Can't Win For Trying

This one’s just a big biofuel bummer.

A new report concludes that the industrial farming methods needed to produce biofuel plants in volume also product greenhouse gases. A LOT of greenhouse gases.

Turns out that the fertilizers used to grow these crops generates three to five times more greenhouse gases than previously thought, especially nitrous oxide (yes, the same stuff you get at the dentist or Grateful Dead concerts), which can be as much as 300 times more effective an atmospheric insulator that carbon dioxide.

And this report doesn’t come from any kind of quack organization; it was written by Paul J. Crutzen, a Nobel prize winner in chemistry.

Using biofuels produced from rapeseed, a popular source crop in Europe, can generate up to 70 percent more greenhouse gas than just using standard, petroleum-based diesel. Corn, one of the main crops in the United States, is a bit better; depending on how it’s produced it can cut greenhouse gas product by 10 percent, or increase it by up to 50 percent. And sugarcane, widely used in South America, can cut emissions by 10 percent to 50 percent.

Worse, none of these numbers even considered the emissions produced during the process of refining crops into fuel.

“The nitrous oxide emission on its own can cancel out the overall benefit” of switching to biofuels, said Crutzen’s co-author Keith Smith.

However, they report did not look at all potential biofuel crops, and there are some contenders that may not require much, or any, fertilizer (algae, anyone?).

I guess the hunt continues.