‘Biofuels Worse than Gasoline’ Headline Delivers Another Damaging Blow to Biofuels

It’s been a long week for defenders of biofuels. On April 20, Nature Climate Change published research from the University of Nebraska, "Biofuels from crop residue can reduce soil carbon and increase CO2 emissions". At its core, this is a mathematical exercise about bad farming practices, not one based in reality. The researchers modeled the amount of carbon lost to the atmosphere when the stover - the stalks, leaves and cobs of corn are removed from the field. Stover is one of the feedstocks for advanced cellulosics, with the advantage being that there is a lot of it in the Corn Belt. Dr. Liska’s findings differ from the scientific consensus that advanced cellulosics are better than gasoline from a climate perspective. Why? The study assumes that farmers remove up to 75 percent of the stover in the Corn Belt, and concludes that these removal rates can result in 7 percent more greenhouse gas emissions for advanced cellulosics as compared to gasoline emissions. High levels of stover removal mean higher losses of soil organic carbon (SOC) because of the role of stover in regulating the complicated carbon cycle of soil. However, farmers generally remove 10 to 25 percent of stover for advanced cellulosic operations. The study also does not include the co-product credit for the burning of lignin, the woody portion of stover that is unusable for biofuels but can be used to power biofuels production operations, making them less reliant on natural gas or coal. Almost every advanced cellulosic plant uses lignin to power the plant. Additional issues pop up in the study. The model was run using data from 36 field sites of cereal crops, including Europe, Africa, and Asia -- areas decidedly outside the Corn Belt and North America. The study also fails to consider the value of any conservation management practices, which now are tied to crop subsidies in the 2014 Farm Bill. Unfortunately, all of these rather critical details get lost by the general news media.

The news headlines just wrote themselves – biofuels worse than gasoline. The Washington Post picked up an AP piece on Monday, in “Federally funded study says biofuels not better than gasoline in short run”. Who else picked up the story? Here is the short list: The Washington Post, TIME, National Geographic, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post. What major news outlets covered the pro-biofuels side? The Des Moines Register. Iowa happens to be the largest corn producing state in America, so it comes as no surprise that an Iowa news outlet took an opportunity to discuss an alternate view point. Within the world of renewable fuels, there was a lot of chatter, but most of this news doesn’t make it to a wider audience. Unfortunately, the headline cast another damaging blow to biofuels – the only viable petroleum replacement developed so far.

Biofuels has a bad public image – and has had for a long time. The industry and advocates are trying to counter this image, with its new Fuels America ad campaign. What’s regrettable, but not surprising about Fuels America, is that no one from outside the ‘usual suspects’ is involved. The Renewable Fuel Standard has indeed made strange bedfellows, and no one without a horse in this race wants to touch the issue. Even strong supporters of advanced cellulosics in Congress have remained publicly mute on the topic. However, it bears repeating: those who seek to reject biofuels as a viable alternative leave us with the status quo – petroleum. Biofuels needs fresh perspectives and new advocates, those outside ‘the usual suspects’. It needs people who are concerned about our use of petroleum, a product that is environmentally destructive and produces toxic emissions dangerous to human health when it is burned. There are people who believe these things, but because of the enormously successful misleading campaign against biofuels, they might not be convinced that biofuels is part of the solution to any of these problems. It needs to be seen as a solution again. Biorefineries producing biofuels and biobased products from a broad variety of feedstocks have enormous potential. It is time to get the facts straight and look at the role sustainably produced biofuels and biobased products can and must play as this country and nations around the world transition to a sustainable, low-carbon energy economy.