A new study released by the University of Michigan in the Aug. 25 journal of Climate Change is causing a ripple through the fuel industry, as it contends that more carbon dioxide is actually released through biofuels than gasoline.
Biofuels were always pegged as being more environmentally friendly because it was assumed they emitted little to no carbon when being grown. The study challenges this assumption.
"To verify the extent to which that assumption is true, you really need to analyze what's going on on the farmland, where the biofuels are being grown," University of Michigan Energy Institute research professor and study author John DeCicco told The Detroit Free Press.
"People haven't done that in the past—they felt like they didn't need to."
The study incorporates tailpipe emissions and crop growth—which are instrumental in the growing of crops used for biofuels—and found that carbon emissions during that period actually only absorbed 37 percent of biofuel production from 2005 to 2013, directly contradicting previous studies that claimed that using biofuels emitted less carbon than using gasoline.
Promotion of biofuel use is based on what's known as the lifecycle analysis, which contends that CO2 released when the fuel is burned originates from carbon dioxide that biofuels removed from the atmosphere during the photosynthetic process.
"When you look at what's actually happening on the land, you find that not enough carbon is being removed from the atmosphere to balance what's coming out of the tailpipe," DeCicco said. "[Biofuels] is unambiguously worse than petroleum gasoline," he added.
To calculate carbon emissions, DeCicco employed his Annual Basis Carbon method, which counts carbon emissions using chemistry of the location where it is generated. It differs from the lifecycle analysis in that it incorporates the stock-and-flow nature of the carbon cycle.
The use of biofuel and other products, including ethanol, tripled from 4.2 billion gallons in 2005 to 14.6 billion gallons in 2013, supported by the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard and California's Low-Carbon Fuel Standard to promote these types of fuels for transportation purposes. Biofuels, usually consisting of corn or soybeans, accounted for approximately 6 percent of all fuel sources in the U.S. in 2013.
Emily Cassidy, a research analyst with the Environmental Working Group, welcomed the report, saying the Renewable Fuel Standard needs to be looked at more closely.
"There is mounting evidence that the Renewable Fuel Standard has been bad for the environment and the climate, and this paper is a new take on that," she told The Detroit Free Press.
Other scientists are taking issue with the study, pointing out that it was funded by the American Petroleum Institute.
DeCicco said the API was the only group willing to finance the study, and emphasized that the report is peer-reviewed.
Others are critiquing the study's short-sightedness. Harvard University geologist Daniel Schrag told Climate Central that eight years is not sufficient to measure bioenergy's ultimate contribution to improving the climate.
"In the long run, there's no question that biofuels replacing petroleum is a benefit," he said.
Choosing a timeline on which to measure biofuels' impact is one of the key difficulties in determining the actual benefit of using biofuels, and is the subject of continuing debate at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The University of Michigan report only focused on the eight years in question. However, other scientists contend that the benefit to biofuel use is that the increased number of crops will suck in excess carbon dioxide emitted by biofuel production.
Another biofuel supporter, Jim Zook, contends that other studies have decisively shown that biofuels substantially lower greenhouse emissions, compared to gasoline. Zook is the executive director of the Corn Marketing Program of Michigan and Michigan Corn Growers Association.
To Zook, biofuels have an added advantage: they produce a byproduct which can then be used for a high-protein livestock feed.
"We are actually getting more products by going through the ethanol process, and being better stewards of our resources by doing that," Zook told the Detroit Free Press.
Princeton University researcher Timothy Searchinger has long criticized biofuels as a less than ideal solution to curb increasing carbon emissions.
"The U.S. is not coming close to offsetting the carbon released by burning biofuels through additional crop growth," Searchinger told Climate Central.
The controversial study was published shortly after Reuters reported that the EPA has not issued a report to Congress on the environmental impact of the Renewable Fuel Standard since 2011. Federal law mandates the EPA provide a report every three years.
The EPA said it will complete a report by the end of next year. The reports are used to set the amounts of biofuels that must be incorporated into American diesel and gasoline supplies each year.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.