The Big Biofuels Blog

Lets talk trees for a bit. There is a growing realisation that diverting corn or other food sources into fuel is likely to have severe impacts on the world's ability to feed itself, or at least that the price of food is likely to rise dramatically. 

What does that leave, as renewable alternatives? Wood, grass, biomass and other forms of decomposing or waste vegetation.

I have decided that I need some structure to my general rambling over the web and I guess we're all going to get pretty bored as the mainstream decides vocally in the coming weeks and months, that Corn is only any good for the short term or smaller volumes of biofuels in the future.

I'm going to try explore some of these other biofuels areas in the coming weeks. So I'm going to start with trees, I like trees, they're big, easy to spot and some of the faster growing ones like willow have been use for as renewable energy for many years.

I recently wrote about Brazil has OK-ing the use of GM Eucalyptus trees on its territory (what happens if they out into the forests and run wild, like Rhododendrons in Snowdonia) and this lead to a response on the Australian Biofuels forum from Troy H, with a PDF of a submission to the Australian Government about oil supply from 2006 numbers about the volume of wood that Eucalypts and other fast growing antipodean trees can produce. The report says:

Wood such as E. globulus and P .radiata grown in plantations in high rainfall (>700mm) steep country currently only useful for grazing, can easily produce in the order of 15 - 30 tonnes of biomass per hectare per year from which 5,000- 10,000 litres per ha per year of alcohol should be extractable on a sustainable basis. Species such as oil mallee Eucalyptus, Casuarina and Grevillea sp have been shown by Dept CALM in WA to have sustainable wood production potential (albeit in the range 1-5 tonnes per ha per year) in the 300 - 500 mm rainfall wheat belt areas. (See press release, Appendix). Such wood production from local species has the added benefit of being sustainable in terms of reducing soil loss, being 'drought proof, lowering saline water tables and providing 'greenhouse sinks'.

 Two caveats, The Lorax (which I've referred to in the past) and letting the land recover or farming trees sustainably.

China plans to grow a staggering 13.33 million hectares of forests by 2020 for biofuels, according to a report in English on Hungarian website BBJ , quoting a Chinese official. (If there's not room for Chinese whispers there, then I don't know when there will be). Just for the record, the land area of Alabama is 135,765 square kilometers.

Sand willows are slowing the Gobi Desert's spread in Mongolia, according to Greening The Desert blog. The trees will be used to generate electricity at power plants in the region

According to Greening the Desert

In early 2007, the first desert biomass thermal power plant was constructed near to an existing methanol chemical plant, two kilometres away. The power plant uses the waste water from the methanol plant, and the biomass residue can be further processed into potassium fertilizer. The power plant is slated to begin operation early next year and will generate some 180–210 million kWh of electricity annually.

It will be interesting to see if the willows are sustainable, whether they can extract enough water to grow for several cycles of harvesting and whether they can help to stabilise the soil in the longer term.

Japan's government is encouraging people to dispose of their disposable chopsticks carefully, sot that they can be collected and used as biofuel, according to Tree Hugger.com. which says.

Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is looking to introduce recycling bins to begin collection the country’s hearty supply of disposable chopsticks. It appears, that on average, each of that nations 127 million souls discards 200 sets annually.

Whatever happened to wipe-clean hardwood chopsticks that were handed down from father to son, mother to daughter for generations? Would the Japanese government be better popularising socks so that people had some where to stash their reusable chopsticks when they're not in use?

Trees could be the biofuel of the future, according to this analysts report from Jeffries & Company which examines clean technology and industrial biotech following the BIO's Industrial Biotechnology conference in the US recently.

Key quotes for me are

Forestry

Unlike prior conferences, this conference was marked by a significant presence of companies speaking directly to the potential to use forests, rather than dedicated energy crops, as cellulosic feedstocks.

Cellulosic biofuels

Several speakers highlighted the difficulty involved in cellulosic ethanol enzyme cocktails (more than 200 different enzymes involved in reducing biomass);

We know that route is tricky, and the paper notes:

Several new technologies were discussed, included a combination pyrolysis/fermentation process that feeds the orgnanisms syngas (demo plant starts up April 2009) and one that used a catalytic process to convert C5 and C6 sugars into hydrocarbons, including aromatics, rather than ethanol.

Download file

Cheers Doris.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono on Tuesday defended Indonesia's drive to expand oil palm plantations, despite a demand by environmentalists for a moratorium on deforestation.

Speaking in his keynote address at the opening of the sixth annual meeting of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Nusa Dua, Bali, Apriyantono said any moratorium, including that recently called for by Greenpeace, was beyond the control of the Indonesian government. 

It must be that there are other forces at work. Surely, it would be more environmentally sensible to intensify production in existing plantations.

If you've been following the debate on energy intensity on the Big Biofuels Blog, mostly buried in the comments, (and perhaps more relevantly here) then you'll know that I've been interested in the cradle to grave carbon dioxide position of palm oil. I'm indebted to Almuth on biofuel watch, who points me to this page .

Here's the key Passage

Deforestation also releases amounts of carbon which is held by the vegetation, ie above soil. Indonesia's old growth forests are estimated to hold around 306 tonnes of carbon per hectare.5 86% of that carbon are lost during 'selective logging', which tends to be followed by land clearance for plantations or agriculture. A mature oil palm plantation only holds less carbon than logged forest, around 63 tonnes per hectare, but those plantations have an average life-time of only 25 years.

As Almuth says in answer to a question about how much carbon dioxide can be attributed to biodiesel from  palm oil...

If you are looking for precise information as to how much of this is related to producing palm oil from biodiesel - no such information is available.  It would require detailed auditing but the palm oil supply chain is not transparent and not traceable. Apart from the very partial reporting requirements in the UK, there are no requirements on biodiesel producers or suppliers to disclose the origin of their feedstock (although a lot of them are very open about using palm oil for biodiesel). In any case, as you will be aware, there are serious question marks over the relevance of putting too much reliance on direct impacts.

The gist is that...
Researchers at the Ghent, Belgium-based Flanders Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) have developed transgenic poplars deficient in the enzyme cinnamoyl-CoA reductase. This reduces the lignin content making them more suitable for bioethanol production, although so far their benefits have only been demonstrated in the lab.

A final decision from the Dutch government is due in spring 2009.

It is incredibly short-sighted to not include as a renewable energy resource the millions of acres of dead and dying trees that, with one spark, could go up in wildfires, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gases.