Bio-fuels not the answer?

The worst fears about the impact of the rush for bio-fuels are coming true. Evidence that has now surfaced suggests that bio-fuels based on plant sources may actually aggravate, rather than alleviate, the environmental damage being caused by global warming. At least two recent studies done in the United States, and published in the latest issue of Science, bear this out. One of them, conducted by Minnesota-based scientists, has reckoned that the ethanol produced from corn, as is being done increasingly in the US and several other rich countries, will nearly double greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, instead of curtailing them by about one-fifth as was made out earlier. The outcome of the second study, conducted by researchers at Princeton University, is equally revealing. It has concluded that the use of cellulosic ethanol, made from switch-grass, produces 50 per cent higher environmentally harmful emissions than gasoline (or petrol).

Such findings are bound to be contested by the bio-fuel industry and other protagonists who argue in favour of this alternative source of energy, but there seems little reason to disbelieve the researchers. What is noteworthy is that bio-fuel's supporters often disregard the changes in land use patterns that the growing consumption of bio-fuels is causing and their adverse impact on the environment and ecology. Forests and grasslands are being cleared in many countries to raise bio-fuel plantations. In doing so, the carbon dioxide imbibed from the atmosphere and stored in the existing vegetation is released back into the atmosphere, causing depletion of the protective ozone layer and encouraging global warming as a consequence. In fact, as pointed out by the authors of these studies, it would take decades and, in some cases, even centuries to offset these emissions against GHG reductions achieved through the use of bio-fuels produced from such lands. Little wonder then that the UK's national science academy, the Royal Society, has also cautioned that bio-fuel usage might not lead to a significant drop in GHGs because of the accompanying land-use changes and habitat destruction.

The diversion of foodgrain, sugar and edible oil crops for bio-fuel production is also not without cost, for, it has caused food shortages and pushed up food prices, which in some cases have soared by as much as 40 per cent in 2007. This has rendered food economically inaccessible for the poor in many poor countries. Surprisingly, the developing countries, India not excluded, have not lagged far behind the developed nations in setting up high bio-fuel consumption targets, though they are doing so to cut down on costly fossil fuels more than on environmental considerations. While Brazil and some other countries are clearing the Savanna grasslands, peat lands and rain forests to grow soyabean, sugarcane and other bio-fuel crops, in India vast stretches of land, including reclaimable and potentially arable degraded lands, are being deployed for raising jatropha plantations, for which proven and commercially viable cultivation and oil-production technologies are not yet available. The need, in view of all this, is to ensure that "green energy" policies are viable, so that the cure does not prove worse than the disease. A better and far less hurtful option would be to use agricultural or industrial wastes and by-products, such as ethanol produced from molasses or bagasse, for conversion into green fuel, leaving the existing crop-land-water balance and green habitats undisturbed.