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February 08, 2008, 03:02 PM ET
Biodiesel: The Devil in the Details
Colleges that have rushed to biofuels as a sustainable alternative to petroleum for the college fleet may — once again — want to think twice. The New York Times reports today on two new studies that say that biofuels may do more damage to the environment than conventional petroleum fuels.
The studies, the Times reports, point to various factors that may lead biofuels to generate more greenhouse gases than previously thought. The land tilled up and used to grow biofuel crops are one part of the calculations.
“The destruction of natural ecosystems — whether rain forest in the tropics or grasslands in South America — not only releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere when they are burned and plowed, but also deprives the planet of natural sponges to absorb carbon emissions. Cropland also absorbs far less carbon than the rain forests or even scrubland that it replaces. … It does not matter if it is rain forest or scrubland that is cleared, the greenhouse gas contribution is significant. More important, they discovered that, taken globally, the production of almost all biofuels resulted, directly or indirectly, intentionally or not, in new lands being cleared, either for food or fuel.”
Environmentalists have long debated the sustainability of biofuels, which have been a focus of Congress and farm lobbies seeking subsidies for the alternative fuel.
Some colleges have dabbled in biofuels to run campus vehicles or generators. The Johns Hopkins University has had a plan to convert the Baltimore bus fleet to biodiesel, and count that as a carbon offset. (Incidentally, Davis Bookhart, the sustainability director at Johns Hopkins, is one of the founders of a biodiesel co-op in Baltimore.)
The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities once touted the greenness of its campus fleet, which burned a gas-ethanol mix. But an economist at the university debunked the claims in a story in The Chronicle‘s sustainability package.
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