazing how the green troops have managed to set the agenda selectively. The reality is that no matter what we do when we try to manage nature, we will get negative side effects.
Let's take a look at the next big thing. Everybody agrees that it would be just wonderful if we could "just" make biofuel from cellulosis and agricultural waste. Has anybody tried to calculate how much wood waste would be necessary to "feed the beast"? Wikipedia suggests that close to 20% of US land (similar to the area used to grow crops) would be needed to cover US transportation fuels from ethanol from switchgrass - quite significant numbers - that will definitely have a significant ILUC effect.
What will happen to the ecosystem and the nutrient content of the soil if much more of the biomass is removed from the land in order to be processed/turned into biofuel? Well - the soil is going to be deprived of organic material, which constitutes an important part of the slow release system for nutrients and water of the soil - also known as humus. Depriving the soil of the organic material will be slowly spoiling the carrying capacity of the soil.
Using wood and forest by-products has similar problems. Enormous quantities are needed, there will be competition with other uses of forest products, from firewood, over cellulosis to fibreboards and construction wood. And the forest is potential agricultural land and vise versa - so also an ILUC effect here. I guess our politicians are in for a tough job to find the "good" solution to our energy and transport fuel problems. Unfortunately they are not going to get any help from the green NGOs.
Update: A German view on the same issue comes to largely the same conclusion.
Showing posts with label lobby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lobby. Show all posts
Monday, October 22, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Why Bother with Renewable Energy?
If you ask an economist if renewable energy is good? He will answer you that it depends on the cost of renewable energy and the alternatives. Ever since the first oil crisis in 1973 we have seen a surge in interest for renewable energy. At first it was mainly something that occupied the idealists but gradually as the production costs came down, technologies matured, politicians put in place policies to make renewable energy more competitive and conventional energy prices went up - it gradually dawned on the business people and other rational decision makers that money could be made working with renewable energy.
In Denmark the first large windmill was put up by the socialist school and sect, Tvind in the 1970'ies as an ideological project and a land mark. Later wind mills developed into a political show case with favourable rates for production and subsidies for erection of mills, from this the Denmark developed several global wind mill champions as Vestas, Bonus (bought by Siemens Wind Power in 2004) and NEG Micon (merged with Vestas in 2004), Nordex and Nordtank (merged 1997 with Micon). In 2008 wind mills accounted for 24% of electricity generation capacity in Denmark.
Politicians are interested in renewable energy for several reasons. The first reason and the thing that really chocked the western world during the first oil crisis is that conventional energy can be very expensive. When oil prices go up the price of energy goes up and expensive foreign currency has to be used to import oil and energy. At least this is the case for most countries. High oil prices lead to a negative trade balance and in the old days (1970-1980'ies) it would also lead to high inflation.
Secondly energy is a very strategic thing, as you can't run a modern society without energy in different forms. If you cannot trust our friends in OPEC or in Russia to actually deliver the goods when you need them, then you will have to develop an alternative, although importing energy might otherwise seem quite favourable from a strictly economic point of view.
Thirdly politicians have come to look more closely at what economists call externalities connected with conventional energy. The main externality with fossil fuel is the emission of carbon dioxide or green house gasses (GHG), which is under severe suspect of being the cause of global warming. Without going into the scientific debate, it is sufficient in this context to realise that the concern since the Kyoto agreement in 1997, where the first countries committed themselves to reduce GHG emissions it has become clear that the global climate is getting warmer - quite fast and consequences can be scary - as the recent report in National Geographic of melting of 97% of Greenland's ice in July 2012 showed.
So facing these aspects politicians have tried their best to devise incentive systems in order to promote alternatives to the imported conventional energy. In some cases politicians have become derailed by lobbyists, so they have mixed up things, which I'm sure we will revisit in a later post.
In the current state of world economic crisis many countries have decided to down play their economic support for renewable energies. Understandably governments think they cannot afford the luxury to pay for nice green window dressing when greater and more urgent issues are at the stake.
In Denmark the first large windmill was put up by the socialist school and sect, Tvind in the 1970'ies as an ideological project and a land mark. Later wind mills developed into a political show case with favourable rates for production and subsidies for erection of mills, from this the Denmark developed several global wind mill champions as Vestas, Bonus (bought by Siemens Wind Power in 2004) and NEG Micon (merged with Vestas in 2004), Nordex and Nordtank (merged 1997 with Micon). In 2008 wind mills accounted for 24% of electricity generation capacity in Denmark.
Politicians are interested in renewable energy for several reasons. The first reason and the thing that really chocked the western world during the first oil crisis is that conventional energy can be very expensive. When oil prices go up the price of energy goes up and expensive foreign currency has to be used to import oil and energy. At least this is the case for most countries. High oil prices lead to a negative trade balance and in the old days (1970-1980'ies) it would also lead to high inflation.
Secondly energy is a very strategic thing, as you can't run a modern society without energy in different forms. If you cannot trust our friends in OPEC or in Russia to actually deliver the goods when you need them, then you will have to develop an alternative, although importing energy might otherwise seem quite favourable from a strictly economic point of view.
Thirdly politicians have come to look more closely at what economists call externalities connected with conventional energy. The main externality with fossil fuel is the emission of carbon dioxide or green house gasses (GHG), which is under severe suspect of being the cause of global warming. Without going into the scientific debate, it is sufficient in this context to realise that the concern since the Kyoto agreement in 1997, where the first countries committed themselves to reduce GHG emissions it has become clear that the global climate is getting warmer - quite fast and consequences can be scary - as the recent report in National Geographic of melting of 97% of Greenland's ice in July 2012 showed.
So facing these aspects politicians have tried their best to devise incentive systems in order to promote alternatives to the imported conventional energy. In some cases politicians have become derailed by lobbyists, so they have mixed up things, which I'm sure we will revisit in a later post.
In the current state of world economic crisis many countries have decided to down play their economic support for renewable energies. Understandably governments think they cannot afford the luxury to pay for nice green window dressing when greater and more urgent issues are at the stake.
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