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Happy Earth Day: A New Study On Corn Stover Slams BiofuelsJust in time for Earth Day, a new study regarding biofuels made from "stover," the residue of corn plants has caused a stir in the environmental community, petroleum industry and the Whitehouse.
The AP News reported on the study, which was released on Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change and concludes that "biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline." The study cost $500,000 and was paid for by the U.S. federal government. An online copy of the study is not yet available.
The results are bad news for "cellulosic" biofuels, fuels produced from wood, grass or the inedible parts of plants, (i.e.: stover) and for the Obama administration, which has ponied up more than a billion dollars in federal support for cellulosic biofuels. AP News reported that "half of the initial market in cellulosics is expected to be derived from corn residue."
With the U.S. being the largest corn producer in the world, converting corn residue into biofuel was a seemingly efficient way to mitigate climate change. However, what the study found is that although biofuels burn more cleanly, extracting stover from the fields, rather than just leaving it on the soil as a nutrient-regenerating mulch, releases enough carbon dioxide from the soil to make the extraction of stover 7 percent worse for the atmosphere than the process used for regular gasoline. Furthermore, removing stover means farmers have to make up for the loss of nutrients to the soil using fertilizers.
This study also means corn stover-based fuel does not meet the 60 percent CO2 emissions reduction standard mandated by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, meaning biofuels will likely not qualify as viable renewable fuels. This means producers won't be earning the subsidies needed for the expensive production of biofuels and refiners would have no interest in them because they will no longer meet the criteria to fulfill biofuel quotas.
However, business and finance media outlet TheStreet reported that biofuel-related stocks do not appear to be suffering too badly yet.
Invested parties and Obama administration officials were quick to jump on the reports and make criticisms. Brooke Coleman, Executive Director of the Advanced Ethanol Council had this to say about the AP News article: "In reality, the study confirms what we already know; that excessive agricultural residue removal is bad for the soil and has negative impacts on climate. The article says little about real world stover-to-ethanol fuel because it uses corn stover removal rates far exceeding those used in the field. The analysis also models a one-size-fits-all approach to managing soil carbon that, by definition, ignores how farmers manage their land. While it’s fair to model whatever scenario you want in the hypothetical, if it’s not happening in the real world then the modeling outcomes are something times zero. Our industry is more than willing to engage in important discussions about the climate impacts of using agricultural residues to make fuel, but the headline-chasing strategy of trying to sell extreme modeling assumptions as the norm does not facilitate that process."
Although the studies may mean the last gasp for biofuels, this Vice Motherboard article points out perhaps the solution involves looking away from figuring out how to better supply fuel and rather focus on how to decrease the demand for it through more energy-efficient vehicles.