Fuelling the future

In the latest issue of Momentum, a new magazine out of the University of Minnesota, I argue that "our cars aren't alone in needing a new diet". Here's the opening:

It’s been a tough couple of years for the public relations staff in the biofuels industry.

The production of biofuels from crops like corn has been blamed for everything from driving up global food prices and deforestation in the Amazon to depleting oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico (not to mention raising the price of tequila).

Even the basic purpose of today’s commercial biofuels production has been called into question.

A study by researchers at the University of Minnesota, published last year in the journal Science, found that if previously undeveloped landscapes are cleared for biofuels production, then those biofuels emit more greenhouse gases than gasoline and diesel. Policymakers and the public are now asking if it’s efficient or ethical to use croplands to feed machines rather than people.

There’s one obvious place to look for an answer. In North America, we have been feeding the majority of our crops to machines for decades. These elaborate, protein-producing devices are best known by their common names: cows, pigs and chickens...

Click here for the full article. Or continue after the jump.


Eating animals is hardly new. Our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors relied on meat for a large proportion of their protein intake. But the advent of agriculture and rise in population after the end of the last ice age led humans to settle in villages and shift to a more energy-efficient, grain-based diet. Over time, meat would be reserved for those who could afford the land and workforce required to raise animals.

Diets in the developed world changed again with the discovery of fossil fuels, especially oil. This cheap source of energy allowed us to produce nitrogen fertilizers, transform crop genetics, fuel agricultural machinery and transport agricultural products around the world. Buoyed by high crop yields and newfound agricultural wealth, we began feeding large quantities of grain and oilseeds to our farm animals.

Today, the average American eats as much as 275 pounds of meat each year, up from 197 pounds in the early 1960s.

Feeding the literally billions of cattle, poultry and pigs now requires a large proportion of the world’s—and mainly America’s—croplands. More than two-thirds of the American corn, soybean, sorghum, barley and oats harvest is used to produce animal feed. That’s more than two-thirds of the fuel used to operate machinery, more than two-thirds of the agricultural chemical use and subsequent water pollution, and more than two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions from croplands.

In the coming decades, the demand for both animal feed and transportation fuels is expected to rise sharply as Asia and the developing world become wealthier. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, per capita meat consumption in China has doubled since 1990, and it could double again.

Can our agricultural system meet this increasing demand while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions, tropical deforestation and water pollution? The solution may be switching to more efficient machines.

Like the cars we drive, the animals we eat have wide-ranging efficiencies. Beef cattle are the SUVs of animal agriculture. Renowned energy expert Vaclav Smil calculated that the U.S. agricultural system uses 32 kilograms of feed to produce 1 kilogram of edible beef. Poultry is the fuel-efficient compact of the animal world, with around one-eighth the feed ratio of beef.

The good news is that Americans have been slowly shifting their diets from beef toward more efficient forms of food production. Since the 1970s, per capita beef consumption has decreased 20 percent, while per capita poultry consumption increased by 40 percent. And more and more Americans are forsaking beef or all meat out of health concerns.

A more aggressive move toward poultry, dairy and vegetable-based diets could greatly decrease the land, energy and fertilizer needed to feed the population. In turn, this change would decrease direct greenhouse gas emissions from food cultivation and nutrient pollution to waterways. My own research indicates that reducing beef consumption in American diets would also reduce nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River and shrink the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

Changing diets would also free up productive croplands for cultivating second-generation biofuels based on unfertilized grains, oil crops or grasses. This newly available land would help eliminate concerns that diverting productive croplands to biofuels cultivation causes the clearing of native vegetation and the release of stored carbon elsewhere in the world.

In a carbon-constrained world, food efficiency may be just as important as fuel efficiency.

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Friedman - Dumb as we wanna be

NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman has a great op-ed on the farce that is US energy policy (I get the sense a book is coming). In addition to timely remarks on subsidies for wind and solar, he calls Clinton's and McCain's promise to cut the federal gas tax for the summer what it really is: political pandering.

Sadly, the phenomena is neither new nor unique to the US. This is what I wrote in a Globe and Mail op-ed about the 2004 federal election in Canada:

The disappearance of prominent environmental issues at election time is hardly a new phenomenon. In the battle for votes, everyone longs to appear green, but will not advocate any policy that might be perceived, correctly or not, as damaging to the voter's wallet.

This election in particular has fallen prey to the opportunistic notion that scoring a favourable headline in the morning paper on the issue of the day is more important than presenting an integrated vision for the country. The result is fragmented political platforms in which environmental issues are the big losers.

The high price of gasoline provides a perfect opportunity to promote the need for higher automotive fuel efficiency, more funding for public transit, and reduced smog in our cities. These are issues of interest to all Canadians; dealing with them would help reduce Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the debate focuses entirely on which party can deliver lower gas prices.

The price of gas has doubled since I wrote that column. Yet outside of Obama (and maybe the Greens in Canada), the political response remains the same.

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Funding and new transit announcements

Earlier this week, British Columbia announced a massive new public transit plan including over $10 billion for rapid transit lines in my new home of Vancouver. It has raised much excitement but also many questions about who will be paying for it all.

A couple days later, the Globe and Mail reported that Canada will copy the new and relatively meaningless US vehicle mileage standards. Today it rather ignorantly reports the move will increase automobile prices by thousands of dollars (even if it were true that costs have to go up to meet the standards, it would happen regardless of the Canadian decision because prices are driven by the US market).

You get the feeling that Canadians are concerned only about cost of transportation, not the efficiency. For the foreign readers of Maribo, it is important to understand that thanks to Canada's unique federalist system, 95% of the political life in Canada is spent arguing over which level of government should be paying for things. We tend to roll out massive public spending programs or new federal regulations without having secured any of the funding. With programs like the BC transit plan, the hope is that by generating excitement, the level of government announcing the program can guilt the other levels into coughing up some money.

Most of the time, guilting the province or the feds fails. So Canadians are quite skeptical of grand proposals for things like expanding public transit, building new inter-city train lines, etc. If you want to raise the ire a Torontonian, just ask about the waterfront redevelopment plan (the response will begin with "which one?").

On the odd occasion, the guilt approach actually works. We Canucks are, after all, generally apologetic people who hate to disappoint others.

Is this one of those odd occasions? Perhaps we've reaching this nexus of voter concern about climate change, oil prices, urban air pollution and traffic congestion that the every level of government will find a way to contribute at least a decent proportion of the requested funds for the BC transit plan, for Toronto's light rail plan, etc. Don't expect the SkyTrain all the way down Broadway to UBC to appear anytime during, say, the current millennium. And don't expect the auto manufacturers in Ontario to suddenly embrace new fuel efficiency standards. But I can guarantee you no one, at any level of government anywhere in the country, wants to look like Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, who toured Washington this week trying to deny the environmental impact of oil sands operations*.

* The argument: large facilities are required to "reduce the intensity by 12 per cent." This while they plan to triple production. So if intensity is the emissions per unit of production, that means the emissions would multiple by 2.64. Canadians do understand fractions.

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Energy intensity and the challenge that lies ahead

A passage about "energy intensity" in the, er, cheery Thomas Homer-Dixon book The Upside of Down got me thinking more about the historical trend in GHG emissions intensity.

For new readers, a couple months back I showed that the globally-averaged emissions intensity has been decreasing for decades even though the total emissions were increasing. In other words, the economy has been expanding faster than GHG emissions. Therefore, a future emissions target based on the rate of emissions per economic production, as was proposed in Canada, would allow total emissions to increase.

It is instructive to break the long-term trend in global emissions intensity into two component parts: the energy intensity, the energy use per unit of GDP, and the "GHG efficiency" of energy use, the GHG emissions per unit energy production. It is done below using energy data from the
History Database of the Global Environment (similar analysis has been done for the recent past by the IPCC's WG III and by Informetrica for Canada alone).

The graph shows that the emissions per unit energy - the blue line - has been relative stable since the Industrial Revolution. The energy intensity- the green line - mirrors the original emissions intensity curve. It peaked in the 1920s and has been decreasing since.

In other words, the emissions intensity has been falling for the past eighty years because we’ve been producing more stuff with less energy not because we’ve become more efficient, emissions-wise, at producing energy. Over the past three decades, world energy production has actually became less GHG efficient due largely to increased energy use in Asia. Emissions intensity decreased during this time only because, as a planet, we were able to produce more income with less energy.

The graph is useful for articulating the challenge that lies ahead. Since it will take time to rebuild the existing energy production infrastructure ("slow turnover of capital stock"), becoming more energy efficient, producing more stuff with less energy is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short-term. That's the green line. But to achieve the long-term emissions reductions (ie. like these proposals) required to avoid dangerous interference with the climate, we'll need to move the blue line. In other words, we'll need to radically change the way be produce, not just use, energy. And, again, with the slow "turnover of capital stock", we need to start planning as soon as possible.

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US Congress to debate Energy Bill

The US Congress is debating an Energy Bill today (HR 3221 – read it here). It is different from the recently passed Senate Energy Bill in a number of ways.

The most publicized difference: this Bill does not set new CAFE standards, not even the inadequate new standards in the Senate Bill. This is thanks to opposition from Democrats like John Dingell, a thorn in CAFE’s paw for years. Dingell’s op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post pulls a bait and switch, supporting a carbon tax but not mentioning CAFE by name. He should read this article from the New Yorker which is summarized in a comment a couple weeks back.

Otherwise, the bill is a grab-bag of different projects, many good (testing photovoltaic roofs), many oddly specific (no incandescent lights on coast guard vessels), many that will be labeled pork barrel (money for some rather specific biofuel programs) and many that will cause a double-take (a line item study on ice sheets!).

And then there is this:

Sec. 6102. MANAGEMENT OF FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS… so as to achieve zero net annual greenhouse gas emissions from the agencies by fiscal year 2050.”

Yep, the bills says all US government operations are to be carbon neutral by 2050. As the NY Times reports, that would include the Pentagon. Let’s just hope this isn’t used as an argument to shift to nuclear, rather than conventional, warfare.

That is one area where Iraq is leading the US; as Eli points out, if the present trend continues, electricity generation in Baghdad will become carbon neutral by the end of 2008.

UPDATE: President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.

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Pros and cons of the US Senate Energy Bill

A couple provisions in the last month's US Senate Energy Bill - technically the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection, and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007 - received most of the attention:

i) the increase in CAFE standards, and

ii) the renewable fuels standard.

It turns out both provisions have some quirky loopholes that were missed in much of the mainstream media coverage so far.

1. CAFE standards

With all the political hurdles, any change in CAFE standards is an accomplishment. As this well-researched article in Salon carefully explains, the actual goal -- that automobiles sold in 2020 average 35 mpg -- may not be worthy of that much praise.

First, it sets a rate of increase could be matched or surpassed without any policy:

It takes about a decade for the nation's vehicle fleet to turn over -- for new cars to replace old ones -- so any change to CAFE takes years to have a real impact on the average fuel economy of vehicles on the road... if you averaged the mileage of the most fuel-efficient cars, trucks, SUVs and minivans sold in the U.S. today, you'd already get a combined mileage of 31 miles per gallon... cars that Toyota sells in the United States almost meet the 2013 standard already, getting just shy of 35 miles per gallon... In Japan, the current average is 45 miles per gallon.

Second, the bill gives automakers one big out:

If the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration can show that it's not "cost effective" for automakers to meet the 35 mpg goal, then it won't have to require them to do so.

These new CAFE provisions may actually get weakened further by the US Congress (where Democratic lawmakers from the automobile-producing states hold some sway). Efficiency will increase a bit without regulation simply due to current market pressures. But, as our carrot-munching friend noted in a comment here, without tougher standards or regulation, people may not have enough incentive to shift from the "safer" large vehicles towards smaller more efficient vehicles.

2. Renewable Fuels Standard

The bill sets a new target of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. Opponents of corn-based ethanol cheered the "capping" of its production at 15 billion gallons.

As part of some ongoing research, a colleague and I read through the renewable fuels portion of the bill for the section on corn. Actually, we just searched for the "corn". Nothing. We tried "maize". Nope.

You see, there is no cap specifically on corn. The target is for 21 billion gallons of "advanced fuels". The remainder, 15 billion, can be conventional ethanol. Flipping back to the beginning of Bill reveals that "advanced" means "fuel derived from renewable biomass other than corn starch." That's where the news of a 15 billion cap came from.

It'll be interesting to discover how this standard will be interpreted. Does a small conversion of corn cellulose or non-starch parts of the corn plant (i.e. relative to the use of the starch in the grain) allow corn-based ethanol production to be included as an advanced fuel? Will conventional fuels created from sorghum, a crop similar to corn grown in drier parts of the US, or from durum wheat be considered advanced fuels?

Perhaps the intent of the authors in structuring the Bill in this manner was benign. At the very least, the language is very curious.

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Banning the bulb

I considered writing what might have been a rather deflating post, about either the news that China is set to bypass the US as the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases next year (not 2025, not 2010, next year, in time for Olympics); the unfortunate twisting of an interesting new paper on wind shear, hurricanes and climate change by Gabe Vecchi at nearby GFDL; or the leaked and already battered new Canadian emissions policy.

But there is some very good news: following on recent pronouncements by Australia, California and the province of Ontario, the Government of Canada has decided to ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs by the year 2012.

I’ll dig into the rest of the new Canadian emissions policy later; frankly, I’m sick of analyzing the Canadian federal policies since they never seem to last more than a month or two. The bulb ban, however, is one thing that will stick, regardless of policy and government. The Ontario decision had already created a buzz; the federal ban will only increase the chatter and excitement (examples here, here).

Hopefully, it will also serve as an example. The country, every country, needs an overarching climate and emissions policy, complete with hard GHG emissions targets, plans for a carbon market or tax, etc. It also needs some actual direct actions that will guarantee GHG emissions reductions. Sure, the bulb ban is a drop in the bucket, accounting for at most 2% of the Canada's emissions. But at least the bucket is not entirely empty.

I’m no politician – too much compromise, too much tie-wearing for me – but my experience says this type of policy is a real political winner. It is simple, direct, something that impacts life at home. If the Conservative government is smart, they would follow this announcement with “win-win” interventions that will reduce emissions, things like banning the sale of inefficient appliances, setting building codes, etc. If not, you can be sure the Liberals and other opposition parties will.

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Going carbon neutral

It’s hip, it’s trendy… and it’s wildly unregulated.

Everyone is going "carbon neutral". The latest to join the craze is US Presidential candidate John Edwards. He has pledged to run a carbon-neutral campaign by “conserving” energy and purchasing carbon offsets. The other candidates are bound to ante up.

Is this even possible? Offsetting the emissions from the campaigns of every US Presidential candidate may require reforesting the entire country. A truly efficient solution would be shortening the campaign by, say, a year or so.

It raises an important question. Which carbon offset-ers can you trust? The proliferation of companies offering to sell carbon offsets is a more than a bit suspicious. Many cannot, and are not required to, confirm that your money will result in a reduction in GHG emissions. The same problem is happening at the macro-scale, with EU countries investing in many questionable offset schemes in China through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.

I can recommend a few relatively trustworthy operations (check here, bottom of page). In many cases, the exact reductions cannot be confirmed, but an effort is at least being made.

If you know of more, let me know. And maybe John Edwards, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and whomever else declares in the next few months.

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"Carbon tax" in the US?

Neglected in the initial media excitement over the Democratic sweep in the U.S mid-term elections was a local ballot initiative in the city of Boulder, Colorado.

Voters there approved what is essentially a carbon tax. The new tax is based on the home energy use (ie. $per kWh) and the revenues will go to the city's Environmental Affairs Office. The city council is hoping it will help Boulder reduce its GHG emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by the year 2012, a goal based on the Kyoto Protocol.

Similar initiatives exist in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas. Small steps in a few liberal communities, sure. But you have to start somewhere.

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Going on an energy diet

The House and Home section of yesterday's NY Times had a terrific, hilarious "lazy man's guide to belt-tightening at home". It includes a number of useful suggestions for reducing energy use as home.

Though I did take offense, as a Canadian, to this one passage:

"And I recently bought a flat-screen high-def 37-inch TV, an energy-Hoover you’ll have to pry from my cold, dead hands; if you haven’t seen an N.F.L. game on something like that, my friend, you might as well watch curling."

Let me tell you, as I'm old enough now to admit the truth, curling really does make for riveting television.

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