Biofuels and Biomass Lose Favor: Investors Beware!

Bio­fu­els and Bio­mass Lose Favor: Investors Beware!

- by Rachel Smolk­er, Biofuelwatch

A few examples: 

The DC Cir­cuit Court of Appeals ruled against the EPA, stat­ing the agency has no basis for a three-year defer­ral that would have exempt­ed CO2 from “bio­genic” sources (ethanol, bio­mass, munic­i­pal wastes, land­fill gas­es) from green­house gas reg­u­la­tions under the Clean Air Act.

The Euro­pean Union Envi­ron­ment com­mit­tee vot­ed to cap the per­cent­age that bio­fu­els made from food crops can con­tribute to their over­all tar­get. They also vot­ed to con­sid­er default val­ue “ILUC” (indi­rect land use change) fac­tors in deter­min­ing the emis­sions from bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion. While these fall far short of the strong steps need­ed to stem the tide of destruc­tion caused by EU bioen­er­gy poli­cies, they do at least reflect some glim­mer of chang­ing opinion.

A grow­ing cho­rus of voic­es in the U.S. is call­ing to cut back the Renew­able Fuel Stan­dard. A Sen­ate bill to repeal the man­date was recent­ly intro­duced. Those call­ing for repeal may not have the pro­tec­tion of the envi­ron­ment in mind — they include Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute and their ilk, as well as live­stock pro­duc­ers and gro­cery man­u­fac­tur­ers con­tend­ing with ris­ing costs of corn and soy.

More local­ly, a long-fought bat­tle against the “Pio­neer” bio­mass incin­er­a­tor in Green­field Mass., end­ed in vic­to­ry for res­i­dents who favor clean air and healthy forests over false solu­tions. Sev­er­al oth­er bio­mass incin­er­a­tors in the state have already been halt­ed or are on hold after reg­u­la­tions were tight­ened last year.

A judge in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty Ari­zona ruled that burn­ing garbage is not “renew­able” ener­gy and thus inel­i­gi­ble for subsidies.

And…

Ten-thou­sand Chi­nese cit­i­zens took to the streets to protest one of the five waste incin­er­a­tors pro­posed for Guangzhou, cit­ing threats to their chil­dren’s health.

The food cri­sis helped bring to light the fool­ish­ness of using food to fuel cars. We still hear end­less­ly repeat­ed the sim­plis­tic view that the prob­lem will be solved sim­ply by shift­ing to non-food crops, even­tu­al­ly, if we can fig­ure out how. But com­mon sense tells us that land, water, and fer­til­iz­ers are all need­ed whether the crop is edi­ble or not. And those are in ever short­er sup­ply. Mean­while, as we are plum­met­ing deep­er and deep­er into cli­mate and weath­er extreme chaos, the pro­tec­tion of forests and ecosys­tems, is urgent. Cut­ting, burn­ing, and clear­ing our forests and fields to sup­ply mas­sive quan­ti­ties of plant mate­ri­als to elec­tric util­i­ties and refiner­ies appears ever more ludi­crous and mis­guid­ed. Think ancient Mayan civ­i­liza­tion collapse.

Will vis­i­tors from anoth­er world some­time in the future arrive here, piece togeth­er what hap­pened and mar­vel at the idio­cy that per­mit­ted a species to first con­t­a­m­i­nate its’ life-sus­tain­ing atmos­phere by burn­ing fos­sil fuels and dig­ging up and defor­est­ing the land­scape — and then tried to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by burn­ing what remained? Let’s hope the sto­ry has a hap­pi­er ending.