Questions and answers about bioenergy
Will bioenergy make bread more expensive?
Do Energy crops take land away from agriculture?
Do people in developing countries have to go hungry because of bioenergy?
Do biodiesel causes more CO2 than it saves?
Do bioenergy causes monocultures?
Do our biodiesel destroys the rainforest?
Will bioenergy make bread more expensive?
- Photo: Schmack
Only a fraction of the agricultural goods produced worldwide have been used to date as bioenergy. Despite this, the world prices for cereals such as wheat and maize have shot up. The reason: Crops failed because of extreme droughts. At the same time, the stocks of the large agricultural traders are very low. In addition: An increasing number of people, especially in the growth regions of Asia, want to consume more meat and milk products. This leads to disproportionately high consumption of cereals and oilseeds as feedstuffs.
Result: The prices rise. Therefore, worldwide it pays for farmers to invest in cultivation and to till fallow fields. As farmers have often achieved very low income only for their products in recent years, in many regions of the earth agricultural production has been abandoned and there has been insufficient investment.
Cereal prices on the world markets should however not been confused with the price of bread from the baker next door. The proportion of the price for the end product bread attributable to the cost of the raw material grain is very low (3.6%). The grain accounts for less than 10 cent of bread costing 2 euro. Other costs such as wages, processing and taxes are far more important.
Do Energy crops take land away from agriculture?
Electricity, heat and fuels can be produced from energy crops (e.g. rapeseed, maize, grain), from wood as well as from residual materials (e.g. slurry and biowaste). In 2007, energy crops grew on 2 mln hectare in Germany; this is 12 % of the land available for agriculture.
According to a study by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, by 2030 this area could be more than doubled to 4.4 mln hectares - without calling into question the food supply.
The arable land can of course only be committed once – but biomass is also available in the form of residual materials from food and feedstuff production, e.g. turnip leaves, slurry, manure and by-products such as potato peelings. Agriculture and bioenergy therefore do not have to compete against each other but instead have long since gone hand in hand.
If the many different sources of residual materials are added to the specially cultivated energy crops, this potential suffices to cover 25% of Germany's energy supply with bioenergy by 2050.
Do people in developing countries have to go hungry because of bioenergy?
Despite a 5% increase in the world cereal harvest in 2007, prices on the agricultural commodities markets rose by massive amounts. Several factors are responsible for this:
- Crop failures due to climate extremes in important growing countries
(Australia, North America, Eastern Europe)
- worldwide historically low stocks
- increased demand for grain as a feedstuff due to increasing meat
consumption, especially in China and India
- despite rising prices, there is no fall in demand in the growth regions (China,
India) due to increased purchasing power
Due to the relatively low producer prices in recent years, land areas continue to lie fallow all over the world. There have also not yet been any new investments in increasing agricultural production – which is why there are now bottlenecks. Against this background, investors from outside the market with speculative intentions are increasingly pushing their way onto the markets for agricultural raw materials. The price trend is becoming increasingly volatile and dissociated from the real relationship between supply and demand.
On the currently tight world agricultural markets, the increasing demand for biofuels is also making a direct or indirect contribution to the shortage of food and feedstuff supply. In case of doubt priority must always be given to food production - food first!
Tank and plate are both possible
In 2007, only 5 % (100 mln tonnes) of the world grain harvest (2.1 bln tonnes) was used in the production of biofuels. In view of adequate land and biomass potential, there does not have to be any competition between food production and energy use of biomass. We do not have to decide between "tank or plate". We can have both – if existing potential is developed and sustainably used. Hunger on the other hand is above all a poverty problem. It has to do with fair distribution of wealth and does not mean that too little food has been produced.
Bioenergy as an opportunity
Many small farmers in developing countries have given up in the past due to the pressure of low world market prices and the lack of profitability and have migrated to the cities. Entry into sustainable use of bioenergy provides the opportunity to reverse the trend: - The production of electricity, heat and fuels creates a second economic pillar for farmers.
- Dependence on expensive fossil energy sources is reduced.
- In developing countries, bioenergy offers the cost-effective decentralised
energy supply which is indispensable for all other social and economic
activities.
- In the poorest countries, which traditionally use biomass (e.g. dung, wood)
inefficiently, the supply can be modernised and overexploitation of wood can
be stopped.
Bioenergy leads out of the oil trap and keeps foreign exchange in the country
Fossil fuel share of all imports
India: 38.2%
Ivory Coast: 34.8%
Indonesia: 22.0%
Brazil: 19.2%
Source: WTO World Trade Statistics 2007
Bioenergy is an economic development opportunity for developing countries
The high dependency of many emerging economies and developing countries on imports of fossil fuels together with the oil price rises since the 1970's was one of the decisive factors leading them into debt.
The developing countries continue to have to pay the rising world market prices despite increasingly weaker purchasing power. The proportion of expenditure on the import of fossil energy sources in many developing countries therefore rose, in relation to their export income, to over 50% to 75%. That means, the low income achieved through the sale of local products on the world market are immediately eaten up again by their oil bill.
A rise in the crude oil price by 10 US$ per barrel and year leads to an average fall in gross national product of …
3.0% in the developing countries of Sub-Saharan Africa
1.6% in the highly indebted developing countries
0.8% in the developing countries of South-East Asia
0.4% in the western industrial nations (OECD)
Source: IEA World Energy Outlook 2006
Do biodiesel causes more CO2 than it saves?
The CO2 released during the burning of biomass equals the quantity the plant absorbed during its growth. Renewable biomass in turn absorbs the released quantity of CO2. It is therefore a closed CO2 cycle.
The climate balance of the various biofuels depends on how energy-intensive the cultivation is (e.g. fertilisers, ploughing) and how complicated the transport and conversion are to organise (efficiency e.g. of a biorefinery). From the view of the climate balance therefore, closed, decentralised cycles in which native energy crops are efficiently used are the optimum solution. New methods of biofuel production (BtL - biomass-to-liquid) can further improve the energy and climate balance.
Vegetable oil and rapeseed meal are produced from rap in the oil mill. In the biodiesel plant the vegetable oil is processed to form biodiesel, which can be used as biofuel in cars, trucks, aircraft or ships. Renewable rape re-absorbs the CO2 emitted. The rapeseed meal produced in the oil mill is used as a protein feedstuff in livestock farming. Slurry produced there can in turn be used as an energy source in digesters. Fermentation residues can then be used as fertiliser for the growing of rape. However, additional process energy, e.g. bioenergy, has to be added from outside for the rape cultivation and for operation of the biodiesel plant.
Is biogas stinking?
Correctly operated biogas plants do not stink. An odour nuisance can only be caused by biogas plants if the biomass is not stored properly before or after the process, if the biological process loses its equilibrium or if poorly fermented material is spread back on the fields.
The worry about odour nuisance due to biogas plants (digesters) is therefore to a large extent unjustified nowadays. In fact: Slurry from livestock farming which was first fermented in a digester and used as an energy source before being spread on the fields causes substantially less odour nuisance than unfermented slurry. The methane contained in the slurry is used in the digester to generate electricity and heat. Therefore, this gas which is extremely harmful to the environment, can no longer escape into the atmosphere when the fermentation residues are spread, i.e. the fermented slurry.
In addition, the nutrients in fermented slurry are more readily available for plants.
By returning the fermentation residues to the fields, this valuable fertiliser can therefore reduce use of synthetic fertilisers. The regional nutrient cycle therefore closes via the digester. For adjacent housing a biogas plant is often a gain as the heat for heating the house can be drawn more favourably from the biogas plant than from the house's own natural gas or oil heating system. Agriculture which does not smell at all will in all probability never exist.
Do bioenergy causes monocultures?
At each site crop rotation can be adjusted to achieve optimum yields and soil conservation with energy crops such as rape. Rape can only be grown on the same area every three to four year – a monoculture is therefore excluded.
When energy crops are grown for biogas and biofuels it is also necessary to comply with the cross compliance requirements of the EU. These specify a range of sustainability criteria which each farmer who receives funds from the EU must comply with. Therefore, an excessive proportion of maize in the crop rotation is already prevented today. According to German specifications, a range of agricultural law provisions must be conformed to within the scope of "good practice" (GfP), e.g. the Plant Protection Law, the Federal Soil Conservation Law and the Fertiliser Regulations.
These guidelines and the necessary crop rotation forbid the permanent cultivation of the same crop variety. Out of their own economic and ecological interests alone a farmer would not endanger their most valuable possession – high-yield soil – through improper cultivation.
As interest in cultivation for bioenergy increases, innovative cultivation systems particularly sensible in ecological terms are also spreading, e.g.
- Mixed crop cultivation: Energy crops such as maize and sunflowers are
simultaneously grown in the same area, for use in the biogas plant.
- Two-crop systems: A winter and a summer crop are grown during a year,
e.g. winter triticale and sweet sorghum, with which a maximum biomass yield
is achieved. At the same time, herbicides and soil erosion can be avoided.
Do our biodiesel destroys the rainforest?
Palm oil from Indonesia plays no role whatsoever on the German biofuel market. This is because biodiesel made from palm oil becomes solid at low temperatures and is therefore excluded as a fuel in Central and Northern Europe. The Biodiesel Quality Management Association (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Qualitätsmanagement Biodiesel - AGQM) has not found any palm oil since it started taking its unannounced samples from German biodiesel producers since 2004.
The rising demand for food and materials is responsible for destruction of the rainforest. 95% of the worldwide palm oil consumption is used as raw materials in these areas. No matter how it is used: Palm oil which originates from cleared rainforest land must be excluded through strict international sustainability criteria.
It is therefore not much help if the proportionately low use of palm oil in the energy sector only is controlled – all imported agricultural raw materials should be checked with respect to ecological criteria.
Sustainability factors must apply to all usages of agricultural goods - otherwise unsustainable cultivation for food and feedstuffs will simply continue on other areas of land.
Bilateral agreements between the Federal Government and cultivation countries as well as independent local control systems should initially ensure that land areas of particular ecological significance are no longer sequestered for growing biomass. Work on developing a certification system has been underway since February 2007 in order to make imports from sustainable biomass cultivation possible.
The certification of biofuels according to strict sustainability standards can be an important incentive to stop the loss of land areas which are of particular ecological value. But it is also not a panacea for more complex problems which lead to woodland clearances and the loss of biodiversity.
Imports come under the planned EU Sustainability Regulations with international control and certification
In Germany, biofuels are mainly produced from native biomass, namely vegetable oil from rapeseed. Imports of biomass for biofuel production are still marginal compared to imports e.g. of feedstuffs. However they are increasing: US American and Argentinean dumping exports of soya-based biodiesel are already increasingly pushing their way onto the German fuel market. Small and medium-sized German biodiesel manufacturers who back short, regionally anchored production chains are therefore at risk.
Imports from destroyed rainforest areas: Unwelcome in Germany and Europe
With the Biomass Sustainability Regulations of December 2007, the Federal Government introduced conditions for future use of biomass for biofuels. Imports of biomass for biofuels can only be allowed on the German fuel market and attributed to fulfilment of the quotas if the CO2 emissions are at least 30% or (from 2011) 40% below the emissions from conventional fuels.
Biofuels whose biomass has been produced by destroying rainforests or moorland would be quite out of the question for imports to Germany due to their substantially worse climate balance.
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