by Howard Hayden

You may well be wondering whether the title of this essay refers to foolishness about renewable energy or foolishness that is renewable. The answer is Yes. Here we encounter three major problems with biofuels, and some delusional economics about German subsidies.

We get about 3.5% of our energy from biomass, primarily from wood and farm waste. The percentage has dropped from about 1850 when firewood supplied almost 100% of the nation’s energy to about 7% today. At that time of low population, forests were being depleted despite the absence of automobiles, television sets, electric lights, computers, airplanes, and other energy-consuming devices of the modern era.

The first problem, as we have frequently noted, is the low efficiency of chlorophyll in converting solar energy to biomass energy. Combine that low efficiency with the diluteness of sunlight, and consider that the yearround productivity of land is almost always less than one watt (thermal) per square meter of land area in good farming locations. Also, the endearing quality of wood is that it is tightly packed cellulose, unlike grasses and other plants. When all is said and done, a given volume (a railcar for example) of coal contains about 10 times as much energy as an equal volume of baled hay. Imagine replacing every one of those 2,000-meter long coal trains with 10 2,000-meter long trains carrying baled hay.

Bio-derived oils have a much higher energy density, of course, on a par with petroleum. However, it is still necessary to deal with low-density plant matter from huge tracts in order to obtain those oils. The exception is, of course, oils obtained from algae, but the problem becomes one of establishing a controlled environment over equally large tracts of ponds.

In other words, the first major biofuel problem is the massive scale of land and materials-handling involved.

The next problem, caused in large part by the first, is the cost. Biofuels, except for firewood and other simple uses, would not be used at all if it were not for subsidies. Let me quote from The Oil & Gas Journal [1].

The US government spent $4 billion in biofuel subsidies during 2008 to replace roughly 2% of the US gasoline supply. The average cost to the taxpayer of those “substituted” barrels of gasoline was roughly $82/bbl, or $1.95/gal, on top of the retail gasoline price. [1, emphasis added]

Enough said. The third major problem is that energy crops always grow best on good farmland, and therefore displace food crops. I quote from The Guardian [2]

One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in         cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the       biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food      supplies.

According to [Earth Policy Institute director Lester] Brown, the growing demand for US ethanol derived from grains helped to push world grain prices to record highs between late 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the Guardian revealed a secret World Bank report that concluded that the drive for biofuels by American and European governments had pushed up food prices by 75%, in stark contrast to US claims that prices had risen only 2-3% as a result.

To put it succinctly, biofuels are characterized by low land productivity, high prices, and hungry people.

Germany passed the 1991 Electricity Feed-In Law, and then modified it in 2000 to cover 20 years, to require utilities to accept electricity from independent renewable-energy producers, and to pay amounts far in excess of what they pay they pay for conventional electrical energy. Worst of all is the 59-cent per kilowatt-hour that the ratepayers have to pay for PV-produced electricity [3]. “Even on-shore wind, widely regarded as a mature technology, requires feed-in tariffs that exceed the per-kWh cost of conventional electricity by up to 300% to remain competitive.”

[1] Paula Dittrick, “US biofuels policies flawed, study finds,” Oil & Gas Journal, Jan 7, 2010 at http://www.ogj.com/index/ article-display/8902308714/articles/oil-gas- journal/generalinterest- 2/hse/2010/01/us-biofuels policies/QP129867/cmpid=EnlDailyJanuary72010.html

[2] John Vidal, “One quarter of US grain crops fed to cars - not people, new figures show” The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/2010/jan/22/quarter-us-grain-biofuels-food

[3] “Economic impacts from the promotion of renewable energies: The German experience. Final Report,” Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, available at http://www.wind-watch. org/documents/wpcontent/up-loads/Germany-Economics-of renewables- Oct2009.pdf

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