US scientists puncture the ethanol biofuel bubble

US scientists puncture the ethanol biofuel bubble

Crop switch likely to /increase/ emissions

By George Smith, *** Destiny
Published Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:31 GMT

Good science news (or bad, depending on your point of view) has arrived with two reports on the carbon footprint of biofuels, in the paper edition of Science magazine. They deal serious damage to the belief - which up to now has been driving the biofuel bubble - that stepped-up ethanol production in the US is an answer to global warming.

Writing in "Use of US croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions for Land Use or Change," Timothy Searchinger and many others state: "To produce more biofuels, farmers can directly plow up more forest or grassland, which releases to the atmosphere much of the carbon previously stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fire. The loss of maturing forests and grasslands also forgoes ongoing carbon sequestration as plants grow each year ..." (A companion piece, "Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt" by scientists at the University of Minnesota, covers similar territory.)

The scientists step on switch grass, too, a weed peddled by those promoting the still largely theoretical panacea of ethanol production direct from cellulose. "Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on US corn lands increase emissions by 50 per cent," write the authors in the lead paragraph.

Read the rest of it here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/13/science_biofuel_reports/
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