Posted by MReed in 
Oil prices are through the roof and the planet is getting hotter. We are facing an energy crisis and many truckers, and other professional drivers, have been forced to stay parked until the prices come down.
With no relief in sight a lot of “green” advocates are jumping on the biodiesel bandwagon. After all it’s a cheaper, cleaner burning fuel and most diesel engines need little or no modifications to start using it*. However, recent studies suggest that biodiesel might not be the “green” solution many are hoping for.
Biodiesel is heralded as an alternative, cleaner burning cousin to diesel. It’s made through the processing of various forms of vegetable oil. It is then blended with conventional diesel or used alone. Biodiesel can be manufactured using waste vegetable oils, like those thrown out by fast-food restaurants. However, a rising demand has lead to the cultivation of farmland for the sole purpose of growing crops for the manufacture of biodiesel fuel.
Approved and toted as a “clean air” fuel, even a 20% biodiesel mix creates a significant reduction in CO2 emissions. The way biodiesel burns is not a point of concern. The way that it is currently being produced, may raise an environmentalist eyebrow or two.
The well respected Science magazine released two reports this year calling attention to the destruction of essential rain forest and other vital natural habitats and eco-systems due to the increased demand for palm, soy and other vegetable oils for bio-diesel production. (Report 1) (Report 2)
These studies warn that biodiesel may not be as green as it seems here’s why:
More Green House Gases
According to the studies the process of clearing grasslands, rain forests, and other land for farming actually releases more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than would be saved by the fuel that the land produces. Not to mention the natural CO2 absorption that is stopped when this dense growth is destroyed. Considering farm land absorbs less CO2 and produces less oxygen than the rain forest or other growth it replaces, the farming and production of oils for bio-fuel arguably does more to harm the environment than to help it.
Of course this “clearing” of farmland for bio-fuels also lends to other problems:
Killing Endangered Species
In Borneo, by 2020 most of the rain forest will be gone. It is home to thousands of unique species of insect and animals, including the endangered Sumatra and Borneo Orangutan, the Sumatra Tiger, Asian Elephant and Sumatran Rhinoceros. In fact the conditions are so dire in Indonesia and Borneo it is estimated that if we continue at the current rate of destruction, the Orangutan will be extinct in 10 years. (www.redape.org)
Creating Dead Zones In the Gulf of Mexico
A “Dead Zone” is an oxygen starved patch in the ocean. These “Dead Zones” occur all around the world and are caused by decomposing algae which depletes the oxygen and suffocates marine life. According to the June edition of National Geographic, the main cause of the rise in “Dead Zones” in the Gulf of Mexico is runoff of fertilizer that comes down the Mississippi. With farmers growing more corn for bio-fuels, more fertilizer is being used resulting in the death of marine life.
The World Food Crisis
The world is already experiencing a global food shortage. The price of wheat has doubled in the last year, and palm, soy, and other food prices are rising across the board. If more crops are grown for fuel less will be grown for food. Tearing down the rain forest for farmland is bad enough, millions of starving people is even worse.
By the end of this year, Europe wants all diesel fuel to contain 5% biodiesel. By 2012 20% of all diesel fuel must be biodiesel. The only way the world’s farmers can keep up with rising demands is to clear more land for farming.
The allure of cheaper, cleaner burning fuels can cause many uninformed “greenies” to applaud the advantages of biodiesel fuel; however there is one buzzword that must be remembered in any conversation about new energy: sustainability.
The facts are clear. We cannot continue to abuse the ecosystem to support our accustomed lifestyle. Fortunately, world leadership is starting to take notice, and people are finally starting to look for new sustainable energy answers. Unfortunately, however, bio-diesel may not be the perfect solution everyone was hoping for.
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(*Note: bio-diesel is a solvent and will eat your rubber fuel lines and seals, older vehicles are more susceptible to this possibility. Make sure your fuel lines are non-rubber if you plan to use biodiesel.)
This is just another hair-brained idea from the left. Leave things alone, quit over regulating, and let the freemarket work.
Bio-fuels have been a bad idea from the beginning, for all the reasons this article describes. But notice how the reality of those reasons seem to come from the left!
Reality has a liberal bias.
- a “not so hair-brained” lefty
Screw the enviroment. Screw the monkies. I just don’t want to keep financing hate filled Islam with our oil money!
JustaTrucker,
The “freemarket” got us into this mess, why do you assume it will be our salvation?
Sheesh.
PS: it’s HARE-brained. You know, those wacky folks who were responsible for every innovation in human history.
Has it ever occurred to anyone to go grab/harvest that algae for biomass?
Or that biofuels from algae/bacteria are carbon negative and don’t require clear cutting of biomass? Just a thought.
This doesn’t prove that bio fuel is bad, it just brings up the point that we are still exhausting our natural resources at a stupid rate….something we’ve been doing forever. Why not focus on driving down demand by riding a bike or living closer to work.
Using our food for biodiesel is definitely not the best of ideas, but using waste vegetable oils or waste fats (such as chicken fat) is a viable and practical option. It of course can’t produce enough biodiesel for everyone, but it’s going to take a hybrid of energy sources to change our current situation.
Of course its not, thats why groceries have tripled in price. I am personally TIRED of it!
JT
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
Biofuels are a good idea. It is just the current popular method of production that sucks.
Try looking at harvesting biodiesel from algae (which does not require farm and to grow) instead of corn or other food sources.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/15-algae-biofuels-energy.php
The article may have a bias and adds to the confusion that is out there. Biodiesel has been used on farms for years and Biofuels have been used since the beginning of the car and diesel engines. Some of the first engines used peanut oil as a fuel. That aside below are my comments in response to the author:
1. Waste vegetable oil does not contribute to the destruction of the rainforest or additional greenhouse gases. Since it is recycling it does not add stress to the environment.
2. Recycling waste vegetable oil does not contribute to the global food shortage.
3. Biodiesel blends B20 and B35 should work on any vehicle regardless of age. Since it is a cleaner fuel than regular diesel it is better for engine wear. These blends are recommended in colder winter climates anyway.
4. Older vehicles made prior 1993 should not run B100 fuel unless the seals are replaced with Vitron or other non rubber components.
5. Biofuels represent a wide range of sources other than corn and soy. It also includes algae and waste byproducts which do not have impact on the environment.
[...] recent studies suggest that biodiesel might not be the “green” solution many are hoping for.read more | digg [...]
I think the writer of this article has Bio-diesel mixed up with ethanol. Most of the Bio-diesel produced and used today is made from used or waste vegetable oil, not pure. Where as ethanol is being widely used in countries such as Brazil to fuel fleets of vehicles. Brazil happens to be one of the only countries growing crops (sugar cane) specifically for the use of ethanol. The author here also is blaming bio-fuels for the destruction of the rain forest, this is completely false, if people stopped using bio-fuels the rain forest is still going to be destroyed for the all the reasons it is today. Lumber and livestock fields are the number one devastators of the rain forest. This articles is skewed and is either poorly researched or deliberately misrepresenting facts.
not a very good article - the whole point and culture of biodiesel is to reuse and recycle - not create from new resources (the rainforest? c’mon!)
biodiesel is strongest at the community level right now - and i predict that trend will persist for quite some time.
the thought of mass producing biodiesel (with respect to cellular ethanol) is quite absurd.
funny - this article is missing a couple things - viable facts and solid research (along with a big ad at the bottom promoting big oil companies…)
don’t believe the hype people!
Whoever wrote that biodiesel is a cleaner, cleaner burning fuel is full of it. Why don’t you change your fuel filter after running 20% biodiesel for about a week, and we’ll see how clean it is.
Actually, biodiesel smokes more, has to burn much hotter, is horrible on newer diesel engines, and smells like your car is cooking french fries. But oh - it’s CLEANER! What a croc - it’s actually a much dirtier fuel. But it doesn’t take as much oil to make…. And as far as being a good fuel for the winter time - I’ll let you all decide that after trying to start your vehicle with biodiesel after the engine becomes ~50 degrees.
And no, I’m not talking about what I read on some website - I drive a diesel truck and recently quit my job at ford being a diesel mechanic. This is how it actually is.
I think this is so upsetting because people who use/used biofuels did so because they wanted to stop being ‘part of the problem.’ Now that there are new reports showing that a lot of these (farmed) biofuels are creating more poverty, and aren’t helping the planet….well, that makes a lot of us feel pretty horrible. This problem isn’t solved yet, but great minds are working on it, and hopefully in a few years, they’ll have found a “real world” way for us to keep our cars, be more gentle to the planet, and not loose our shirts in the process.
To Mitchell, who commented right above me, the problem you seem to have with B20 is the fact that your truck has been running dirty fuel prior to running biodiesel. As it is a cleaner fuel, and by its nature a solvent, it will remove the impurities left behind by petrodiesel, and consequently clog your fuel filter.
As for winter time fuel, Canola biodiesel is good to 9 degrees fahrenheit, and you can mix biodiesel with regular diesel or kerosene to allow anti-gel additives to work with it.
Your claim about newer diesels not running well with biodiesel is nothing more than an outrageous claim, since you did not supply any evidence, and thousands of diesel owners running B100 in their new vehicles would say otherwise.
* * *
The article addresses many points with biodiesel: (1) Endangering species. Okay, I assume he’s talking about palm oil biodiesel. That’s not even a prevalant source for bio, as it gels at very high temperatures (probably only works in the summer for most places). Much more of the palm oil problem is due to the food industry. Biodiesel makers are not a large purchaser of palm oil. Restaurants are.
(2) Dead zones- again, just a small fraction of biodiesel is being grown in tropical areas. The people growing palm there have no inhibitions about what they do to their land. They were going to grow something there, they just saw biodiesel through palm as the highest profit crop. These people are the minority, and would be destroying their land anyway (be it through raising palm for cooking oil, growing other plants, drilling for oil, etc)
(3) Contributing to the food crisis- This is a major fallacy that people use as an argument. Biodiesel does NOT compete for food. In North America, most biodiesel is produced from soybeans. In Europe, it is canola/rapeseed. Both of these crops are food, but the oil part of them is usually not used. From this perspective, biodiesel is a more efficient use of crops that would otherwise be going to waste. Soybeans are used for their protein, and canola/rapeseed is a rotational crop. Biodiesel does not use the entire plant. The increase in the price of food people are seeing is unfortunately coincidental to the increase in biodiesel and ethanol production. In fact, the largest factor in the increase in food prices is the increase in the price of oil. Farmers need oil to grow crops, simply put. The cost we pay is just a transfer of the cost they pay for diesel. The price of biodiesel has gone up, so if it were the thing causing food prices to go up, wouldn’t that mean its price would stay down?
On any level, saying that biofuels are bad for the world is primarily and overtly a harmful example of what the media does to sell stories. What is commonly overlooked is the alternative to biodiesel and ethanol, which is drilling crude oil out of commonly pristine habitats, poisoning the land for miles, and extracting a dirty-burning and dirtily-processed fuel that cannot be made again once we run out. Biodiesel supports the local economy, is 100% renewable, and when done responsibly (as it is in most cases) promotes a better environment.
To throw in a personal observation, out of the 40 or so biodiesel stations in my area, I cannot name one that uses palm oil. If they do, it is certainly not rainforest-destroying, and definitely can only be sold in the summer months in the Pacific Northwest. Much of the fuel sold here is grown by wheat farmers in our state who use canola as a rotational crop. That is both sustainable and local.
Implementing a good idea poorly does not make the good idea bad. Using the palm, soy and vegetable oils to make biodiesel is a bad idea. Using algae to make biodiesel is a good idea. See how I correctly identified the source of the problem instead of making a short-sited article on it?
@tony & @SDK
I whole heartily agree with your comments. This article and some of the comments stink of big oil trying to thwart the surge of people looking to use SVO (straight Veg oil) or WVO (waste veg oil) as a fuel in their diesel vehicles. Why? This is a viable solution to using petroleum based fueled vehicles.
@Mitchell
If you are a diesel mechanic then you know that you have to turn on the block heater no mater if you had SVO in your tank or petro diesel in -50. Also…anyone that goes with SVO or WVO in their tank knows that it has to be heated to keep the viscosity thin. Any kit you find on the internet talks about this so any moron using SVO or WVO in their system will surely know that the tank, fuel line, and pump should be heated.
Don’t fall for the false info in this article, do some research.
SeQuential in Oregon is doing just fine producing biodiesel from waste oil and oregon-grown canola. Aside from fertilizer, their entire product cycle is self-sustaining, local, and awesome. You can buy 99% biodiesel at commercial gas stations in the summer and 50% in the winter.
As with every emerging green technology it would appear the details matter. Of course clear cutting the amazon and then shipping oil 2 or 3 thousand miles is not the best approach. Just like using edible feedstocks to ferment fuel ethanol isn’t the right approach.
Evidently you havenlt done very much research. Look into Valcent Technologies. They are creating a closed loop system that grows algae to produce biodiesel. Early estimates already put them at 100,000 barrels of BioDeisel per acre and they are best setup in the DESERT, not a rain forest or even a small wooded lot in Kentucky.
This country grows exponentially more corn than we could ever consume. A lot of that goes to markets, more to ethanol, and the rest is sold to other countries like Mexico. We have so much extra corn that we bring the price of it down in Mexico. So much, that Mexican farmers are going out of buisness because they can’t compete at that level. They, inturn, become the illegal immigrants who jump the borders looking for work to feed their families. The price of food in this country is not, and will never be raised or lowered due to biofuels! look up the gov’t subsidies to American farmers.
Using bio-diesel is not a bad idea.
The bad ideas are where this is sourced from. There are many more options to source bio-diesel (rendering old tyres ; rendering animal carcas (waste from food production)) - potential algae farms - that use non arible land, a lot of these sources for bio-diesel don’t take food away and are less intensive to make the fuel than ethanol would be. Currently bio-diesel looks like the better bet than ethanol.
Bio-Fuel in the form of ethanol from food (ie: ethanol from corn) is justa silly idea.
Biodiesel produced using non-edible oils from hardy trees such as Pongamia and Jatropha on non-farm and non-forest lands could offer a solution.
You guys are noobs.
Oh - Yah it sure is too bad that we have to clear rainforests and cant use other land to grow the necessary crops.
Oh we dont have to do that?
Good then. Sounds like this article is moot.
I don’t think anyone has the right idea yet on how to make anything work on a large scale and make it safe for the environment. Biofuel was started to just save money.
Back in my time . . . America ran on rails! The Arabs made very cheap oil available, so available that we developed fleets of rubber tired diesel trucks to move goods to market faster and cheaper. This is no longer working because they no longer provide oil at very cheap rates. Be prepared to go back to the much more efficient steel wheel on steel rail system. This is not the end of the world for us, it is a change in the way we do things Back to the future! Nowadays with computers we can expect totally automated intercity freight systems soon, and interlinking them should be simple computer switching technology - we just haven’t had to apply these solutions until now. Say goodbye to rubber wheeled trucks, transports down to six wheelers, say hello to smaller lighter automated rail shunt systems to replace them. Most four rubber wheeled delivery will be battery/electric or hydrogen powered before oil hits $200.bbl and we will see a huge rise in public transport- yeah, buses and commuter trains. Welcome to the 21st Century America!
Wow,
I’m blown away by the misinformation here.
This article said “With farmers growing more corn for biodiesel, more fertilizer is being used resulting in the death of marine life.”
Biodiesel is not made from corn, it’s made from soybeans, waste vegetable oil, or animal fats.
Domestically produced biodiesel is a clean burning fuel that’s good for most engines and offers significant emissions (included greenhouse gas) reductions.
Here are 22 myths about biodiesel dispelled: http://gas2.org/2008/04/10/biodiesel-mythbuster-20-twenty-two-biodiesel-myths-dispelled/
That sounds me a f****** lobby.
The oil industries are kinda crazy about the possibility of a green alternative.
yea i dont see bio-diesel becoming too popular… i predict it will be the electric cars that are still gas capable.
-Mike
Reuters reports that all over the US, “soaring corn and soy prices on top of rising construction costs and tight credit markets have pushed about a dozen U.S. biofuel plants to file for bankruptcy protection, experts said.” Moreover and more importantly, more scientists are in agreement that both ethanol and biodiesel do more harm than good to the environment.
On the other hand, as the cleanest-burning alternative, the California Energy Commission found that Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) produces 23% lower emission than diesel and 30% lower than gasoline. Natural Gas is also the consistently cheaper alternative to rising fuel prices. More and more, energy sustainability discussions are beginning to include Natural Gas as a viable, economically-sound alternative.
Doug:
What free market are you talking about? Here in the real world oil companies are subsidized by the government. Regulated at every turn. Then forced to justify everything they do in congressional witch hunts.
A free market doesn’t work like that. I’m sick of liberals claiming that under Bush we had a free market. Our economy is being crushed by regulation, taxation, and oddly subsidies. Get government out of our lives, out of business, and back under control before we turn into france.
quote: “The “freemarket” got us into this mess, why do you assume it will be our salvation?”
I’m all for free speech, However articles like this are based on an opinion of the writer. For all that are reading this, do yourself a favor and educate yourself. Learn all of the facts before you make stray remarks or blog posts.