Socio-environmental impacts of biofuel production: theory

The most well-known reports on the socio-environmental impacts of biofuels tend to be negative, creating a vision of biofuels as a blind alley. However, this is a crude misrepresentation, as biofuels can be beneficial to the environment and the society, provided they are grown in the right place, at the right time and in the right way.

Judging by the research I have carried out, I conclude that negative impacts from biofuels arise due to poor governmental regulation and thus should not be blamed directly on biofuels. It also means that these impacts can often be avoided given appropriate management, but at the same time reminds us that the positive benefit from biofuels can only be limited, as it is only beneficial under certain conditions. For example, increasing the biofuel utilization to more than 10% of total consumption in Europe will likely be unsustainable, as it will probably require imports of biomass, involve direct or indirect deforestation and the building of more conversion plants, which produce emissions (Harvey, 2011). Additionally, there is simply not enough land to grow enough biofuels to meet our current energy needs, where even if all the agricultural land currently used for corn production in the US was converted to biofuel cultivation, biomass would only be able to replace 12% of the US’s gasoline consumption and only 6% of diesel requirements (Hill et al., 2006). Now I will outline the major potential problems of biofuels that arise under poor management.

Social: One of the major criticisms of biofuels is food production displacement by them, leading to global food shortages and the increase in the global food prices, which can increase poverty, especially in the future under the scenario of biofuel expansion and due to other factors such as climate change. This is discussed in the short radio podcast below (Vidall, 2008):

The worry about biofuels driving up food prices appeared after the report by the World Bank in 2008, which said that biofuels have contributed to the impoverishment of 100 million people, being the cause of 75% of the 140% total increase in the global food prices in 2002-2008, instead of the 3% as was estimated previously (Chakrabortty, 2008). The Gallagher Report (2008) and the Carbon Trust (2008) also supported this finding. Until this day, these worries persist with reports by parties such as the International Land Coalition (ILC) emphasizing the speed at which biofuels are expanding, saying that 40% of the total global land area that has been converted to agriculture in the last 10 years was for biofuel production while it has only been 25% for food crop cultivation (ILC, 2011).

However, this problem of food crops displacement can be reduced to a minimum and potentially even prevented by ensuring that only agriculturally unsuitable land, such as degraded land is used for biofuel cultivation. Other social problems, such as a potential increase in social segregation and wealth inequality have been blamed on biofuels too. This is because energy producing companies may choose to source raw materials from the larger and wealthier farms, as the supply there is considered to be more consistent and of higher quality (Laabs and Groteke, 2008). However, I would argue that this is a political problem rather than a problem caused strictly by biofuels, meaning that it can be prevented or minimized under appropriate management. For example, while this may not be that easy in reality, a law obliging companies to include the smaller-scale poorer farmers could possibly be a solution here.

Environemntal:  Another major worry about the consequences that biofuels will have concerns the environment. It is said that biofuel expansion may lead to direct and indirect deforestation (the latter being caused largely through food crops displacement as discussed in the indirect GHG emissions section earlier in the blog), which will increase the global total GHG emissions and threaten biodiversity. For example, stories of rainforest destruction in the name of oil palm plantations in countries such as Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia emerged after the global exports of palm oil had increased by 50% in 1999-2004 (Olmstead, 2006). For example, over 80% of the Brazilian Cerrado biodiversity hotspot region has been deforested, which has been largely attributed to activities such as biofuel expansion by the media (Olmstead, 2006). This has been associated with the threat posed to over 140 species of terrestrial animals, including the Bornean orang-utan and the Sumatran tiger. While the reality may not be as dramatic as these large numbers suggest, depending on how ‘species’ has been defined in these studies, this is certainly a significant problem nonetheless. I would advise to read more on such stories on Gem Williams’s blog. The fact that even some degraded lands, such as brownfield sites may have high biodiversity (UNESO, 2009), means that careful case-specific evaluation of whether the site should be converted to monoculture biofuel cultivation is needed. Nonetheless, these problems of major biodiversity loss could be avoided by ensuring that biofuel conversion does not take place in ecologically diverse regions, such as forests and such brownfield sites. The main flaw in this argument lies within the fat that ensuring this may be difficult in practice due to problems such as poor monitoring and poor law regulation, but once again, I would suggest that this is a political problem and not a one caused strictly by biofuels.

Other environmental problems arise when biofuels are grown in water-scarce regions, as a relatively large amount of water is consumed during cultivation (75% of total human water use goes into agriculture! (Wallace, 2000)), which can be read about on Megan L Smith’s blog. Another problem is potential water pollution from fertilizer runoff, which can lead to problems such as eutrophication, which is especially applicable to nitrogen-demanding crops such as corn. UNESCO (2009) modelled the target biofuel expansion in the US and concluded that nitrogen inputs into the Mississippi are likely to increase by 40% as a result. However, the possibility of eutrophication and water pollution by fertilizers can be dramatically decreased with careful management, such as ensuring the cultivation of non-nitrogen demanding crops such as switchcrass near major waterways and through optimal fertilizer application control.

Another negative aspect of biofuels is that while they decrease the emissions of many harmful gasses compared to fossil fuels, they increase the emissions of others such as NOx and acetaldehyde, the latter being 108% higher than from fossil fuels under E10 policy. The policy involves the using of blends containing 10% biofuels and 90% fossil fuel in engines (Demirbas, 2009). This is probably the main problem which is caused directly by biofuels and can not at present be reduced. However, when compared against the pollution that biofuels decrease in comparison with fossil fuels and when the other potential benefits of biofuels are taken into account, this seems like a minor problem.

To summarise, the main problems that arise from biofuels happen when natural ecosystems are converted, which impacts biodiversity, increases global GHG emissions and thus generally defeats some of the main reasons for biofuels cultivation in the first place (Phalan, 2009). This would only benefit energy security in countries that do not possess fossil fuel reserves and industry, which can use their ‘green’ activities as a marketing strategy to increase revenue. Socio-environmental problems will likely arise in this scenario of poorly-controlled biofuel expansion, because converting agricultural land to biofuel cultivation will either mean a global food shortage and food prices increase or indirect land-use changes. This means that biofuel expansion should be carefully controlled to prevent such a harmful expansion and only biofuels grown on certain marginal and degraded lands and future biofuels, such as hydrocarbon biofuels from algae, which will be discussed later on in this blog may be sustainable (Hill et al., 2006 and Phalan, 2009). Additionally, biofuel production should be carefully managed to ensure their production in water-scarce regions is minimal, the application of fertilizer is as low as possible, especially near waterways and that the poorest stakeholders are included when planning for biofuel production and during the production process. If these conditions are met, the socio-environmental impacts of biofuels will be relatively small compared to the potential positive impacts.