Genetically engineered algae for biofuel?

Scientists in the US are developing genetically engineered strains of algae, mostly cyanobacteria ("blue green algae") to produce alkane fuels in quantity. They are confident that algal biofuel avoids many of the drawbacks of corn- or grass-biofuels, such as competition with food supply, low yields per hectare, and need for extensive processing.

However, they're running into problems of their own: need for large volumes of water, difficult in scaling up the process from the lab to the field, and the high volume of carbon dioxide consumption that these algae have. Some of the problems were unexpected, however:

"Shrimp think algae are good food," says CEO Pyle [of the company Sapphire Energy]. "If you don't pay attention, you will ultimately have a shrimp farm."

The returns on such an investment might not be too bad either!

German nuclear shut-down - what next?

Germany has recently announced that it will shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2022. This comes in the wake of the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, and election gains by the German Green Party in the key state of Baden-Württemburg. The Green Party is a major player in German politics, and supports the cause of denuclearization.

What does this mean for the politics of energy production in Europe and beyond? On the one hand, we want to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Existing sources will eventually run out, and the carbon dioxide released by burning them is believed to be the key factor driving climate change. On the other, are nuclear power and renewable energy may be inadequate to meet the shortfall. Nuclear power, in particular, is fraught with difficulties. Not only are people fearful of potential disastrous accidents ('Fukushima' may eventually become a cultural keyword in the same way that 'Chernobyl' is now), but there are practical concerns regarding the disposal of nuclear waste. If we forgo the nuclear option, will wind, solar, wave, and other so-called 'renewables' be enough?

This seems like a good time to introduce an important book on the issue, Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air, written by David McKay, a physicist at Cambridge University. The whole book is available for free online, in addition to a 10-page synopsis for those who want to get the gist of it quickly. An even shorter summary has been written by him for the BBC website.

McKay's analysis, which is essentially a straightforward, but necessary, accounting of the relevant figures and facts, shows that relying exclusively or heavily on renewable energy sources would be hugely disruptive and intrusive to both our existing way of life and, ironically, to the environment. The main fact is that wind farms, solar farms, and the like are not energy 'dense' - they require large tracts of land to produce the same amount of power as a conventional or nuclear power plant. Given existing levels of energy consumption (the book focuses on the UK but other industrialized nations are comparable), there would be hardly any land left for other purposes!

Wind farming projects around the world, for example, are already running into opposition from local citizens who find the windmills, and the electrical pylons required to connect them to the grid, hugely unsightly. Their constant whir is also a form of noise pollution. Biofuels and solar energy harvesting, two commonly-proposed alternatives, would possibly squeeze out farming and natural woodland. Even so, they would not yield very much. The figure below, from Without the Hot Air, shows to scale the quantity of land required for biofuels, wood harvesting, and other forms of renewable energy, required to meet the UK's current demand (the last five symbols in the legend are not to scale, but the rest are).

Therefore, if nuclear were out of the question entirely, it seems unlikely that renewable energy, in the state of technology that is available now, would be able to carry the day. Realistically speaking, it is likely that the Germans will find that after the closure of their nuclear plants, the supply of energy from renewables will not be able to keep up and they will be forced to revert in some degree to fossil fuel, or to importing energy from neighboring countries.

Nuclear energy is something even Singapore has to take into account. Even if our country decides that the risks are simply too high for our island-state, we still have to consider the possibility that neighboring countries will adopt nuclear power. It is important to have a frank discussion of the risks and realities now, than to be enveloped in doubt and fear later. 

Hidden costs of bioethanol

Are biofuels really 'green' as they claim to be? This subject has come up before on this blog, usually on the side of 'no'.

A recent piece of correspondence to Nature (caution: paywall) from two scholars at the Federal University of Alagoas in Brazil points out the real costs associated with Brazil's experiment in sugarcane farming for bioethanol. Brazil was a pioneer in using sugar for vehicular fuel, decades before biofuels became fashionable in the rest of the world. They say that over 85% of the rainforest cover in the state of Alagoas in Brazil has been destroyed over the period of 35 years, since the beginning of the sugarcane to biofuel program. The loss of rainforest cover is thought to be responsible for landslides and flooding associated with heavy rains.

They call it "a dirty footprint in one of Brazil's poorest states." Biofuels gained popularity because they are supposedly 'renewable', as opposed to finite fossil fuels. Nothing comes for free, however, and this small planet we live on has only limited land available. For fuel crops to be grown, additional forested land has to be cleared, or land that would otherwise have grown food crops have to be converted. The former causes a net carbon gain to the atmosphere as well as a loss of biodiversity. The latter straitens the food supply, risking higher prices and endangering vulnerable populations.

There's no way to win!

"Green Energy" sometimes a different kind of green

"Green Energy" is a buzzword in policy circles because what is "green" must be good for the environment, right? Unfortunately, the truth is that what sounds like a good idea on paper (or increasingly, online) can actually do more harm than good.

The advocacy group Survival International, which claims to represent the interests of "tribal peoples" around the world, has criticized the Malaysian Bakun dam project in Borneo, which not only has flooded large tracts of rainforest and disrupted river flow, but also has displaced members of the Penan tribe. They also have sharp words for the palm oil plantations which are razing forest in the name of biofuel, a subject which this blog has covered many times before. As one commentator on the Malaysia Today website (where the SI article is reposted) remarks, the only thing "green" about these projects is the money changing hands!

California says biofuels aren't so green

California has approved a new clean-fuel rule requiring fuel providers to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from fuels by 10% in 2020 compared to 2010 levels. The rule to calculate emissions, however, takes into account all aspects of fuel production, hence biofuels will face a penalty:

"Despite intense opposition from the US corn (maize) ethanol industry, the rule takes into account agricultural expansion abroad caused by rising grain prices as food crops are diverted for biofuels. This 'indirect' effect boosts the estimated emissions for various categories of corn ethanol by 50% or more, meaning that ethanol often results in higher greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline." (from the Nature news article)

The formula that California uses to calculate the greenhouse gas cost of biofuel, however, is fairly conservative, and some analysts argue that it should be even higher.

The Evils of biofuels

One of the biggest reasons for forest clearance in Southeast Asia is the expansion of oil palm plantations. Oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, has superseded rubber as the major cash crop of this region. Its oily fruit is pressed and processed to make palm oil, which is ubiquitously used in processed food (have a look at your instant noodle packet). The panic over climate change and high oil prices not too long ago led to an interest in biofuels, plant-derived alternatives to traditional petroleum-derived fuels, such as corn-derived ethanol and, that's right, palm oil.

Ironically, or insidiously, the opportunity to make even more profit from using crops for fuel than using crops for food has persuaded many agricultural corporations to convert many of their fields to biofuels production, putting pressure on food systems and increasing the rate of land conversion - because people are still as hungry as they were before biofuels. Therefore, biofuels, far from being the savior of our carbon-emitting economy, is making the problem worse, by giving people incentives to eliminate biodiversity, and actually causing a net carbon dioxide release into the atmosphere, because the cheapest way to clear forest is to burn it.

In Indonesia, clearance of forest is not only impacting the monkeys, trees, and elephants. It is a direct injustice to indigenous peoples who rely on the rainforest for their sustenance. (The opening paragraph of this article does have a slightly misleading vignette: pumpkin and cassava are natively South American crops that were only introduced to Southeast Asia probably in the 16th century, while rubber, a native of Brazil, only arrived in the 19th. But this does not affect the rest of the story, which is set very much in the present day.)

All the ills that characterize business in the tropical frontier are present: corrupt officials both civil and military, legal protection on paper but not in fact, large multinationals more interested in profit than social conscience. Perhaps one may accuse the author of this article as being sentimental in trying to portray the Dayak villagers whom she visits as being a heroic underdog up against the heartless corporations and corrupt officials - is the reality really this black and white? But to those who complain of soppy sentimentality, I say that cynicism easily blinds us to caring about the real human costs of what people usually see as an environmental problem. Forests are not only where the plants and animals live: they are important to people, too, who are just as vulnerable when the forest is gone.

I reflect on this issue because one of the major customers of the company seizing ancestral Dayak lands to clear cut for oil palm is a Singapore-based firm. Doubtless they have their reasons and excuses, but I feel that the problems of oil palm agriculture have been underappreciated in Singapore. I recall being brought on school field trips to Malaysia where we would tour different kinds of farms and plantations, and learn about how oil palm and rubber were produced and processed, how they were made into such a wonderful variety of goods. Silence, however, on what was lost to make that possible. The environmental rhetoric surrounding biofuels has also papered over the true cost of biofuel production - basically trading the tropics for the myopic carbon conscience of consumers in the industrialized nations. Most end-of-the-chain consumers, people like you and me, of course are decent people who would be aghast if their purchasing habits were the direct cause of why the Dayak were being driven forcibly from their homes. But the sheer indirectness of modern supply and production chains absolves anyone of direct responsibility, and makes it easier for unscrupulous acts to be obscured.

A recent letter in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 67-68) by Koh Lian Pin (an associate of the RMBR) and David Wilcove (of Princeton) point out how deliberate misinformation in the media is used by the oil palm industry to justify themselves. For example:

• Claim: Oil palm is grown on former rubber and other plantations, so little new forest is being cleared.




• Fact: Untrue. From 1990 to 2005, more than half of oil palm expansion in Malaysia and Indonesia was on old growth and secondary forest.




• Claim: Oil palm plantations are 'planted forests' that green the landscape and harbor biodiversity too




• Fact: Quite clearly false. This banks on the urban public's ignorance of what life is like in the forest and plantation. Any casual observer walking through can tell that they are qualitatively different. Oil palm also uses massive quantities of pesticides, that often drain into adjacent forests.




• Claim: Developed nations have no right to interfere with how the developing world uses its land, because they have been polluters and deforesters in the past




• Fact: This is like saying that I should have the opportunity to smoke cigarettes and ignore the advice of a sick old smoker, because he's had the chance to smoke and I haven't. This is reminiscent of the simplistic moralizing of the Asian-values debate.




• Claim: The Malaysian government claims that it will protect places zoned as protected forest and forest reserve from oil palm land conversion.




• Fact: Unprotected forest will be cleared regardless. Also, Malaysia has bought hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Brazil for oil palm development. It is effectively exporting its problem to other places which care less, something like the NIMBY mentality in the developed world.

I close with a picture of an oil palm plantation, what huge swathes of the region now looks like. The sad thing is that this picture was taken by me just outside of the Pasoh forest reserve in Negri Sembilan. Pasoh is a protected area, because it contains a long-term ecological study plot established by Peter Ashton half a century ago, that is part of a world-wide network of long term forest 'observatories' run by the Center for Tropical Forest Science. Hundreds of scientific publications have been written on this 50 hectares of forest. But contrary to what one might assume when reading these papers, this is not a sample of 'pristine' forest at all. It is surrounded on three sides by oil palm, coming right up to its gates, with very little by way of a buffer zone. If this is the best we have, then forest ecology will soon be a museum science.