The God Species_ How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans - Mark Lynas [66]
Currently more than 40 percent of the U.S. corn crop goes into producing ethanol, which is mostly mixed with gasoline to fuel conventional cars.26 Even though this raises food prices and reduces the U.S. surplus that can be sold on world markets, the ethanol industry is supported by a $6 billion subsidy scheme aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In Europe, biofuels are similarly supported with “environmental” subsidies and fuel mandates. All these supports and promotion schemes for liquid biofuels should be scrapped, because of overwhelming scientific evidence that using land to produce energy crops delivers no climate benefits at all once agricultural emissions and land-use change are taken into account. This is obvious in the most egregious example of all: the clearing of tropical rain forest in Malaysia and Indonesia for oil-palm plantations, at least a third of which are used to produce feedstocks for biofuels (the rest goes into processed food, from chocolate to cooking oil, and cosmetics). Every year vast areas of highly biodiverse rain forest are being felled or burned in the Indonesian islands of Borneo and Sumatra for conversion to oil palm; the devastation has been highlighted by Greenpeace and many others.27 Overall, 1.7 million hectares of Indonesian forest were converted to oil-palm plantation between 1990 and 2005,28 and the rate of destruction is accelerating. Scientists have calculated that the burning of peatland rain forest to free up land for plantations churns out more than 1,500 tonnes of carbon per hectare.29 Mopping this CO2 up using palm-oil-derived biodiesel would take nearly 700 years. Biofuels derived from cleared rain forest land should not just be discouraged—they should be outright banned.
Estimates of future land take for biofuels production range up to well over a billion hectares globally,30 more than double the 400 million hectares that remain if we are to respect the proposed planetary boundary. Once the need to produce more food is taken into consideration, it is clear that biofuels can only ever be a marginal contributor to world energy supplies. This conclusion has important implications. Most critically, liquid fossil fuels used in the world’s vehicle fleet of cars and trucks cannot simply be replaced with liquid biofuels. Instead, surface transportation must be almost entirely converted to electricity. This is starting to happen already: All-electric cars or plug-in hybrids are beginning to hit the mass market and will be particularly appropriate for urban or suburban settings, where the limited range of current battery technology is less of a concern. In the medium to long term, however, countrywide electrical-charging infrastructure will need to be built that allows electric cars to deliver all the range and refueling convenience of gas vehicles. A U.S.-based company called Better Place has already signed contracts in Israel, Denmark, and other countries to pioneer battery-swapping stations that will allow motorists to swap dead batteries for fully charged ones in less time than it once took them to fill their tanks. If batteries can be designed that charge faster and last longer, most of us could simply plug in our cars at home or while parked in town—a much better option than driving to a gas station and having to line up to pay afterward.
Electric is clearly the way to go for the majority of surface transportation. This includes mopeds and bikes as well as large trucks. With oil prices rising and local air pollution worsening in developing-world megacities, the tipping point may come even sooner than many pundits think and be driven by demand in fast-growing countries like China. All the major automotive companies