Fact Sheet: Cellulosic Ethanol

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Plant mat­ter is com­prised of cel­lu­lose and hemi­cel­lu­lose, which are essen­tial­ly sug­ars, and the struc­tur­al mate­r­i­al, lignin. Plants evolved to pro­tect them­selves from being con­sumed, and so the sug­ars they con­tain are not eas­i­ly acces­si­ble. Deriv­ing fuels from these mate­ri­als is thus a com­plex, ener­gy inten­sive process.⁵⁶⁷ Most con­ver­sion tech­nolo­gies depend on ther­mal gasi­fi­ca­tion (high tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure), acid hydrol­y­sis, or enzymes to break down mate­r­i­al and access the sug­ars within.

In spite of the lack of viable tech­nolo­gies for mak­ing cel­lu­losic fuels, the U.S. nonethe­less passed a man­date for 16 to 21 bil­lion gal­lons per year of cel­lu­losic ethanol by 2022 in the Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act.⁸ As of July 2008, there were about 55 pilot and demon­stra­tion sale cel­lu­losic refiner­ies, in the U.S.⁹ A com­mer­cial refin­ery oper­ates in Ottawa, Cana­da, run by Iogen. It uses more ener­gy than it pro­duces¹⁰ and is expe­ri­enc­ing oper­a­tional prob­lems.¹¹

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“Hype”-o-thetical and “Myth”-no-logical

The “hype” around cel­lu­losic fuels is based on claims that 1) the feed­stocks are plen­ti­ful and can be grown on “mar­gin­al” lands, and 2) they will not com­pete with food pro­duc­tion, and 3) they will pro­vide bet­ter ener­gy bal­ances than corn ethanol. These claims are unfound­ed.¹²

Biore­finer­ies require mas­sive and con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of feed­stock to main­tain oper­a­tions. These must be acces­si­ble with­in a short dis­tance to avoid trans­porta­tion costs and emis­sions.¹³ The most effec­tive way to pro­vide such a feed­stock sup­ply is to use pur­pose-grown ener­gy crops (indus­tri­al mono­cul­tures). While some com­pa­nies claim they will rely on “wastes and residues,” the real­i­ty is that con­tin­u­al removal of agri­cul­tur­al or forestry residues severe­ly deplete soils and results in ero­sion. Com­pe­ti­tion for forestry residues is already intense, with prices ris­ing.¹⁴ Indus­try lob­by­ists are now push­ing to open pub­lic and pri­vate forest­ed lands for “bio­mass removal,” even as there is increas­ing recog­ni­tion of the crit­i­cal role forests play in reg­u­lat­ing the cli­mate. Many facil­i­ties are like­ly to switch to using cheap­er (but much dirt­i­er) feed­stocks such as construction/demolition wood waste (often treat­ed with tox­ic chem­i­cals), trash or sewage sludge. In fact, most pro­posed cel­lu­losic ethanol plants are for trash and sludge.

The idea that there are large quan­ti­ties of mar­gin­al land avail­able to grow feed­stock is a con­ve­nient myth. Demand for corn ethanol is already threat­en­ing the Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram (CRP) — one of the coun­try’s pre­mier bio­di­ver­si­ty pro­tec­tion mea­sures. This pro­gram rewards farm­ers for tak­ing land out of cul­ti­va­tion where it will pro­vide valu­able habi­tat and pro­tect soils from ero­sion and water­ways from agri­cul­tur­al runoff.^15,16 With incen­tives to pro­duce more ener­gy crops, CRP lands are dwin­dling, result­ing in loss of crit­i­cal bio­di­ver­si­ty (includ­ing pol­li­na­tors, like bees), con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of water­ways, soil loss and car­bon emis­sions.^17,18 The pre­dict­ed loss of CRP lands in just 3 states will release as much car­bon as putting 15 mil­lion new cars on the road.¹⁹ An anal­o­gous pro­gram, called “set-aside” lands, in Europe was recent­ly elim­i­nat­ed alto­geth­er under pres­sure to expand cul­ti­va­tion for ener­gy crops.²⁰

The impact of the “mar­gin­al land” myth on devel­op­ing coun­tries has been a dis­as­ter. Near­ly all land uses that do not con­tribute to glob­al mar­kets are con­sid­ered “mar­gin­al,” fail­ing to acknowl­edge pas­toral­ists, small­hold­ers²¹, and bio­di­ver­si­ty.^22,23 No for­mal def­i­n­i­tion for mar­gin­al exists.²⁴ Its mis­use and false promis­es²⁵ have caused mas­sive land grabs,²⁶ forced labor,²⁷ lost income, food inse­cu­ri­ty and dis­place­ment, glob­al­ly.²⁸

The sec­ond myth — that cel­lu­losic feed­stock will not com­pete with food pro­duc­tion — is based on this false def­i­n­i­tion of “mar­gin­al” lands. Crops such as switch­grass, while they can grow in less fer­tile soils, yield more when grown in prime, irri­gat­ed soils with fer­til­iz­ers. Farmer’s choic­es are based on eco­nom­ics: if it pays to grow switch­grass or some oth­er ener­gy crop rather than food, they will do so, on even their best lands. A case in point is jat­ropha.²⁹

Jat­ropha has been declared a ‘won­der plant’ for biodiesel (made from oils, not cel­lu­lose). It has been very wide­ly pro­mot­ed on the basis that it can be grown in arid soil pro­duc­ing seeds with up to 40% oil con­tent. In India, over 14 mil­lion hectares of jat­ropha have been plant­ed with the expec­ta­tion of such yields. Yet farm­ers are find­ing that yields are high­ly vari­able and direct­ly cor­re­lat­ed with soil fer­til­i­ty and water avail­abil­i­ty.^30,31 Being inva­sive and tox­ic, farm­ers are left with the nasty con­se­quences of poor advice.

The third myth — that cel­lu­losic fuels will pro­vide bet­ter ener­gy bal­ances than “first gen­er­a­tion” bio­fu­els — is sim­i­lar­ly false. Life cycle assess­ments are noto­ri­ous­ly tricky. Indus­try esti­mates seek to ignore all emis­sions from land use change, for exam­ple, focus­ing sole­ly on refin­ery and com­bus­tion. One of the more com­pre­hen­sive assess­ments by Dr. Tad Patzek at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley found that ethanol from switch­grass requires 50% more fos­sil ener­gy than the ener­gy return. For wood, the fig­ure is 57% more. This is even worse than for corn ethanol (29% more).³²

No life cycle assess­ment can accu­rate­ly mea­sure “indi­rect land use changes” that can occur when large shifts in land use rip­ple through­out a glob­al sys­tem of pro­duc­tion and trade.³³ For exam­ple, when demand for corn for ethanol in the U.S. rose, farm­ers switched from soy to corn. Unmet demand for soy was met by increas­ing soy pro­duc­tion in Brazil, which was only achieved by clear­ing more forest­ed land, result­ing in a series of con­nec­tions link­ing corn ethanol to defor­esta­tion emis­sions.

If such land use changes are includ­ed, vir­tu­al­ly all plant-based fuels result in increased green­house gas emis­sions.³⁴

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Business as Usual

The fact that cel­lu­losic ethanol is still being pro­mot­ed and sub­si­dized in spite of the false claims is tes­ti­mo­ny to the pow­er of lob­by­ists and a major “green­wash” cam­paign on the part of the agribusi­ness, forestry, biotech­nol­o­gy, and auto industries.

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Scaling the Peaks: Biodiversity and
Peak Soil — Peak Water — Peak Demand

Giv­en extreme soil and water deple­tion, loss of bio­di­ver­si­ty, and an expand­ing pop­u­la­tion to feed, does it make sense to add an enor­mous new demand for plant-based energy?

The U.S. annu­al­ly con­sumes 142 bil­lion gal­lons of gaso­line.³⁵ The Ener­gy Pol­i­cy Act of 2005 man­dates pro­duc­tion of 7.5 bil­lion gal­lons per year by 2012³⁶ and the Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act of 2007 cre­ates an impos­si­ble goal of pro­duc­ing 36 bil­lion gal­lons of “renew­able” fuels.³⁷ Plant­i­ng switch­grass on all active U.S. crop­land would replace only 10% of U.S. gas con­sump­tion.³⁸ A 2005 joint USDA / Depart­ment of Ener­gy report unre­al­is­ti­cal­ly esti­mates avail­abil­i­ty of 1.3 bil­lion tons of dry bio­mass, but only by remov­ing most agri­cul­tur­al residues, plant­i­ng 55 mil­lion hectares of ener­gy crops, and using sig­nif­i­cant­ly more manure than EPA cur­rent­ly allows.³⁹

Cel­lu­losic fuels are only part of the expand­ing demand. The trend toward a “bioe­con­o­my” seeks to replace a large part of fos­sil fuel ener­gy with plant-based ener­gy, includ­ing elec­tric­i­ty, heat, chem­i­cals, mate­ri­als and indus­tri­al ener­gy. This scale of demand can­not be met while main­tain­ing a hab­it­able planet.

The U.S. has 2.263 bil­lion acres of land, with 52% devot­ed to agri­cul­ture,⁴⁰ and ero­sion rates exceed soil regen­er­a­tion on close to 30% of crop­lands.⁴¹ Iowa’s high­ly fer­tile soils have declined an aver­age of 10–18 inch­es just over the past cen­tu­ry. Mean­while, U.S. wet­lands have declined by 70%, and both under­ground aquifers and sur­face water sup­plies are dwin­dling. Irri­ga­tion for agri­cul­ture uses the bulk of the world’s fresh­wa­ter.⁴²

Such enor­mous demands for land, soils and water are com­plete­ly unsus­tain­able, espe­cial­ly in light of the com­ing impacts of cli­mate change, which will increase ener­gy needs while decreas­ing agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.⁴³

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Biotech Breakdown

Devel­op­ing both genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered (GE) ener­gy crop feed­stock (biotech trees and grass­es) and GE and syn­thet­ic⁴⁴ microbes has become the major focus of the biotech­nol­o­gy indus­try. Unlike GE (biotech), syn­thet­ics are entire­ly human made with no nat­ur­al foun­da­tion.⁴⁵ In addi­tion to expand­ing mar­kets for their tra­di­tion­al GE crop vari­eties, the indus­try seeks to devel­op new crops that can be more eas­i­ly con­vert­ed to fuel,⁴⁶ pro­duce more bio­mass, resist pests, droughts, freez­ing or dis­eases, and sur­vive heav­ier dos­es of her­bi­cides. For exam­ple, a “self-digest­ing” corn vari­ety is being devel­oped which is more eas­i­ly con­vert­ed to ethanol.⁴⁷ The risk of “indus­tri­al fuel” crops con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing food crops is very con­cern­ing espe­cial­ly in light of recent and accu­mu­lat­ing evi­dence on the human health impacts of con­sum­ing GE foods. Switch­grass, a native and inva­sive species,⁴⁸ is also being sub­ject­ed to genet­ic engi­neer­ing.^49,50 This is alarm­ing con­sid­er­ing the poten­tial for spread­ing GE con­t­a­m­i­na­tion to wild grass­es. Com­pa­nies like Arbor­gen are devel­op­ing GE trees for bio­fu­els, rais­ing the specter of irre­versible biotech con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of native forests.⁵¹ An EPA study found that GE grass­es can pol­li­nate wild grass­es as far as 13 miles away.⁵²

The U.S. For­est Ser­vice found that GE grass “has the poten­tial to adverse­ly impact all 175 nation­al forests and grass­lands.“⁵³ Between cel­lu­lose-digest­ing GE enzymes used in the ethanol plants (which could escape if mis­han­dled) and GE trees and grass­es (some car­ry­ing sim­i­lar enzymes) plant­ed out­doors where they can spread, the eco­log­i­cal dam­age is incal­cu­la­ble.⁵⁴

Resis­tance to GE crops has been strong in Europe, Africa and else­where, based large­ly on health con­cerns about eat­ing GE foods. Since fuel crops aren’t intend­ed as food, the biotech indus­try is seiz­ing on this back door entry to their markets.

Polluting Processes

Ethanol refiner­ies are dirty, ener­gy and water inten­sive facil­i­ties. Some pro­posed plants would oper­ate incin­er­a­tors capa­ble of burn­ing tox­ic waste streams like trash, tires, plas­tics, and wood waste as well as less con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed ani­mal, crop, for­est and food pro­duc­tion wastes. Each pro­duces its own set of con­t­a­m­i­nants, released into the air, land and water. The dirt­i­est would use muni­cal sol­id waste, con­struc­tion and demo­li­tion debris, tires, and treat­ed tele­phone poles. Even “wheat straw” was found to have chlo­rine lev­els sev­en times high­er than the coal it was being burned with, con­tribut­ing to increased tox­ic air emis­sions.⁵⁵

Among the more com­mon tox­ic pol­lu­tants are volatile organ­ic com­pounds such as acetalde­hyde, acetic acid, acrolein, formalde­hyde, methanol and fur­fur­al. State envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions are very weak and air pol­lu­tion per­mits fail to require that these emis­sions be mon­i­tored on a con­tin­u­ous basis.⁵⁶ Ethanol itself is high­ly flam­ma­ble and a pol­lu­tant, pre­sent­ing a fur­ther risk to com­mu­ni­ties.⁵⁷

Sustainably Subsidized

Ethanol is sub­si­dized to the tune of $1.10 to $1.30/gallon, with bio­fu­els in total get­ting $92 bil­lion from 2006–2012.⁵⁸ Cel­lu­losic ethanol has fur­ther fund­ing and cred­its such as the 50% write off in the Tax Relied and Health Care Act of 2006. The 2008 Farm Bill added $1.01/gallon. The Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) biomass/biorefinery research facil­i­ty received $110 mil­lion in 2006 and expects $400 mil­lion in 2009. Oth­er DOE grants are offered and fur­ther incen­tives are giv­en on state and local lev­els. This mon­ey could go much fur­ther if invest­ed in con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind, solar, tidal, closed loop geot­her­mal and micro hydro. The need for com­bustible fuels in trans­porta­tion can be elim­i­nat­ed with the use of elec­tric cars (and plug-in hybrids in the short term), using wind-pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty, at a cost less than $1/gallon gaso­line equiv­a­lent.⁵⁹

Increas­ing the aver­age mileage of pas­sen­ger cars and SUVs by 3–5 miles per gal­lon would dwarf the effects of all pos­si­ble bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion from all sources of bio­mass avail­able in the U.S. Inflat­ing pas­sen­ger car tires prop­er­ly today will have more impact on the ener­gy inde­pen­dence of U.S. than the 2012 ethanol pro­duc­tion require­ments.⁶⁰ Pro­mot­ing con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy mea­sures, pub­lic tran­sit, effi­cient dis­tri­b­u­tion, and local­ized pro­duc­tion would be most effec­tive and are even­tu­al neces­si­ties. In light of these need­ed changes, it’s clear that bio­fu­els are not a tran­si­tion tech­nol­o­gy⁶¹ as they are wast­ing pre­cious resources while fur­ther­ing the sta­tus quo. It should come as no sur­prise that some of the biggest cor­po­rate investors into bio­fu­els are the multi­na­tion­al Big Oil com­pa­nies.⁶²

Cel­lu­losic fuels are clear­ly the wrong tech­nol­o­gy in light of cli­mate, bio­di­ver­si­ty, food, water, and ener­gy crises.⁶³

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Old Footnotes

1. Renew­able Ener­gy World. “$84 Mil­lion for the First Tires-to-Ethanol Facil­i­ty,” pub­lished March 23, 2006. www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2006/03/84-million-for-the-first-tires-to-ethanol-facility-44428
   
2. “Enerkem Bio­fu­el & Bio­chem­i­cal Plant Enters Start-up Phase. www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/01/enerkem-biofuel-biochemical-plant-enters-start-up-phase-54482
   
3. DOE and NREL com­mis­sioned study by Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty. Ker­stet­ter et al. “Assess­ment Poten­tial for Con­ver­sion of Pulp and Paper Sludge to Ethanol Fuel”, 1997. www.energy.wsu.edu/documents/renewables/PulpPaperToEthanol.pdf
   
4.  
5. Bio­Cy­cle; Oct 2001; 42, 10; ABI/INFORM Glob­al pg. 23 www.ithaca.edu/staff/mbrown/usingmsw.pdf
   
6. Fuel Ethanol Pro­duc­tion, DEO, Genomics:GTL. http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/ethanolproduction.shtml#improve
   
7. Envi­ron­ment Cana­da. (1999). “Wood-Ethanol Report.” http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/WoodEthanolReport.html
   
8. Rapi­er, R. (2006, Octo­ber 23). “Cel­lu­losic Ethanol vs. Bio­mass Gasi­fi­ca­tion.” From R‑Squared Ener­gy http://i‑rsquared.blogspot.com/2006/10/cellulosic-ethanol-vs-biomass.html
   
9. Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act, passed into law under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion on Decem­ber 19, 2007. New bio­fu­el stan­dards list­ed in Title II Sec­tion 203 of HR6 Infor­ma­tion may be accessed at: www.GovTrack.us. H.R. 6–110th Con­gress (2007): Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act of 2007, via GovTrack.us, a data­base of fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110‑6
   
10. Envi­ron­men­tal and Ener­gy Study Insti­tute. “Cel­lu­losic Fact­sheet,” July 2008. www.eesi.org/files/eesi_cellethanol_factsheet_072308.pdf
    
11. Supra #5 DOE Genomics
    
12. Ern­st­ing and Paul. “Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion Bio­fu­els: An Unproven Future Tech­nol­o­gy with Unkown Risks.” www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/agrofuels/Secon_Generation_Biofuels.pdf
    
13. Dr. Tad Patzek. Depart­ment of Civ­il and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, CA. “Mass and Ener­gy Bal­ances of the switch­grass-ethanol cylce. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/TWSwitchgrass.pdf
    
14. FIGURES FROM RACHEL (link)
    
15. Stew­art. Forest2Market. Emerg­ing Trends: “The Chang­ing Sup­ply Chain: The effects of wood-to-ener­gy pro­duc­tion on the LBM mar­ket.” www.building-products.com/readArticles.aspx?ID=2728
    
16. “Esti­mat­ing Water Qual­i­ty, Air Qual­i­ty and Soil Car­bon Ben­e­fits of the Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram”, FAPRI, Col­lege of Agri­cul­ture, Food and Nat­ur­al Resources, Jan­u­ary 2007.
    www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/606586_hr.pdf
    
17. Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund fact­sheet, 2008. www.nativeecosystems.org/documents/CRPFactSheet
    
18. A emis­sion equiv­a­lent of 15 mil­lion cars on the road if CRP lands of only 3 states were con­vert­ed to bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion accord­ing to the arti­cle “Car­bon, Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram and Native Prairie.” Ducks Unlim­it­ed. April 2008.
    
19. CGIAR (Con­sul­ta­tive Group on Inter­na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Research) (1997) Report of the study on CGIAR research pri­or­i­ties for mar­gin­al lands. Tech­ni­cal Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of the CGIAR. www.cgiar.org/corecollection/index.cfm?Page=search&CatalogID=332
    
20. Ducks Unlim­it­ed. “Car­bon, Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram and Native Prairie”, Ducks Unlim­it­ed, April 2008
    
21. BirdLife Inter­na­tion­al. “Cau­tion to Fur­ther Bio­fu­els Devel­op­ment.” www.birdlife.org/eu/EU_policy/Biofuels/eu_biofuels7.html
    
22. Rajagopal, D. (2007) Rethink­ing cur­rent strate­gies for bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion in India. Paper pre­sent­ed at the Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Link­ages in Water and Ener­gy in Devel­op­ing Coun­tries. Organ­ised by IWMI and FAO, Hyder­abad, India, 29–30 Jan­u­ary 2007.www.iwmi.cgiar.org/EWMA/files/papers/rajagopal_biofuels_final_Mar02.pdf
    
23. Mad­dox, T., Pri­at­na, D., Gemi­ta, E. & Salam­pessy, A. (2007) The con­ser­va­tion of tigers and oth­er wildlife in oil palm plan­ta­tions. Jam­bi Province, Suma­tra, Indone­sia. ZSL Con­ser­va­tion Report No. 7. The Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don, London.
    
24. Thoenes, P. (2006) Bio­fu­els and com­mod­i­ty mar­kets – palm oil focus. Paper rep­re­sent­ed in AgraIn­for­ma con­fer­ence, Brus­sels, 24–25 Octo­ber 2006https://silo.tips/download/biofuels-and-commodity-markets-palm-oil-focus-1-p-thoenes-23-fao-commodities-and
    
25. Renew­able Fuels Agency. “Gal­lagher Review of the Indi­rect Effects of Bio­fu­els Pro­duc­tion,” July 2008. www.dft.gov.uk/rfa/_db/_documents/Report_of_the_Gallagher_review.pdf
    
26. Govt On Spot Over Bio­fu­el Production.The Cit­i­zen (Dar es Salaam) 23 July 2008. http://allafrica.com/stories/200807240051.html
    
27. “Agro­fu­els in Africa: the impact on land, food and forests”, African Bio­di­ver­si­ty Net­work, July 2007
    And see, “Bio­fu­el Land Grab­bing in North­ern Ghana”, RAINS/ABN, April 2008
    
28. Eth­nic Com­mu­ni­ty Devel­op­ment Forum. “Bio­fu­el by Decree” — Unmask­ing Bur­ma’s Bio-Ener­gy Fias­co. www.terraper.org/what_new_view.php?id=36
    
29. Expan­sion of soya in Latin Amer­i­ca has dis­placed hun­dreds of thou­sands, as has cane expan­sion in Brazil and oil palm expan­sion in Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca. In Colum­bia and Indone­sia peo­ple have been removed vio­lent­ly.
    Agro­fu­els and the Myth of Mar­gin­al Lands: a brief­ing pre­pared by The Gaia Foun­da­tion, EcoNexus, Bio­fu­el­watch, African Bio­di­ver­si­ty Net­work, Sal­va La Sel­va and Watch Indone­sia. Sep­tem­ber 2008. www.gaiafoundation.org/documents/Agrofuels&MarginalMyth.pdf
    
30. Posi­tion Paper on Jat­ropha and Large Scale Project Devel­op­ment, FACT, June, 2007. Fuels from Agri­cul­ture in Com­mer­cial Tech­nol­o­gy (FACT), an infor­ma­tion cen­tre based in the Nether­lands. www.fact-fuels.org/media_en/Position_Paper_on_Jatropha_Curcas
    
31. Supra, Rajagopal
    
32. Jongschaap, R.E.E., Cor­ré, W.J., Bindra­ban, P.S. & Bran­den­burg, W.A. (2007) Claims and facts on Jat­ropha cur­cas L. – Glob­al Jat­ropha cur­cas eval­u­a­tion, breed­ing and prop­a­ga­tion pro­gramme. Plant Research Inter­na­tion­al, Wagenin­gen, UR. www.fact-fuels.org/media_en/Claims_and_Facts_on_Jatropha_-WUR
    
33. Pimentel and Patzek. Nation­al Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, March 2005. “Ethanol Pro­duc­tion Using Corn, Switch­grass, and Wood; Biodiesel Pro­duc­tion Using Soy­bean and Sun­flower.” http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/NRRethanol.2005.pdf
    
34. W.F.Laurance. 2007. Switch to corn pro­motes Ama­zon defor­esta­tion. Sci­ence. Vol. 318, no. 5857
    
35. Mon­biot, G. (2007, Novem­ber 15). “The West­ern Appetite for Bio­fu­els is Caus­ing Star­va­tion in the Poor World,” The Guardian. Retrieved June/July 2008. www.forestrycenter.org/headlines.cfm?refid=100798
    
36. Depart­ment of Ener­gy. US Prod­uct Sup­plied for Crude Oil and Petro­le­um Prod­ucts. http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm
    
37. Ener­gy Pol­i­cy Act of 2005. Sec­tion 1501 man­dates 7.5 bil­lion gal­lons of ethanol use by 2012. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h6enr.txt.pdf
    
38. Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act, passed into law under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion on Decem­ber 19, 2007. New bio­fu­el stan­dards list­ed in Title II Sec­tion 203 of HR6 Infor­ma­tion may be accessed at: www.GovTrack.us. H.R. 6–110th Con­gress (2007): Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act of 2007, via GovTrack.us, a data­base of fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110‑6
    
39. Tad Patzek. “Mass and Ener­gy Bal­ances of the Switch­grass-Ethanol Cycle,” July 9, 2008. Depart­ment of Civ­il and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, CA 94720. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/TWSwitchgrass.pdf
    
40. DOE/USDA report by Per­lack et al. (2005). http://feedstockreview.ornl.gov/pdf/billion_ton_vision.pdf
    
41. Eco­nom­ic Research Service/USDA. “Major Uses of Land in the US,” 2002/EIB-14. www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB14/eib14a.pdf
    
42. ENat­ur­al Resource Con­ser­va­tion Service/USDA Soil Ero­sion Brief, 2006. www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/outlook/Soil%20Erosion.pdf
    
43. “Water Impli­ca­tions of Bio­fu­els Pro­duc­tion in the Unit­ed States,” the Octo­ber 2007 Report in Brief, at this site of The Nation­al Acad­e­mies. http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/biofuels_brief_final.pdf
    
44. Var­i­ous Stud­ies — many high­light­ed with­in The Real Cost of Agro­fu­els Report: Impacts on Food, Forests, Peo­ple, and Cli­mate. www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/publications/Truecostagrofuels.pdf
    
45. Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy being par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous as they are com­plete­ly human-made with no nat­ur­al foun­da­tion. Agro­fu­els: Towards a real­i­ty check in nine key areas, pp. 14–15; Nicholas Wade, “Sci­en­tists Trans­plant Genome of Bac­te­ria,” New York Times, June 29, 2007.
    
46. Action Group on Ero­sion, Tech­nol­o­gy and Con­cen­tra­tion. ETC group pub­li­ca­tion on “Extreme Genet­ic Engi­neer­ing”. www.etcgroup.org/en/materials/publications.html?pub_id=602
    
47. Depart­ment of Ener­gy – Joint Genome Insti­tute. “DOE JGI Direc­tor Eddy Rubin High­lights the Genomics of Plant-based Bio­fu­els in the Jour­nal Nature,” Press release August 13, 2008. www.jgi.doe.gov/News/news_8_13_08.html
    
48. Green Car Con­gress. “Researchers Mod­i­fy­ing Corn With Genes to Pro­duce Enzymes to Enable Sim­pler Pro­duc­tion of Cel­lu­losic Ethanol.” www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/researchers-mod.html
    And see Phil McKen­na. “Bio­fu­el Corn makes Cow Bug Enzyme to Digest Itself,” April 2008. www.newscientist.com/article/dn13619
    Also note: USDA dereg­u­lat­ing Syn­gen­ta corn. “Will USDA Head Vil­sack Cheer­lead Syn­gen­ta’s New Con­tro­ver­sial Bio­fu­el Franken­corn?” www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_16885.cfm
    
49. Tilman, D., Reich, P. B. & Knops, J. M. H. Nature 441, 629–632 (2006).] , and Tilman, D., Reich, P. B., Knops, J., Wedin, D., Mielke, T. & Lehman, C. Sci­ence 294, 843–845 (2001)
    
50. ‘Adding Bio­fu­els to the Inva­sive Species’, Fire, S. Rathu, et a., DOI: 10.1126/science.1129313,Science 313, 1742 (2006)
    
51. GISP (Glob­al Inva­sive Species Pro­gramme) (2008) Bio­fu­el crops and the use of non-native species: mit­i­gat­ing the risks of inva­sion. www.gisp.org/index.asp
    
52. Peter­mann, A. and Tokar, B. 2007. Cel­lu­losic fuels, GE trees and the con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of native forests. In: R. Smolk­er, et al. The True Cost of Agro­fu­els: Impacts on Food, Forests, Peo­ple and Cli­mate. www.globalforestcoalition.org/img/userpics/File/publications/Truecostagrofuels.pdf
    
53. “Genes From Engi­neered Grass Spread for Miles, Study Finds,” New York Times, Sept. 21, 2004. Yes! Books. Sep­tem­ber 2003 www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/business/21grass.html
    
54. Ibid.
    
55. Jef­fery M. Smith. Seeds of Decep­tion: Expos­ing Indus­try and Gov­ern­ment Lies About the Safe­ty of the Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Foods You’re Eat­ing. http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/Home/index.cfm
    
56. Ida­ho Nation­al Engi­neer­ing and Envi­ron­men­tal Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Ida­ho Falls, ID. “Selec­tive Har­vest of High­er Val­ue Wheat Straw Com­po­nents,” study reveals cor­ro­sion to the boil­ers from chlo­rine present in the bio­mass.
    Rel­e­vant study on switch­grass bio­mass by, NREL. Chari­ton Val­ley Bio­mass Project in Iowa. 2001.
    
57. Con­tin­u­ous Emis­sions Mon­i­tors www.ejnet.org/toxics/cems/
    
58. Ethanol Fact Sheet www.energyjusticenetwork.org/ethanol/factsheet
    
59. Doug Koplow, “Bio­fu­el at what cost? — Gov­ern­ment sup­port for ethanol and biodiesel in the Unit­ed States: 2007 Update,” Earth Track, Inc., Oct 2007, p1 www.earthtrack.net/earthtrack/library/BiofuelsUSupdate2007.pdf
    
60. Plug-in hybrid and elec­tric car advo­cates argue that even if wind pow­er cer­tifi­cates were pur­chased to ensure that elec­tric­i­ty use would­n’t be sup­port­ing our large­ly coal, nuclear and gas-pow­ered elec­tric grid, it would still cost under $1/gallon gaso­line equiv­a­lent. See the fol­low­ing web­sites for more info: www.pluginpartners.org
    www.pluginamerica.com
    www.calcars.org
    www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com
    
61. Dr. Tad W. Patzek, “The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca Meets the Plan­et Earth,” Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Berke­ley, Aug 21, 2005. www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/08/NPC_briefing_Patzek.pdf
    
62. Anti-Tran­si­tion Argue­ments (work in progress)
    
63. BP & Vere­ni­um Form Cel­lu­losic Ethanol Ven­ture http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/02/bp-verenium-form-cellulosic-ethanol-venture?cmpid=WNL-Wednesday-February25-2009

    Also, Vera­Sun Ener­gy to sell assets to Valero Ener­gy http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D966D3180.ht

    And Big Oil Steps Into Brazil­ian Ethanol http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2008/05/big-oil-steps-into-brazilian-ethanol-52475

    And, Shell, Iogen Form Cel­lu­losic Ethanol Devel­op­ment Alliance.
    Shel­l’s own web­site claims being one of the world’s largest dis­trib­u­tors of bio­fu­els — see Bio­fu­els — About Shell
    

64. Dr. Tad Patzek, “How Can We Out­live Our Way of Life?” Paper pre­pared for the 20th Round Table on Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment of Bio­fu­els: Is the Cure Worse then the Dis­ease? Septemp­ber 10th, 2007. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/OECDSept102007TWPatzek.pdf

Footnotes

1. Renew­able Ener­gy World. “$84 Mil­lion for the First Tires-to-Ethanol Facil­i­ty,” pub­lished March 23, 2006. www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2006/03/84-million-for-the-first-tires-to-ethanol-facility-44428 ↩︎
2. “Enerkem Bio­fu­el & Bio­chem­i­cal Plant Enters Start-up Phase. www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/01/enerkem-biofuel-biochemical-plant-enters-start-up-phase-54482 ↩︎
3. DOE and NREL com­mis­sioned study by Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty. Ker­stet­ter et al. “Assess­ment Poten­tial for Con­ver­sion of Pulp and Paper Sludge to Ethanol Fuel”, 1997. www.energy.wsu.edu/documents/renewables/PulpPaperToEthanol.pdf ↩︎
4. Using MSW and indus­tri­al residues as ethanol feed­stocks Jacque­line D Broder; Robert A Har­ris; Jef­frey T Ran­ney ↩︎
5. Bio­Cy­cle; Oct 2001; 42, 10; ABI/INFORM Glob­al pg. 23 www.ithaca.edu/staff/mbrown/usingmsw.pdf ↩︎
6. Fuel Ethanol Pro­duc­tion, DEO, Genomics:GTL. http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/ethanolproduction.shtml#improve ↩︎
7. Envi­ron­ment Cana­da. (1999). “Wood-Ethanol Report.” http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/WoodEthanolReport.html ↩︎
8. Rapi­er, R. (2006, Octo­ber 23). “Cel­lu­losic Ethanol vs. Bio­mass Gasi­fi­ca­tion.” From R‑Squared Ener­gy http://i‑rsquared.blogspot.com/2006/10/cellulosic-ethanol-vs-biomass.html ↩︎
9. Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act, passed into law under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion on Decem­ber 19, 2007. New bio­fu­el stan­dards list­ed in Title II Sec­tion 203 of HR6 Infor­ma­tion may be accessed at: www.GovTrack.us. H.R. 6–110th Con­gress (2007): Ener­gy Inde­pen­dence and Secu­ri­ty Act of 2007, via GovTrack.us, a data­base of fed­er­al leg­is­la­tion http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?tab=summary&bill=h110‑6 ↩︎
10. Envi­ron­men­tal and Ener­gy Study Insti­tute. “Cel­lu­losic Fact­sheet,” July 2008. www.eesi.org/files/eesi_cellethanol_factsheet_072308.pdf ↩︎
11. Supra #5 DOE Genomics ↩︎
12. Ern­st­ing and Paul. “Sec­ond Gen­er­a­tion Bio­fu­els: An Unproven Future Tech­nol­o­gy with Unkown Risks.” www.wrm.org.uy/subjects/agrofuels/Secon_Generation_Biofuels.pdf ↩︎
13. Dr. Tad Patzek. Depart­ment of Civ­il and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, CA. “Mass and Ener­gy Bal­ances of the switch­grass-ethanol cylce. http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/Biofuels/TWSwitchgrass.pdf ↩︎
14. FIGURES FROM RACHEL (link) ↩︎
15. Stew­art. Forest2Market. Emerg­ing Trends: “The Chang­ing Sup­ply Chain: The effects of wood-to-ener­gy pro­duc­tion on the LBM mar­ket.” www.building-products.com/readArticles.aspx?ID=2728 ↩︎
16. “Esti­mat­ing Water Qual­i­ty, Air Qual­i­ty and Soil Car­bon Ben­e­fits of the Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram”, FAPRI, Col­lege of Agri­cul­ture, Food and Nat­ur­al Resources, Jan­u­ary 2007.
    www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/606586_hr.pdf ↩︎
17. Envi­ron­men­tal Defense Fund fact­sheet, 2008. www.nativeecosystems.org/documents/CRPFactSheet ↩︎
18. A emis­sion equiv­a­lent of 15 mil­lion cars on the road if CRP lands of only 3 states were con­vert­ed to bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion accord­ing to the arti­cle “Car­bon, Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram and Native Prairie.” Ducks Unlim­it­ed. April 2008. ↩︎
19. CGIAR (Con­sul­ta­tive Group on Inter­na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Research) (1997) Report of the study on CGIAR research pri­or­i­ties for mar­gin­al lands. Tech­ni­cal Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee of the CGIAR. www.cgiar.org/corecollection/index.cfm?Page=search&CatalogID=332 ↩︎
20. Ducks Unlim­it­ed. “Car­bon, Con­ser­va­tion Reserve Pro­gram and Native Prairie”, Ducks Unlim­it­ed, April 2008 ↩︎