Biomass energy and the implications for climate and food

Abstract

Many experts have concluded that, if greenhouse gas concentrations are to be limited while the world’s energy demands are nonetheless met, biomass energy will be an indispensable resource. At the same time, climate change is expected to affect agricultural productivity adversely—and 15 percent of people in developing countries, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, already suffer from extreme food insecurity. Authors from three countries—José R. Moreira of Brazil (2014), Roberto Bissio of Uruguay, and Ethan B. Davis and Tom L. Richard of the United States (2014)—explore how the potential climate mitigation benefits of devoting arable land to the production of biomass energy can be achieved without further undermining food security in the developing world.

In May 2013, the measurement station atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii detected in the atmosphere, over the course of 24 hours, an average carbon dioxide concentration of 400 parts per million. Carbon dioxide levels have probably not been as high as that in the past 3 million years—since before human beings existed (Gillis, 2013).

Human activity is responsible for the high levels of carbon dioxide, but the majority of humans burn relatively little carbon. According to the UN Development Programme, the planet’s poorest 1 billion people are responsible for only 3 percent of carbon emissions. Meanwhile, the 1.26 billion people who live in nations that belong to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are responsible for 42 percent of the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere each year, and their nations are overwhelmingly responsible for the carbon that has been added in the past. The rich, if they reduced their emissions by just 8 percent, could achieve more climate mitigation than the poor could achieve by reducing their emissions to zero. The rich could manage this 8 percent reduction by altering their lifestyles in barely noticeable ways. For the poor, a reduction of 100 percent would imply permanent misery.

These realities, plus basic values such as justice and respect for human dignity, make it obvious that the people most responsible for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—the richest one-seventh of them—should both burn less carbon and pay more to address the problems that use of fossil fuels has created. But burning fossil fuels is highly addictive. People who are hooked on it will try every trick they can think of to avoid withdrawal symptoms.

One such trick is to burn carbon derived from Earth’s surface (biomass) instead of carbon deposits extracted from underground (fossil fuels). The idea appears at first to make sense, as biomass when burned emits the same amount of carbon as has been stored during the biomass’s growth phase; this should result in no net increase of atmospheric carbon. But things are not so simple when the idea is applied on an industrial scale and all inputs and indirect effects are taken into account.

The European Environment Agency Scientific Committee argues that bioenergy “is meant to reduce [emissions of greenhouse gases] but … increases the amount of carbon in the air … if harvesting the biomass decreases the amount of carbon stored in plants and soils, or reduces ongoing carbon sequestration” (EEASC, 2011). And many have argued that biofuels in particular actually use more energy than they produce (Kleiner, 2007). Moreover, replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy implies that an enormous amount of agricultural or forest land will be diverted to that purpose. Massive deforestation and land clearing—which eliminate carbon sinks and add to total carbon concentrations—are already occurring in Indonesia and other countries due to the increasing cultivation of commodities like palm oil (Walsh, 2011).

Instead of replacing farmland or forests with crops for bioenergy feedstock, a better approach would be to replace modern agricultural practices—which are responsible for 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—with organic agriculture (though this would require the world’s wealthy to change their consumption habits, for instance by eating less meat). Organic agriculture can be carried out in a carbon-neutral manner and might even store large amounts of carbon in the soil (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2013). Peasants around the world have been practicing sustainable agriculture for centuries, without consuming fossil fuels and therefore without harming the climate.

Some have suggested that global emissions could be cut by introducing small-scale bioenergy technologies to the developing world, technologies such as biogas electrification or efficient cookstoves. These ideas will be welcomed if they support rural development, reduce soot, and so forth—and if patent protections do not prove an obstacle to their adoption. But again, because poor people produce very little carbon in the first place, the resulting reductions in greenhouse gas emissions will be small.

What’s really necessary is for people in the wealthy world to reduce their carbon emissions. Households in rich countries could achieve easy reductions with more efficient kitchens or cars, better insulation, or a bit more bike-riding. Surely this approach represents a better bargain for all concerned than does devoting land to producing feedstock for biomass energy, when that land might be put to use feeding poor families.

But to achieve reductions in rich countries, it is probably necessary to introduce carbon taxes—and the developed world’s big emitters continue to seek other solutions. It is as if a cigarette smoker, rather than giving up tobacco, decided to move to the suburbs to breathe cleaner air. This is a fake form of compensation, and bioenergy is similar. It creates the illusion of a greener economy. It allows people to postpone tough decisions. But whereas smokers who don’t give up cigarettes mainly harm themselves, wealthy countries that consume massive amounts of fossil fuels pass the harm to innocent people.

If nothing changes, it may be just as well to abandon any pretense of respect for values such as justice and human dignity. Those values have suffered for a long time in any case, as nations have failed to live up to the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which underlies the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.