LOCAL NEWS: September 09
Investigating the real threat of bioenergy on our industry
Biofuels Seminar, Stellenbosch University, 3 August 2009
Following the addition of biofuels researchers at Stellenbosch University to the Global Sustainable Bioenergy project (GSB Project), the university recently held a conference with some of the world’s leading experts in the field to discuss a resolution of issues relating to the sustainable production of bioenergy.
The GSB Project is still in its early days, and will only be implemented by governments around the world following a number of international meetings in the next year. However, any preliminary discussions that have taken place have all outlined Africa as having the greatest potential for bioenergy production. With its large land masses that are fairly unpopulated to its historically highly productive landscape, Africa could very well be the epicentre of the global bioenergy market.
So far, this is a certainty: Africa can provide enough bioenergy without impacting on the continent’s food security. The uncertainty is how to achieve this – an uncertainty that has faced many biomass projects that have all failed.
So what makes the GSB Project different? According to Professor August Temu, who works for the World Agroforestry Centre, this project will turn away from previously “western-based” bioenergy plans and ensure instead that ownership of any bioenergy production is by the very people whose land will grow the crops: Africans.
But what has this got to do with the pulp and paper industry? We’ll get to that later.
Prof. Temu kicked off the proceedings with a discussion on “The role of agricultural education in food security for Africa”. His comparison of food security in India and Africa was an eye-opener: India has 1.1 billion inhabitants and food security, while Africa has 770 million inhabitants and no food security. India
This means that all 1.1 billion people in India have access to affordable food. The same cannot be said for Africa’s population with a land area 12 times that of India. Fertilizers are unaffordable to Africans and hence crops are planted year after year in the same soil resulting in the “mining” of nutrients and lower crop yields. Prof. Temu also emphasized the fact that the young people of Africa regard farming as a lowly career, and instead aspire to be doctors, lawyers, engineers etc.
Professor Temu’s solution to these vexing issues is to encourage multi-use or integrated farming methods. This is where trees come into the picture. Livestock, food crops and trees should be integrated into the each farm. This “agricultural diversity” will promote a faster replenishment of the soil and will yield more profitable crops. This is in stark comparison to present African farming techniques, where food crops are grown in monocultures and harvested over a relatively short period.
Another key solution is education. The project will be approaching those on a ground level, whose land will be used, and educate them on the risks and rewards of taking ownership of the biomass plantations. Young Africans need to be educated in modern farming methods and encouraged to go into farming, especially women. Only 15-20% of students in agricultural education in Africa are women.
Finding support will be at a multiple level: regional, national and then global. The project will aim to find a stable framework and policy initially, and then implement it at all levels to induce ownership across the board.
With this basis for a secure bioenergy source, it was very encouraging to hear the extremely passionate and knowledgeable second speaker, Professor Lynd from Dartmouth College, talk about initiatives on exploring the potential of bioenergy globally.
As Prof. Lynd explained, the three prerequisites for the well being of human society are sustainability, prosperity and peace. The dominating factor impacting on these is resource access and utilisation, particularly energy. In about 1980, the world reached the point where land area required to provide for resource consumption and waste assimilation on a sustainable basis (the global environmental footprint) was equivalent to one planet (Wackernagel et al.,2002). In 2003 with a global population of 6 billion people, the global environmental footprint was 1.3 planets. At that time (2003), using India’s consumption, only 0.4 planets were required for sustainable resource supply but, applying the USA’s rate of consumption, 5.1 planets were needed (www.footprintnetwork.org).
During the first industrial revolution, the world was “resource plentiful and people scarce”. Today, during the second industrial revolution, the reverse is true. Hence there is currently a huge reliance on sustainable resources, especially energy. We are now facing multiple resource constraints and high prices. Prof. Lynd points out that a viable path to a sustainable world cannot happen with single isolated changes, but only by multiple, large complementary changes. Thus the initial step for a sustainable resource transition is in realizing currently improbable futures by showing that they are possible. His hypotheses are:
- For all resources and end-use sectors, paths to a sustainable future feature multiple, large, complementary and currently improbable changes.
- To achieve a sustainable transportation sector, we very likely must produce biofuels in large amounts.
Looking at the various pathways from sustainable resources (sunlight, wind, nuclear, geothermal etc.) to human needs requirements (food, energy in various forms and materials), the pathway via sunlight to biomass to biofuels for transport stands out as the only viable option. It may be feasible to operate small passenger vehicles on batteries, but large vehicles, aircraft and machinery would require batteries that contribute to over 80% of the weight. For example, in an aircraft with a full fuel tank, the weight of the fuel is about 42% of its total weight. A battery powered aircraft would require a battery which would exceed 80% of its weight – it would never get off the ground.
Prof. Lynd commented that cellulosic biofuels are the means to producing fuel from plants, on a widespread and large scale basis. This is the focus of all studies. Looking at land productivity, today and in the future, he believes that, in the long term, biofuel yield will increase from 89 GJ fuel/ha to 402 GJ fuel/ha. With this quantum leap in productivity, there will be enough land to produce both food and biofuels sustainably.
Large-scale biofuel production is impeded by two barriers viz; technology and land use. On the technology front, the cost of processing, especially overcoming biomass recalcitrance is the key barrier.
Overcoming this barrier is likely in the medium term. With regard to land use, there appear to be many strategies for producing cellulosic biofuels while maintaining food production and biodiversity, and avoiding significant carbon emissions from land use change. The physical constraint of land availability has led many researchers to reach different conclusions, but as Prof. Lynd highlighted, if the following improvements are achieved in the US:
- Improve processing (2.5 times higher yield in converting cellulose to liquid fuel)
- Improve vehicle efficiency 2.5X
- Increase biomass yield 2.5X
- Agricultural integration (as echoed by Prof. Temu). Examples of these are: double cropping and switching from soy to switch grass for protein production as well as cellulose.
Following from this, no additional land (and maybe even less land) is required to provide liquid biofuels from cellulose for current US mobility. Through the work of Prof. Lynd and his colleagues, the GSB Project seeks to apply a similar approach on a global scale.
For further information, refer to http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/gsbproject
