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Say no to biofuels

Alex Doherty — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:37:50 +0000

Beware simplistic solutions to complex problems. Humanity is in a fix: for over a century our advanced industrial civilisation has been almost entirely fuelled by fossil hydrocarbons – oil, coal and gas – extracted from geological reserves under the Earth’s surface. We have known for years that the combustion of these fuels releases carbon dioxide, enhancing the planet’s natural greenhouse effect and condemning us all to a fiery future unless we leave the majority of remaining reserves under the ground. What to do? Biofuels are an obvious solution: replace ‘mineral’ petrol and diesel from fossil reserves with biological fuels extracted from plants and the result will be no net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. This is because the carbon released in combustion was originally sucked out of the air when the plants grew using energy from the sun. So once enough cars run on biodiesel or ethanol, humanity will effectively have switched to a solar energy economy and the problem will be solved.

Or will it? Perhaps the strongest argument against biofuels is that they simply replace one ecological problem with another. Humanity is already exerting tremendous pressure on the planet, largely because of agriculture. The UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a landmark report authored by thousands of experts, found that over the last 50 years humanity has changed the planet’s ecosystems “more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history”. This has already led to a major loss of biodiversity, and at least 60% of the Earth’s ‘ecosystem services’ (things like freshwater, air purification, fisheries and so on) are being degraded or used unsustainably. In other words, humanity is already living far beyond its means – we are hitting the ecological buffers in many other areas apart from just global warming.

A large-scale shift towards biofuels – extracting fuel from the biosphere rather than underground – can only worsen the human agricultural pressure on ecosystems, as we shift from producing not just food but also fuel from increasingly scarce cultivable land. Some of the worst examples of biofuels causing the destruction of valuable ecosystems – such as the conversion of Indonesian tropical forests to palm oil plantations – are already well-known, thanks to vociferous campaigns by groups like Friends of the Earth and Biofuelwatch. Using palm oil for biodiesel production is little short of madness, even from a strictly climate change perspective – far more carbon is released when the forests are cleared (particularly when the peat underlying them is drained and burned) than will ever be clawed back through the replacement of fossil fuels. A similar equation applies on Amazonia, where the expansion of soya production (soya is another biodiesel feedstock) is also driving deforestation. Indonesia and Brazil are amongst the top ten carbon emitters in the world due to the degradation and destruction of their forests, thanks increasingly to biofuels.

But there are other less visible problems too. Most farmers apply nitrogen-based fertilisers to their crops to stimulate production. Most of this nitrogen isn’t captured by the plants, but runs off into rivers and lakes, causing algal blooms which kill fish and deplete oxygen levels. Whole areas of the ocean are now classified as ‘dead zones’, because of this agricultural runoff. Indeed, the planet’s natural nitrogen cycle has been even more dramatically altered by humans than the carbon cycle, although this is gets much less attention than the issue of climate change. But the two issues are interlinked: fertilisers also degrade on land to produce nitrous oxide, a very powerful greenhouse gas. A recent scientific analysis by a team led by the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen found that biofuels can “contribute as much or more to global warming by N2O [nitrous oxide] emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings”.

These two issues – nitrous oxide and emissions from land-use change – should by themselves be enough to rule out a large-scale shift to biofuels. But the ecological concerns raised by biofuels run even deeper than this. With more than six billion people on the planet, humanity has already run short of agricultural land for food production, and the conversion of virgin forests and grasslands into farmland monoculture can only worsen the current extinction crisis. Some charismatic species like the orang-utan in Borneo and Sumatra are directly threatened by biofuels production, but there are countless other less visible victims of agricultural expansion: in total, one in four mammals, one in eight birds, a third of all amphibians and 70% of plants are currently threatened by human activity, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), whose director Julia Marton-Lefevre now talks of a “global extinction crisis”. These species are important not just for economic or aesthetic reasons, but because the whole earth system – air, oceans and climate – depends vitally on living organisms: biology is as much a part of our Earth as chemistry and physics. If we wipe out biodiversity, we risk triggering escalating impacts which will eventually rebound on human societies too.

Biofuels are currently only a small part of this equation, but any increase in agricultural production can only intensify the extinction crisis. Some of this comes about through a displacement effect: even if biofuel feedstocks, whether corn, sugar cane, soya or palm oil, come from supposedly ‘sustainable’ sources, the gap in food supplies caused by their use will necessarily drive further deforestation and agricultural expansion in other areas. But some of the damage is much more direct. For example, 20,000 acres of Kenya’s Tana River wetlands – home to 350 species of birds, as well as hippos, elephants, rare sharks, reptiles and primates – are currently slated by the country’s government for destruction to produce sugarcane for ethanol, to be exported to the west for use in cars. In Cote d’Ivoire another wetland, the Tanoe Swamps Forest – a last refuge for three highly endangered primates – is due to be converted into palm oil, again for biofuels production.

Biofuels supporters frequently advocate the use of plants like the oilseed-producing drought-tolerant shrub jatropha, which they argue can be grown in ‘marginal’ areas in poorer countries without reducing food production. However, these ‘marginal’ areas are often precisely the places where a semblance of biodiversity still clings on. In addition, if crops like jatropha become successful, they will doubtless be expanded into food-producing areas and forests alike: unless strict laws are in place, economic incentives will always trump humanitarian or ecological concerns. Similarly, so-called ‘second-generation’ biofuels are also touted as a radical improvement on current fuel production from food crops. By brewing ethanol from crop waste or wood, the argument goes, biofuels production can be ramped up without driving up food prices and starving the poor. But if this ‘cellulosic ethanol’ were ever to take off in a big way, it might present an even greater threat than today’s generation of biofuels. Entire forests would likely be liquified in order to produce petrol and diesel for motorists – not just in rich countries, but increasingly in rapidly-industrialising nations like India and China. If world oil prices continue to rise, pressure to find substitutes like biofuels can only escalate.

That is not to say that all biofuels are bad. Burning old chip fat in car engines is beneficial, but only on a tiny scale and because it uses waste oil. Biogas produced from human sewage could be used to replace natural gas from underground. And biomass – from coppice woodland, for example – can be a good way to produce heat and power, but again only on a limited scale. So with biofuels largely out of the equation, how should we tackle global warming? The best way to reduce emissions from vehicles is not to find new sources of liquid fuels, but to shift rapidly to the production of electric cars and trucks, which can plug into the grid to recharge. This electricity in turn must come from wholly renewable sources, which means wind, solar and wave or tidal power. A 100% renewable economy may sound like a pipe-dream, but it is technologically entirely feasible, and economically represents an enormous opportunity for growth in jobs and manufacturing, as Germany has already begun to discover. Over the century ahead humanity has to learn how to supply its energy needs in ways which do not destroy the capacity of the planet to support life. Neither biofuels nor fossil fuels meet this test – but luckily there are plenty of energy sources that do.

Environmental Groups Slam G8 Leaders

Ellie Keen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:40:20 +0000

In Japan, world leaders at the G8 summit have announced they would work toward cutting carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050. The White House hailed the declaration as a major step forward, but environmental campaigners criticized the lack of a commitment to midterm targets. Global warming ties into other big themes, such as soaring food and fuel prices, being discussed at the three-day summit. We go to Hokkaido to speak with Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South.

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AMY GOODMAN: G8 leaders say they will set a global target of cutting carbon emissions by at least 50 percent by the year 2050 in an effort to tackle climate change. In a statement released during a summit in northern Japan, the Group of Eight leaders agreed they would need to set midterm goals to achieve that “shared vision” by 2050 but gave no numerical targets.

The White House hailed the G8 declaration as a major step forward and said it was a validation of President Bush’s global warming policy. But environmental campaigners slammed the lack of a commitment to midterm goals. Greenpeace International called it a “complete failure of responsibility,” and WWF said the target date of 2050 was insufficient and the lack of progress “pathetic.”

Global warming ties into other big themes such as soaring food and fuel prices being discussed at the three-day summit. Leaders from the G8 nations—Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States—are being joined by counterparts from some fifteen other countries. The gathering is taking place at a plush mountaintop hotel on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, where 21,000 police have been mobilized. Despite the crackdown, protests have been occurring for days in the lead-up to the summit.

RENATO REYES: We’re here in solidarity with our Japanese friends who are standing up against the G8. We feel very strongly about this issue, especially since the poverty happening in the Philippines right now is really bad. The oil crisis, the fuel crisis and the war on terror has really affected many of our countrymen.

KIM HEUNG HYUN: [translated] What I’d like to say most is that food should not be used as a political tool. If you allow it to happen, food could eventually be a weapon. The important thing is for each country to maintain agricultural self-sufficiency.

MASUYUKI TOMITA: [translated] This is a meeting by world thieves. They, the G8 countries, are causing all the current problems, such as environment destruction and food crisis. That is why I am against them.

AMY GOODMAN: The G8 summit wraps up Wednesday. We go now to Japan to speak with Walden Bello, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South. He joins us on the phone from Hokkaido. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Walden.

WALDEN BELLO: Hi, Amy, yes. The line is a bit choppy, but I hope I can hear you and you can hear me.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe what is happening? First, your response to the stated set of goal, 2050, to cut carbon emissions by 50 percent?

WALDEN BELLO: Yes, I think that, you know, this has been sold as a big thing, but it’s really not, and it’s, in fact, quite backward, because the US in fact killed the efforts to have in the declaration in Bali last—during the summit over, that, you know, 25 to 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by 2020. And the consensus right now is that you have to have at least an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. So this is really a low target. And this was really an effort to basically please the United States. And the thing about this also is that the US is subverting the UN process, because he’s put this within the context of another rival grouping called the Major Economies Meeting, which is a US effort to parallel the Kyoto UN framework process. So this is bad news.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello, can you talk about the activists who tried to get in? There are 21,000 Japanese police there.

WALDEN BELLO: Could you repeat that, Amy? The line’s a bit choppy here.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the difficulty of activists trying to get in to protest the G8 in Japan?

WALDEN BELLO: I—wow, you know, that really didn’t come across. The difficulties of what now?

AMY GOODMAN: Of the protesters getting into Japan, getting to Hokkaido?

WALDEN BELLO: Oh, wow, I can’t—I couldn’t get that. I couldn’t get that. I’m terribly sorry. It came up as very, very unclear.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll have the producer ask you the question. We’re talking to Walden Bello, senior analyst, Focus on the Global South, joining us on the line from Hokkaido. We’ll go to a break, and we’ll come back, and we’ll clear up the phone line. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We go back now to Walden Bello. He’s speaking to us from the Japanese island of Hokkaido. He’s senior analyst at the Focus on the Global South. And we hope the phone line has cleared up. Walden Bello, I was asking about the difficulty activists had of getting to the G8 summit.

WALDEN BELLO: Oh, yes. Well, they’re following the example of Singapore, which is to really screen people and not admit people that are, you know, people who have been longtime activists in these issues. And, you know, like it’s—these twenty-four Koreans who were here, they were held for about, you know, over twenty-four hours and then sent back. And many others did not receive their visas on time. And, of course, many of us who came through already had visas, we were pulled aside and subjected to heavy questioning. So this is what we call really the—Japan following Singapore’s policy of really, you know, restricting the entry of people associated with social movements. And this is a very, very bad precedent, because, in fact, in terms of—I’ve been in quite a number of summits of the G8, and I would say that, in terms of border controls, this is the worst so far.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the people who were actually prevented from getting in, like Susan George?

WALDEN BELLO: Well, Susan George, you know, was able to come in, and—but she was questioned for about, I believe, four hours in a small windowless room. And so, this—and Lydinyda Nacpil of the Jubilee South, for instance, the anti-debt coalition, was questioned for about three-and-a-half hours. And basically, this is—you know, this is harassment. So, you know, this is Japan on sort of a security footing that is really quite a departure from previous policies with respect to the entry of activists.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello, can you talk about the food crisis?

WALDEN BELLO: Well, you know, it’s said to be—the agenda here is said to include the food crisis, but people are not really expecting anything to come out, because the G8 countries really don’t—or the G8 governments really don’t know how to deal with this problem, because, you know, it’s been something that’s been caused by their policies. Now, certainly the diversion of corn to biofuel production from food is a cause, one of the causes, of the sharp rise in food prices. But we’ve got to see this in a longer-term perspective, that basically the policies of World Bank and IMF structural adjustment and WTO-, World Trade Organization-mandated liberalization basically destroyed the capacity of so many developing countries to be self-sufficient producers. It turned them into net importers of food, and then they were made into dumping ground for highly subsidized food commodities from the European Union and the United States. So this is the sort of already weakened agricultural economies in which the biofuel diversion took effect. So the weakening of these economies really began with G8-supported free market structural adjustment policies.

So, this is why the G8 governments really don’t have, you know, a solution for this, except platitudes, to say that they’re going to help increase food production. Some of them have been talking about supporting a new green revolution based on genetically modified organisms, seeds, in Africa. You know, so it’s all these real techno fixes, which are dangerous in the case of so-called green revolutions on genetic engineering. So this is really the wall, you know, that the G8 faces. They—it’s a problem of their creation, and they don’t really have any solutions for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello, we reported yesterday that The Guardian newspaper obtained an unpublished World Bank report that found biofuels have caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent. The report apparently was finished in April but reportedly not published in order to avoid embarrassing the United States, which has claimed plant-derived fuels have pushed up prices by only three percent. The report found biofuels have distorted food markets by diverting grain away from food for fuel, encouraging farmers to set aside land for its production and sparked financial speculation on grains.

WALDEN BELLO: Yes, definitely. I think that is a very critical report, and I think this just goes to show how the World Bank essentially follows, you know, the concerns and lead of the United States here. So, I mean, if it were a really transparent institution, they should have come out with that.

And what I’m—I guess what I’m trying to say is that the weakening—you know, the biofuel diversion has certainly been a very big factor behind the food crisis, but that this occurred within the context of already weakened economies that had been destroyed by the imposition of free market policies. So we’ve seen that over the last twenty to twenty-five years, from Africa to Latin America to Asia, self-sufficient economies have been turned into import-dependent economies. And it is those countries that—for instance, like Mexico, you know—that have become—made dependent on corn imports from the United States. They are the ones suffering now very greatly the impact of this diversion of corn from food to biofuel, because they’re dependent on corn imports from the US. Now, that dependency was created in the first place—and this is the sort of total context, this is the sort of comprehensive view that we need to have in order to be—to really understand the causes of the agricultural crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: Walden Bello, I want to thank you for being with us, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, speaking to us from the Japanes island of Hokkaido, where the G8 are meeting and thousands of activists have come out to protest.

Fuel For Thought

Ellie Keen — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:12:41 +0000

As of 15 April, all petrol and diesel sold at British filling stations has to be blended with biofuels.

The British government, through the Renewable Fuel Transport Obligation (RFTO), and the European Union have continued to push ahead with biofuel expansion despite scientific studies which show that this is one of the quickest ways of heating the planet, and despite United Nations (UN) agencies warning that biofuels are fuelling a catastrophic food crisis.

In February this year two peer-reviewed studies on biofuels were published in the journal Science. These studies showed that converting land for biofuels releases vastly more carbon than is “saved” by burning less fossil fuels. They confirm that for every hectare of land used for bioenergy crops, another hectare of natural land will be converted for biofuel or food production.

The “carbon debt” from putting more land under intensive agriculture will take at least decades, but in many cases centuries, to repay. Right now people in Argentina’s Buenos Aires are choking from smoke produced by some 300 fires burning across 70,000 hectares of what used to be biodiverse farmland and ecosystems. Farmers are burning land in order to create new pastures for cattle as previously grazed fields are now devoted to the more profitable production of soya.

Just six months ago Paraguay experienced its worst ever fires, and earlier this year the Brazilian government admitted that deforestation and forest fires in the Amazon basin were rising again – all because of high soya prices.

While tens of millions of hectares of forests are facing destruction, biofuels are now widely acknowledged to have triggered, or at least worsened, the worst global food crisis in decades. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, global food prices have risen by 57 percent in the past year. However, staple food prices in many countries of the global south have doubled or even trebled, causing millions more people to go without enough food.

Agrofuels are helping to push up prices in at least three ways: they are rapidly pushing up the demand for food, they are tying the price of food to the rapidly increasing price of oil and they are giving agribusiness, in alliance with energy companies, even greater control over food markets and prices.

Nonetheless the EU, with the apparent consent of the British government, is set to approve a new Fuel Quality Directive this summer. The British government has warned privately that this will create a biofuel target of more than 25 percent by 2020. Further legislation for a different 10 percent mandatory biofuel target has also been announced.

Governments will not cease to support the agrofuel industry regardless of the cost to people, the environment and the climate, without strong popular opposition. We are seeing the beginning of a protest movement in Britain and elsewhere, with demonstrations outside Downing Street and some ten other places when the RFTO was introduced.

More such protests will and need to follow – including a Day of Action Against Agrofuels, organised as part of this year’s Climate Camp, on 6 August.

(www.climatecamp.org.uk).

Industry Pushes For 25% Agrofuel Target

Ellie Keen — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:41:09 +0000

Despite clear warnings about the impact of agrofuels (commonly referred to as biofuels) on the world food supplies, those within the industry think that Europe’s 10% target is not high enough. They are pushing for a 25% target by 2030 [1] – and some members of the European Commission appear to be listening to what they have to say.

Corporate Europe Observatory attended the launch of the European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTFP) Strategic Research Agenda and Strategy Deployment Document (SRA & SDD) in Brussels to find out more about how industry is using this important document – it is set to influence future EU spending on agrofuel research – to push for a bigger guaranteed market and the opportunity to boost its profits, to the detriment of the environment and the world’s poor.

What is the EBFTP?

The European Biofuel Technology Platform was set up by the European Commission to look at the future needs of the agrofuel industry, particularly in terms of research. It has around 145 members, mainly from industry, with members from research institutes and just two from NGOs.[2] The Platform receives funding from the Commission.

It is, in effect, a descendant of the Advisory Research Council for Biofuels (BIOFRAC) and continues its work. BIOFRAC’s chair, Anders Roj of Volvo, together with the vice chairs were asked to work with the European Commission to select members for EBFTP’s steering committee.[3]

The Platform represents a range of industries interested in agrofuels – from car makers to biotech companies. The steering committee was chaired by Luis Cabra from the oil and gas giant Repsol, which is developing ambitious plans for agrofuels in co-operation with Bunge and Acciona. In January this year he handed over to another oil company rep, Véronique Hervouet from oil company Total.

Five Working Groups, drawn from interested players from the world of industry and research, were set up to develop the research agenda (SRA). Drawing on BIOFRAC’s agenda, they have taken the proposal for a 25% target – originally put forward by BIOFRAC – as their overall aim.

Their draft proposals were published online for a brief public consultation and some 600 responses were submitted, Birger Kirkow from EBFTP’s secretariat explained to stakeholders that these had been taken into consideration “where appropriate”. In reality very little of substance changed at all.

Technology Platforms

Technology
Platforms like the EBFTP, were set up by Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik to allow industry to influence research and development priorities on strategic issues. They play an important role in developing European research policy and are seen as a way of ensuring that Seventh Research Framework Programme (ie EU public-funded research) better meets the needs of industry.

The EBFTP, which is the youngest of all the technology platforms dealing with agrofuels, sees its role as in building “synergies” with others platforms, such as the Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform (FTP), the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform (HFP), the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC), and the Biotechnology Platform (Plants for the Future) – creating a “knowledge based bio economy”.

This move towards industry-driven research fits in with the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda, which aims to make Europe “the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world.” Priority is being given to research into new areas of industry – with little opportunity to question the wider impacts of this work.

In a letter to CEO, Commissioner Potočnik justified the dominance of industry saying: "European Technology Platforms have been conceived as a means to help realise the Lisbon Strategy. The platforms can play a key role in better incorporating industry’s needs into EU research priorities by bringing together stakeholders, led by industry, to define a Strategic Research Agenda and to suggest possible directions for its implementation. This is the underlying rationale for the deliberate industrial focus of technology platforms, which was indeed, as you note correctly, reflected in BIOFRAC and is also manifest in the composition of the Biofuels Technology Platform."

The problem with targets

The European Commission is already pushing an agrofuel target of 10% by 2020.[4], much to the alarm of environmental and poverty campaigners. The vast majority of NGOs working on the issue have condemned the target because of the damaging social and environmental consequences and in April 2008 the European Environment Agency’s Scientific Body [5] called for the target to be dropped. International bodies including the UN and IMF have warned on the impact of agrofuels on food supplies.

A wide range of studies, including some from the EU’s own Joint Research Committee (JRC), have highlighted problems around the impacts of agrofuels – including the impact on food production and prices already being seen, the problems created for small landowners and workers in producer countries and the damage to the environment.

Research has shown that large scale changes in land use will be needed to grow agrofuels, and that doing so will result in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating climate change instead of mitigating it. Agrofuels are not a sustainable form of energy – and many question whether they ever can be so.

But the EBFTP has ignored these concerns – raised by many in response to the consultation – and
proposed increasing the target to 25%.

Campaigners outside the stakeholder meeting, angered by the proposed target, greeted delegates with a banner saying: “Agrofuels – no solution for oil addiction” and handed out popcorn from a petrol pump. With food prices already rising as farmers switch from growing food to growing fuel, how, they asked, can an increase in agrofuel production be justified?

Civil society groups, including Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, WDM and the Transnational Institute, also wrote to Commissioner Potočnik ahead of the SRA stakeholder meeting to condemn the role of the EBFTP.[6] Why, they asked, should this undemocratic body – which effectively excluded the input of all those who did not support the call for a 25% target – be allowed to determine the EU’s research agenda or hold such influence?

Sustainability on the agenda?

Inside the meeting, the issue of sustainability was less prominent – although many of the speakers seemed keen to show that it was an issue they were aware of. Martin Kaltschmitt of the German Institute for Energy and Environment referred to sustainability as “a critical, very emotional issue”.

Using non-food crops, such as jatropha, was put forward as one solution by Harri Turpeinen from Finnish transport fuel company Neste Oil. His company’s aim was “to get out of the food chain,” he said. “We are completely in line with the tune of the demonstrators outside the building,” he added, completely ignoring the social and environmental threats posed by large scale jatropha plantations, which are as damaging as any other form of monoculture.

“Sustainability indicators” and “sustainability criteria” were put forward as essential to allow
industry to show the wider world that what they are producing is acceptable. But the sustainability criteria used by European Commission – outlined by Ariane de Dominicis, from DG Environment – will not guarantee any degree of sustainability – they fail to take account of the big picture concerns around land and resource use (the displacement effect) and ignore many of the environmental impacts, such as the effect on water and soil.

Monitoring future land use patterns and food prices is like waiting for the patient to die before the doctor is called.

Many of the so-called solutions being put forward by industry – such as the use of GM technology to produce more efficient crops and “second generation biofuels” – raise even more environmental and social concerns.

Ulrich Schuur, Director of the Institute Phytosphere in Germany shared his vision of how genetically modified plants could allow improvements in germination or increase the rate of photosynthesis for example.

Some in the audience were left to wonder whether GM plants – rejected as a food source by many
European consumers – be allowed to spread across the countryside for use as fuel?

José Manuel Silva, Head of DG Research warned that industry must learn the lessons of the GM
debate. “We cannot repeat other cases, like GMOs, where the debate happened after the research actually started,” he said.

Ralph Sims from the International Energy Agency was one of the few to sound a note of caution, warning that scientists had been talking about second generation biofuels since the 1970s but there were no guarantees that they would ever materialise at a low production cost.

“Put stricter speed limits on the highways,” he said. “It’ll cost nothing and you’ll get huge
greenhouse gas reductions.”

Industries’ Dream

But for many speakers at the stakeholder event, technology was the way to improve the efficiency
and sustainability of agrofuels. Markku Karlsson from the Finnish wood and paper company UPM Kymmene, illustrated new ways of exploiting biomass
residues and waste for ethanol.

Dirk Carrez from the Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem) showed how in the United States, energy efficiency and renewable energy research funding from the Department of Energy is being used to support a
range of companies working in agriculture, transport, biotechnology and the chemicals industry.

In effect, European funding is providing an opportunity for the oil and petrochemical industries to diversify into new areas.

As Swedish MEP Lena Ek said at the opening of the event: “The market is there. Market potential is huge for the industry.”

Although without a European target, the market would not be there – as in the current market place agrofuels cannot compete with fossil fuels in terms of price.

The EBFTP in fact represents a no risk strategy for industry – persuade the European Union to create guaranteed demand and then persuade them to partly fund the costs of developing new products to meet this demand.

Potočnik’s support

Having set up the EBFTP and encouraged industry’s involvement, Commissioner Potočnik seems prepared to ignore all criticism, however well-supported by evidence.

In his reply

to campaigners, he did not even respond on the key issue of the 25% target and did not address questions regarding the fundamental sustainability of agrofuels, accepting wholesale EBFTP’s
reassurances that technology can solve any problems they face.

He also said he was reassured by the open and transparent process adopted by EBFTP, despite the limited involvement of civil society – and despite the EBFTP’s failure to listen to concerns raised by many people in the consultation exercise.

Indeed many campaigners see involvement in the EBFTP process as futile – and for that reason have chosen not to become official stakeholders. Despite its claims, industry is not interested in considering whether agrofuels can ever be sustainable – it wants to create security for investors. Concerns, it wants us to believe, can be overcome with the power of science. The only real concern is the need to ensure that public opinion does not turn against them – which again (as with GMOs) they seem to think they can achieve by a selectively promoting some of the science and promising greater technological improvements for the future.

In whose interest?

The Commission is spending public money on agrofuel research, providing private interests with a Platform to ‘advise’ how this money should be spent. Seizing this opportunity, industry has proposed a research agenda based on an absurd 25% agrofuel blending target by 2030.

The European Commission says that it is “not in any way bound by the views, results or recommendations arising from the activities of any of the technology platforms”, yet previous evidence suggests it is only too willing to listen to what they have to say.[7] There needs to be a public debate on the role being played by technology platforms.

Corporate Europe Observatory and others are calling on Commissioner Potočnik and the rest of the European Commission to face up to the problems agrofuels cause and impose a moratorium on agrofuel targets – including the target of 10%.

The EBFTP should be dissolved. Research priorities should be determined through discussion between stakeholders without commercial interests, and must not be allowed to be at the expense of societies outside the EU. Research on the real impacts of new fuels, on developing sustainable electric transport systems, and on the relation between trade liberalisation and increased transport demands would all be good places to start.

Notes

Strategic Research Agenda & Strategy Deployment Document, European Biofuels Technology Platform, January 2008.

WWF and the European Environment Bureau (EEB).

For more detailed information on BIOFRAC and the EBFTP see The
EU’s agrofuel folly: policy capture by corporate interests,
Briefing paper, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), June 2007.

Proposal for a
directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, European Commisison, 23 January 2008.

Suspend 10 percent biofuels target, says EEA’s scientific advisory body, press release, European Environmental Agency, 10 Apr 2008

For the full correspondence between CEO and Commissioner Potočnik
see:
- Corporate Europe Observatory, Letter to Commissioner Potočnik, 1 June 2007
- Reply Commissioner Potočnik, 27 June 2007
- Corporate Europe Observatory and others, Letter to Commissioner Potočnik, 15 January 2008
- Reply Commissioner Potočnik, 28 February 2008.

The car lobby for example has successfully blocked a proposed restriction of 120g/km CO2

Public in the Dark about Biofuels in their Petrol

Ellie Keen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:16:35 +0000

Almost nine out of ten Britons have no idea that biofuels will be added to their petrol from tomorrow, according to the first ever public attitudes survey on the controversial alternative fuels. The research also revealed that, of those who knew what biofuels are, three quarters would prefer the Government to curb emissions by improving public transport or making cars greener.

The YouGov survey, commissioned by Friends of the Earth, also revealed that 78 per cent of the public agree that European governments should make vehicle manufacturers double the fuel efficiency of new cars by 2020 in order to tackle climate change. And that more than two thirds of people think the Government is not doing enough to improve public transport.

The Government’s Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, brought in to meet EU regulations, means all petrol sold in the UK will have to include at least 2.5 per cent biofuels – made from crops- from 15 April 2008. But although the move aims to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions, new scientific evidence shows that the growth in biofuels could actually increase greenhouse gas emissions through land conversion and greater use of chemical fertilisers.

Worryingly, two thirds of those surveyed by Friends of the Earth were unaware that the growth in biofuels is contributing to the destruction of rainforest.

Friends of the Earth believes the UK Government and the EU should scrap their biofuels targets and tackle transport pollution by investing in better public transport and strengthening proposals for mandatory emissions limits on all new cars.

Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner, Kenneth Richter, said:

“Most people will be horrified to know the Government is putting biofuels in our petrol when the damage they do to forests could make climate change worse.

“People want to see real green transport solutions that make a difference to their lives instead – like better public transport and smarter cars that burn less fuel. It’s now up to the Government to put transport policy on the right track.”

Notes:

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2,183 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 3 – 7 April 2008. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all GB adults (aged 18+).

[1] The survey results are:

When asked whether they thought European Governments should make vehicle manufacturers double the fuel efficiency on new cars by 2020, 78 per cent of all respondents either agreed or strongly agreed.

Overall more than two thirds (70 per cent) think the Government is not doing enough to improve public transport.

When asked, “are you aware that the growth in biofuels is contributing to deforestation in countries like Indonesia?” only 33 per cent of respondents answered yes.

89 per cent of people in Great Britain do not know that biofuels are going to be added to their petrol from 15 April when the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation comes into force.

Of the 1,209 respondents who knew what biofuels were (55 per cent), fewer than one in seven people (14 per cent) thought they were the best way to reduce emissions from road transport. 44 per cent singled out improving public transport as the best option.

[2] Recent research has suggested that the carbon dioxide emissions released when land is converted to grow biofuels could take centuries to pay back. Globally the push for biofuels is resulting in increased pressure on the worlds remaining rainforests which hold huge stores of carbon.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/February/07020802.asp

Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has calculated that using chemical fertilisers to grow biofuel crops can release twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/September/21090701.asp

[3] There are increasing calls for Government caution on biofuels, The King Review of Low Carbon Cars, commissioned by the UK Government and published on 12 March 2008, urged the EU to shift the focus of its policy from biofuels to cleaner automotive technology. It also recommended adopting a target of 100 grammes of carbon dioxide emissions for each kilometre a car travels. Friends of the Earth is calling for European governments to go even further and make vehicle manufacturers double the average fuel efficiency on new cars by 2020 – something supported by the vast majority of people in our survey released today.

New cars sold in the UK in 2007 emitted 164.9 grammes of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km CO2). The latest figures for the EU as a whole showed that average emissions of new cars sold in 2006 were 160g.km CO2. Doubling average fuel efficiency would reduce average emissions to 80g/km CO2.

The EU is currently deciding on emissions targets for the next decade or more. And has recently weakened its plans to reduce average emissions from new cars sold in the EU to no more than 120g per kilometre by 2012 in the wake of lobbying from car companies like Porsche.� As well as relaxing the limit to 130 g/km it has not proposed any firm longer term targets for 2020. Car manufacturers are calling for the 2012 target to be weakened still further and, according to reports, Porsche is considering legal action against the EU if it sticks to its original 120g/km CO2 target – see http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2007/09/14/afx4117266.html for further information.

For further information about low carbon cars and the current EU negaotaitions, see http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/delivering_greener_cars.pdf

For further information about Friends of the Earth, visit www.foe.co.uk.

Stop the biofuels bandwagon

JamieSW — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:48:16 +0000

The tide of public and expert opinion has been turning inexorably against biofuels in recent months. First news began to leak out about hungry Mexicans protesting about rising corn prices, as more and more of the global harvest was siphoned off for ethanol. Then studies by scientists confirmed that all current biofuels are worse – some by an order of magnitude – in greenhouse emissions terms than conventional mineral petrol and diesel.

Now the government’s chief scientist has come out strongly against biofuels, again because of the long-term threat they pose to our food supply. There’s only one problem: the UK and Europe still have targets to massively ramp up biofuel use. These targets were set prematurely, when governments enthusiastically jumped at the chance to encourage the use of so-called renewable fuels which offered the promise of allowing people to keep driving while not destroying the climate.

Unfortunately, the celebrations were premature. We now know that biofuels release far more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels because of the emissions that are caused through deforestation and agriculture in their production. We know also, as Professor Beddington emphasised in this week’s lecture, that there simply isn’t enough land space to feed a growing world population if valuable carbohydrates from staple food crops are burned in cars. The oft-repeated statistic that it takes a year’s worth of food for one person to fill the petrol tank of the average 4×4 is reason enough to abandon this failed enterprise.

Now is the time to act, before the biofuels mistakes of the past get compounded by the EU’s rush to prematurely set targets for their increased use. The case is very simple: meeting the EU’s targets on biofuels use – of 5.75% by 2010 – will dramatically worsen both carbon emissions and the food supply crisis. The targets must be abandoned immediately.

Gordon Brown should listen carefully to Professor Beddington’s advice, and act on it. The government must quickly abandon our national targets for biofuels use, and urge its EU partners to remove the target across the entirety of Europe. Much damage has already been done to the rainforests of Indonesia as a result of rising demand for palm oil as a feedstock for biodiesel. We know that there is no such thing as “sustainable” palm oil, because any rise in demand will lead to further encroachment into these unique forests.

Europe should offer Indonesia financial assistance to protect its remaining areas of tropical forest, instead of adding to the pressure for their destruction through biofuels demand. Estimates vary, but a few billion euros would go a long way to preserving what is not only the last surviving habitat of the orang-utan but also a vital store of standing carbon.

In the longer-term, European politicians need to face up to the fact that the future of road transport is far more likely to be electric than liquid fuelled. Already Israel is planning the installation of a network which will allow electric cars – charged with renewable energy from solar power – to travel the whole country.

No one is arguing that research on second-generation biofuels, which may be able to produce fuel more efficiently without harming food supplies, should be stopped. But more research is needed to study their potential ecological impacts before governments again get too enthusiastic. The lesson from the biofuels debacle is clear: look before you leap.

Machine Feed

Ellie Keen — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 14:47:17 +0000

Aimed at mitigating climate change, a whole slew of policies and investments in agrofuels have emerged, supported by the EU’s Biofuels Directive and a web of corporate interests. The EU set targets for 2.5% agrofuel in transport fuel by April this year, 5% by 2010 and 10% by 2020. Yet, these targets cannot be met without significant imports – the UK government’s own figures state that only 2.5% of the agrofuel target can be met by domestic production.

November 2007 saw the UK government create a Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) to oversee its Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). The chairman stated, ‘I am looking forward to working with the oil industry, biofuel companies, environmental groups, motorists and the general public.’ The RFA’s board, however, comprises energy, oil, motoring and agrofuel interests alone – no environmentalists or members of the general public. The RFA opposes regulation in favour of ‘praising those companies who operate responsibly while openly shaming those that do not.’ These weak sustainability criteria will be unenforceable until 2011, and labour rights are likely to be exempt.

The interests promoting agrofuels across the world include oil companies (BP, Shell, Petrobras, Repsol), banks (Rabobank, Barclays), agribusiness behemoths (Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, ConAgra, and Primark’s owners Associated British Foods or ABF), biotech corporations (Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Monsanto), supermarkets (Tesco), energy companies (Greenergy) and many new companies capitalising on a booming market and government subsidies – US subsidies for the ethanol industry have been estimated at $7 billion. In Europe the EBB (European Biodiesel Board) a major agrofuel lobby represents sixty agrofuel producers, including agrofuel giants Cargill and ADM (Archer Daniels Midland). Its website boasts high level access to the EU.

One of the larger UK processors and distributors of agrofuels, D1 Oils Plc partnered with BP in June 2007. Working with Keygene in the Netherlands D1-BP Fuel Crops are developing strains of jatropha, an oil yielding shrub valued for its potential role in agrofuel production across Africa and in India and Indonesia. ‘D1 will act as the exclusive supplier of selected, high-yielding Jatropha seeds and seedlings to D1-BP Fuel Crops’, thereby holding a monopoly on high-yield jatropha. Sun Biofuels, another UK based agrofuel company, specialises in African jatropha plantations. Sun were granted 9,000 hectares in Tanzania, displacing eleven villages. With Sun’s projected income from a hectare of jatropha around £390, the compensation offered was revealed to be between £31 and less than £100 per person.

According to Biofuelwatch seven processing plants are already operational in the UK – two run by D1 Oils and one each by British Sugar, Argent Energy, Greenergy, Petroplus and Earls Nook. Seven more are under construction and another seven proposed.

Greenergy, the supplier of agrofuel to Tesco and Virgin, expects to source over 150,000 tonnes per annum of UK grown rapeseed as feedstock for their plant. A thousand farmers are reportedly participating in the ‘Field to Forecourt’ contract. ‘Cargill has been appointed to manage the supply of rapeseed grown under the Field to Forecourt contract and will work alongside Frontier Agriculture, a company which it jointly owns with ABF Holdings Ltd.’

Earls Nook, formerly Biofuels Corp, is working with a cluster of agribusiness, oil and genetic engineering interests (BP, ABF and DuPont). They plan to process Malaysian palm oil – one of the worst contributors to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Working with ABF, plantations in Africa may also supply their refinery. In November 2007 ABF, which owns a 51% stake in African based sugar company Illovo Sugar, announced a 70% stake and £100 million investment in a sugar mill, an ethanol plant and electricity co-generation unit in Mali. Illovo will manage a government sponsored agricultural development (plantation) supplying 1.5 million tonnes of sugar cane a year to the plant.

Argent Energy claim to use less energy intensive biofuel, from waste animal and vegetable fats. Argent Energy New Zealand signed a letter of intent with Shell New Zealand last year; Shell is looking into algae as agrofuel in Hawaii. The proposed plant will consume 20,000 hectares if algae becomes commercially viable. So far tests in the US show that only when grown near fossil fuel power plants does algae agrofuel become viable. Far from emblematic of a post-fossil fuel economy.

The EU, confronted with grain stocks at their lowest for twenty five years and spiralling food prices, has abolished regulations for farmers to set aside around ten per cent of farmland. Land left fallow is being returned to industrial agriculture – but not to wheat production . Oilseed rape cultivation has increased by twenty percent (100,000 hectares) in the UK. A nutrient hungry crop, oilseed rape requires high amounts of nitrogen fertiliser (c. 200kg per hectare). Fertliser run-off causes eutrophication – algal blooms in waterways – and Defra’s designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones will increase in 2008 to cover 70% of England; up from 55% in 2002. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also release nitrous oxide (N2O) as they decompose in the soil. N2O is a greenhouse gas 296 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Agriculture accounts for around 7% of the UK’s emissions: 4.5% of which is nitrous oxide. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also depend on oil/gas for their manufacture. Fertiliser prices, as with natural gas, are rising. Wealthier farmers alone may benefit from lucrative crops, such as oilseed rape, which require high fertiliser inputs.

The EU agrofuel targets represent a tiny reduction in CO2 emissions – an overall cut of 80% in greenhouse gas emissions is required if runaway climate change is to be averted. Substituting 10% of transport fuel with biofuel by 2020 does not alter tailpipe emissions; ethanol also combusts to produce CO2. The biodiesel fantasy envisages a cut in emissions during production, with crops absorbing CO2 as they grow and thus balancing out that which they release in combustion. Yet, as research from Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has shown, significant amounts of greenhouse gases are released through changes in land use, deforestation, fertiliser. The life cycle emissions from bioethanol from maize and biodiesel from oilseed rape often exceed those of fossil fuels.

The EU is scrambling to regain lost ground. Stavros Dimas, EU’s environment commissioner, has admitted that the European Biofuels Directive introduced targets without sufficient scientific and socio-ecological assessment. Refusing a moratorium on agrofuels he seeks to focus on second and third generation agrofuels (such as waste, grasses, trees and genetically engineered crops). These still require vast swathes of land, while biotech firms will find their power over markets and the world’s ecosystems significantly enhanced.

Admit It: We Were Right

Ellie Keen — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:12:25 +0000

Why is it that no one ever gives environmentalists any credit for being right? When the prospect of large-scale use of biofuels as a response to climate change was first mooted, many green campaigners and writers – including Greenpeace and the Guardian’s George Monbiot – raised concerns about the impacts on land-use, food supply and biodiversity. They were ignored, as both the US and the EU rushed to adopt biofuel targets as a supposedly pain-free way to reduce carbon emissions from cars and trucks.

Many writers, including myself, also questioned whether biofuels could even do any better in a straightforward calculation of greenhouse gas emissions. It seemed to me that once pollution from fertilisers, farming, land clearance and transporting fuels was added to the equation, biofuels would not be any better for the climate – and indeed might even be worse – than conventional mineral diesel and petrol. Some scientists were also concerned: in the US, Cornell University’s Professor David Pimentel published studies concluding that ethanol was a “net energy loser” when compared to conventional fuels. Producing ethanol, in other words, uses more energy than the resulting fuel generates on combustion. Once again these warnings were ignored and marginalised.

Even powerful interests were beginning to voice concerns: in May 2007 the chief executive of the agricultural commodities giant Cargill warned of “unintended consequences”, and argued that food should come first, and fuel second. But Cargill’s competitor Archer Daniels Midland remained gung-ho for agrofuels, and the Swiss agricultural behemoth Syngenta reported massive profit rises, thanks in part to global demand for biodiesel. In the UK, Tesco has been leading the biofuels revolution, taking a 25% stake in Greenergy, which runs a biofuels refinery at Immingham on the east coast of England. Tesco now sells a bioethanol/petrol mix at hundreds of its petrol stations, claiming that this fuel is “responsible for 4.5% less CO2”.

Two new studies published in the world’s leading scientific journal Science show that the claims made on behalf of biofuels by its proponents are at best mistaken and at worst utterly fraudulent. Greenergy, for example, claims that its “GlobalDiesel” fuel saved as much CO2 in a year as would be equivalent to taking 117,000 family cars off the road over the same period. The company bases this claim on analysis which supposedly takes into account all the carbon released during the manufacturing and processing of its product. But two critical factors are missed out, and these are the ones considered specifically by the two new papers in Science: the displacement effect of burning crops for fuel, and the carbon released by ploughing up grassland or removing forest for crops.

When these factors are considered, biofuels are responsible for releasing far more greenhouse gases than they mop up – as the environmental lobby has long argued. There are some small exceptions, like perennials planted on abandoned agricultural land and the use of waste vegetable oil in cars, but these are only ever going to be marginal. Overall, destroying forests for palm oil plantations – which later produce biodiesel for European cars – releases hundreds of times more carbon dioxide than using these fuels will save every year, according to one of the two papers in Science. No wonder the campaigners at Biofuelwatch label the fuel “deforestation diesel”. You are far better off buying the normal stuff from Shell.

The European Union, stung by criticisms that its policy on biofuels is increasing deforestation worldwide, has promised only to buy fuel from “sustainable sources” – palm oil plantations or soya fields which are not grown on recently-deforested land. But the second paper in Science puts paid to this notion too: because of the displacement effect, farmers will simply deforest more land in order to make up for the feedstock diverted from the more “sustainable” sources. In other words, fuel from a “sustainable” plantation or farm will be exported to the European Union, while the gap this leaves on world markets will simply be filled with palm oil or soya grown on destroyed forest land.

There is no avoiding this equation: any use of biofuels will raise demand on world markets for agricultural products, competing with the food market and leading to the clearance of more land. Because forests and grasslands are the key remaining wild-land habitats, this onslaught – supposedly in the interests of reducing climate change – is having disastrous impacts on biodiversity. In Borneo and Sumatra the orang-utan is now endangered because of forest clearance, much of it for palm oil.

The upshot of all this is obvious. The EU and other governments must admit they’ve got it wrong, and ditch biofuels targets. Yes, road transport must be de-carbonised, but the future is far more likely to be in electric cars powered by renewably-charged batteries than in any other competing technology. The myth that biofuels can reduce greenhouse gases has been exploded, and policies need to shift accordingly. Given the disastrous rates of deforestation in tropical countries like Indonesia and Brazil, the EU must urgently find ways to pay these countries to keep their forests standing, and to pay for some of the damage that has been done through the calamitous biofuels mistake.

And it would be nice if, just this once, those who so trumpeted the virtues of biofuels could admit that the green hand-wringers were right all along.

The Last Straw

Tim Holmes — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:18:34 +0000

Now they might start sitting up. They wouldn’t listen to the environmentalists or even the geologists. Can governments ignore the capitalists?

A report published last week by Citibank, and so far unremarked by the media, proposes “genuine difficulties” in increasing the production of crude oil, “particularly after 2012.”(1) Though 175 big drilling projects will start in the next four years, “the fear remains that most of this supply will be offset by high levels of decline”. The oil industry has scoffed at the notion that oil supplies might peak, but “recent evidence of failed production growth would tend to shift the burden of proof onto the producers”, as they have been unable to respond to the massive rise in prices. “Total global liquid hydrocarbon production has essentially flatlined since mid 2005 at just north of 85 million barrels per day.”

The issue is complicated, as ever, by the refusal of the OPEC cartel to raise production. What has changed, Citi says, is that the non-OPEC countries can no longer answer the price signal. Does this mean that oil production in these nations has already peaked? If so, what do our governments intend to do?

Nine months ago, I asked the British government to send me its assessments of global oil supply. The results astonished me: there weren’t any(2). Instead it relied exclusively on one external source: a book published by the International Energy Agency. The omission became stranger still when I read this book and discovered that it was a crude polemic, dismissing those who questioned future oil supplies as “doomsayers” without providing robust evidence to support its conclusions(3). Though the members of OPEC have a powerful interest in exaggerating their reserves in order to boost their quotas, the IEA relied on their own assessments of future supply.

Last week I tried again, and I received the same response: “the Government agrees with IEA analysis that global oil (and gas) reserves are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future.”(4) Perhaps it hasn’t noticed that the IEA is now backtracking. The Financial Times says the agency “has admitted that it has been paying insufficient attention to supply bottlenecks as evidence mounts that oil is being discovered more slowly than once expected … natural decline rates for discovered fields are a closely guarded secret in the oil industry, and the IEA is concerned that the data it currently holds is not accurate.”(5) What if the data turns out to be wrong? What if OPEC’s stated reserves are a pack of lies? What contingency plans has the government made? Answer comes there none.

The European Commission, by contrast, does have a plan, and it’s a disaster. It recognises that “the oil dependence of the transport sector … is one of the most serious problems of insecurity in energy supply that the EU faces”(6). Partly in order to diversify fuel supplies, partly to cut greenhouse gas emissions, it has ordered the member states to ensure that by 2020 10% of the petroleum our cars burn must be replaced with biofuels. This won’t solve peak oil, but it might at least put it into perspective by causing an even bigger problem.

To be fair to the Commission, it has now acknowledged that biofuels are not a green panacea. Its draft directive rules that they shouldn’t be produced by destroying primary forests, ancient grasslands or wetlands, as this could cause a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Nor should any biodiverse ecosystem be damaged in order to grow them(7).

It sounds good, but there are three problems. If biofuels can’t be produced in virgin habitats, they must be confined to existing agricultural land, which means that every time we fill up the car we snatch food from people’s mouths. This, in turn, raises the price of food, which encourages farmers to destroy pristine habitats – primary forests, ancient grasslands, wetlands and the rest – in order to grow it. We can congratulate ourselves on remaining morally pure, but the impacts are the same. There is no way out of this: on a finite planet with tight food supplies you either compete with the hungry or clear new land.

The third problem is that the Commission’s methodology has just been blown apart by two new papers. Published in Science magazine, they calculate the total carbon costs of biofuel production(8,9). When land clearance (caused either directly or by the displacement of food crops) is taken into account, all the major biofuels cause a massive increase in emissions.

Even the most productive source – sugarcane grown in the scrubby savannahs of central Brazil – creates a carbon debt which takes 17 years to repay. As the major carbon reductions must be made now, the net effect of this crop is to exacerbate climate change. The worst source – palm oil displacing tropical rainforest growing in peat – invokes a carbon debt of some 840 years. Even when you produce ethanol from maize grown on “rested” arable land (which in the EU is called set-aside and in the US is called conservation reserve), it takes 48 years to repay the carbon debt. The facts have changed. Will the policy follow?

Many people believe there’s a way of avoiding these problems: by making biofuels not from the crops themselves but from crop wastes. If transport fuel can be manufactured from straw or grass or wood chips, there are no implications for land use, and no danger of spreading hunger. Until recently I believed this myself(10).

Unfortunately most agricultural “waste” is nothing of the kind. It is the organic material which maintains the soil’s structure, nutrients and store of carbon. A paper commissioned by the US government proposes that, to help meet its biofuel targets, 75% of annual crop residues should be harvested(11). According to a letter published in Science last year, removing crop residues can increase the rate of soil erosion 100-fold(12). Our addiction to the car, in other words, could lead to peak soil as well as peak oil(13).

Removing crop wastes means replacing the nutrients they contain with fertiliser, which causes further greenhouse gas emissions. A recent paper by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen suggests that emissions of nitrous oxide (a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than CO2) from nitrogen fertilisers wipe out all the carbon savings biofuels produce, even before you take the changes in land use into account(14). Growing special second generation crops, such as trees or switchgrass, doesn’t solve the problem either: like other energy crops, they displace both food production and carbon emissions. Growing switchgrass, one of the new papers in Science shows, creates a carbon debt of 52 years(15). Some people propose making second generation fuels from grass harvested in natural meadows or from municipal waste, but it’s hard enough to produce them from single feedstocks; far harder to manufacture them from a mixture. Apart from used chip fat, there is no such thing as a sustainable biofuel.

All these convoluted solutions are designed to avoid a simpler one: reducing the consumption of transport fuel. But that requires the use of a different commodity. Global supplies of political courage appear, unfortunately, to have peaked some time ago.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Citi, 4th February 2008. Industry Focus: Oil Companies – International.

2. See http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/05/29/what-if-the-oil-runs-out/

3. International Energy Agency, 2005. Resources to Reserves: Oil & Gas Technologies for the Energy Markets of the Future. Available electronically at: http://www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2005/oil_gas.pdf

4. Email from the Energy Desk, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, 8th February 2008.

5. Dino Mahtani, 26th December 2007. Oil watchdog reworks reserves forecasts. The Financial Times.

6. Commission of the European Communities, 23rd January 2008.
Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council
on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, p8. http://ec.europa.eu/energy/climate_actions/doc/2008_res_directive_en.pdf

7. Commission of the European Communities, 23rd January 2008.
Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council
on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, Article 15. http://ec.europa.eu/energy/climate_actions/doc/2008_res_directive_en.pdf

8. Joseph Fargione, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, Peter Hawthorne, 7th February 2008. Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt. Science. Doi 10.1126/science.1152747.

9. Timothy Searchinger, Ralph Heimlich, R. A. Houghton, Fengxia Dong, Amani Elobeid, Jacinto Fabiosa, Simla Tokgoz, Dermot Hayes, Tun-Hsiang Yu, 7th February 2008. Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change . Science. Doi 10.1126/science.1151861.

10. I am grateful to Jim Thomas from the ETC Group for putting me right.

11. US Department of Energy and US department of Agriculture, April 2005. Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: the Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/final_billionton_vision_report2…

12. David Pimentel and Rattan Lal, 17th August 2007. Letter: Biofuels and the Environment. Science.

13. This term has been used by Alice Friedemann, 10th April 2007. Peak Soil: Why cellulosic ethanol, biofuels are unsustainable and a threat to America. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...

14. PJ Crutzen, AR Mosier, KA Smith and W Winiwarter, 1 August 2007. N2O release from agro-biofuel production negates global warming reduction by replacing fossil fuels. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 7, pp11191–11205. http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/11191/2007/acpd-7-11191-2007.pd…

15. Joseph Fargione et al, ibid.

Global warming will push Asia into reverse, as UK leadership fades

JamieSW — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 19:51:19 +0000

The biggest study yet from the unique coalition of major UK poverty and environment groups reveals scale of climate impacts on international work -and says immediate action needed before Asia goes ‘Up in Smoke’?

The report – Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific – with a foreword by Dr R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – says that without immediate action, global warming is set to reverse decades of social and economic progress across Asia, home to over 60 per cent of the world’s population. The report is published in the wake of evidence that the UK is reneging on targets for renewable energy set to tackle climate change.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific is the most extensive and concluding chapter of a unique, four-year long exercise by the Up in Smoke coalition – an alliance of the UK’s major environment and development groups. Four years ago, the coalition set out to assess the impacts of climate change on efforts toward poverty reduction around the world from the point of view of practical, community-based organisations engaged in designing responses to a changing environment.

This, the latest and most comprehensive report from communities around the world on the front line of climate change catalogues the threat climate change poses to human development, and the growing consequences of inaction on the issue. It shows how, across Asia, people and communities are already acting to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. But the report says, there is not a moment to lose. Unless a decisive international agreement is reached, and soon, the lives of those living on the front line of climate change will go up in smoke.

As world leaders prepare for the next UN talks to determine the international response to climate change, in Bali at the beginning of December, Up in Smoke: Asia and the Pacific, shows how the human drama of climate change will largely be played out in Asia, where almost two thirds of the world’s population live, effectively on the front line of climate change.

The report highlights, for example, that:

In the summer of 2007, British aid agencies, including those in the Up in Smoke alliance, had to raise funds from the UK public to go towards assisting up to 28 million people affected by flooding in South Asia. Extreme weather events like this are likely to become more frequent.

Over half of the population of Asia live near the coast, making them directly vulnerable to sea-level rise driven by global warming.

Asia is home to 87 per cent of the world’s known 400 million small farms – all especially vulnerable to climate change as they rely on regular and reliable rainfall.

Drought in north China has increased, ruining the livelihoods of the region’s farmers. And, around 8 out of 10 glaciers in western China are reportedly in retreat due to climate change.

The latest global scientific consensus indicates that all of Asia is set to warm during this century, and that this will be accompanied by less predictable and more extreme patterns of rainfall. Tropical cyclones are projected to increase in magnitude and frequency across the region, while monsoons, around which farming systems are designed, are expected to become more unpredictable in their strength and time of onset.
The expansion of biofuel crops linked to deforestation could, instead of being a climate friendly alternative to fossil fuels, actually worsen global warming and harm local livelihoods and the environment.

Communities living on small island states like Vanuatu, Kiribati and Tuvalu, scattered across thousands of square kilometres of ocean in the Pacific, among the least responsible globally for climate change, have already fallen victim to the impacts of climate change. Entire nations are now at risk.

Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, presents the results of an unprecedented consultation by members of the coalition among grass roots groups across Asia and the Pacific and including within China – presenting a unique body of evidence direct from the front line of climate change, and an urgent call to action from global leaders.

As officials in the UK continue to work behind the scenes to evade the UK governments commitments to renewable energy, the report catalogues the impact that climate change is already having on some of the worlds most vulnerable communities – just last month, a reported 5 million people were affected when a typhoon struck the south- east coast of China.

The report also presents new evidence that the ‘silver bullet’ of biofuels could turn into a rush for ‘fools gold’ across Asia as huge social and environmental costs outweigh the benefits, substantiating concerns already raised by aid and environment groups, and scientists.

Indonesia has some six million hectares of land under oil palm and the Government is actively encouraging further expansion. As a result of deforestation, some of which is for palm oil plantations, Indonesia is the third-largest global emitter of carbon dioxide, after the USA and China.

Deforestation is already the second-largest contributor to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Deforestation to make way for large-scale mono-cropping obliterates the ‘green credentials’ of biofuels by actually increasing the amount of emissions rather than reducing them.

The economic attraction of biofuels is also leading to conflict between crops grown for food and those grown for fuel. Increasingly, the result is expected to be both greater competition for land and higher food prices.

Pledging once again to play their part in trying to halt dangerous climate change and to help bring about a global solution that is fair and rooted in human equality, amongst a range of recommendations detailed in the report, the coalition calls on the international community to urgently:

Cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rich countries, both historically and today, are disproportionately responsible for the emissions that have caused and still fuel climate change. As such, they need to meet and exceed their targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set under the Kyoto Protocol. Starting now with deep annual cuts, commitments should be introduced progressively in a way that prevents a dangerous accumulation of greenhouse gases and puts industrialised countries on track to reach cuts of at least 80 per cent by 2050.
Halt forest clearance to contain biofuel expansion. Conduct an urgent assessment of carbon benefits from different fuels as well as assessing their impacts on biodiversity especially in intact forests, carbon release from peatlands, as well as impacts on the food security and traditional livelihoods of local populations.

Draw up coordinated plans, from local to international levels, for relocating threatened communities with appropriate political, legal and financial resources. New problems are emerging. For example, as some nations lose land, a way to deal with threats to Exclusive Economic Zones, and appropriate compensation funding, need to be developed. Resources, too, will need to target the appropriate level of government with whom the responsibility to care for environmental refugees will fall.

In particular, the coalition calls on the UK government to set an example for countries like China and India by:

Committing to mandatory emissions reductions. As an absolute minimum, the UK Climate Change Bill, currently passing through parliament must lock-in mandatory year on year emissions reductions for the UK, setting carbon budgets for 3-5 year periods, to ensure that the UK does its part in keeping global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.
Keeping its commitments to renewable energy. Recent evidence revealed the UK government’s attempts to evade binding targets on renewable energy. Across Asia, the potential for sustainable and renewable energy is vast, and the market, especially in poor communities frequently unable to gain power from large grid systems, is huge. But the temptation to exploit easily available fossil fuels is equally high. Countries like the UK need to set strong domestic examples by championing renewable energy – if countries in Asia are to be convinced not to go down the fossil fuel energy route of ‘get rich quick, stay poor long.’ India, for example, could provide 60 per cent of its total electricity supply by 2050 using renewables.

Enable the transfer of environmentally friendly technology, where appropriate and requested, by ending the use of restrictive laws governing intellectual property.

There is growing consensus about the current human and environmental challenges facing Asia, and what is needed to tackle them. There is already enough knowledge and understanding to know what the main causes

Alongside new evidence of the devastating impact that climate change is already having on communities across Asia, Up in Smoke? Asia and the Pacific, shows positive measures that are already being taken – by governments, by civil society and by local people – to reduce the causes of climate change and to overcome its effects. It shows examples of emissions reduction; alternative water and energy supply systems; preservation of strategic ecosystems and protected areas; increasing capacity, awareness and skills for risk and disaster management; and the employment of effective regulatory and policy instruments. The challenge is clear and many of the solutions are known: the point is, to act.

BP Bankrolls Biofuels Research

Tim Holmes — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:18:21 +0000

AMY GOODMAN: There is a controversy raging at the University of California, Berkeley, where British Petroleum, where BP — they’ve called themselves now Beyond Petroleum — has promised to give $500 million to the university over the next ten years. The deal would fund the development of “sustainable, commercially viable, and environmentally friendly” sources of energy. The newly created Energy Biosciences Institute, or EBI, claims to promote research into biofuels, as well as bacteria that would increase energy production from oil and coal.

Critics at UC Berkeley point to the corporatization of academic research, the ecological dangers of biofuels, and BP’s long history of environmental irresponsibility, they say. They call this an act of greenwashing by BP and have been protesting the deal since it was announced in February of this year. But supporters claim that the corporate – academic partnership allows the university to realize its renewable energy research agenda and provides the most effective and economical means of addressing the looming environmental crisis.

To talk about this issue, we’re joined by two professors at UC Berkeley. Miguel Altieri is a professor of entomology. He is a renowned expert in agroecology, or sustainable agriculture. He is opposed to the deal between BP and UC Berkeley. He joins us here at Link TV’s studios in San Francisco. Daniel Kammen is a professor of Energy and Resources, a professor of public policy and nuclear engineering. He directs the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and is on the executive committee of the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will carry out much of the research under this deal. Kammen is generally supportive of the deal.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Professor Kammen. Why do you think this $500 million that BP has promised over the next ten years is good for the university?

DANIEL KAMMEN: Well, there’s a couple features. One is that we clearly need to learn more about biofuels, and we need to learn about them in a way that emphasizes the sustainability. The biofuel industry right now is taking off around the world, and it’s unfortunately being based largely on feed stocks that are bad on an energy balance and bad for many communities on a profit balance and bad for many communities in terms of trading off their food needs versus fuel needs. And so, the need to develop a serious research agenda to find out the better ways to do this or, in fact, whether we should do this at all, is in fact the reason why we need to begin these sorts of programs, not just at Berkeley, but hopefully around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, the issue of BP giving this enormous sum of money, $500 million over the next ten years, is this of concern to you, the issue of the privatization of a public institution?

DANIEL KAMMEN: Well, I think that the size of the grant can be a concern, but not for the reasons that you’re raising. I actually think that this amount of money is relatively small change, both for the oil industries around the world and, in fact, for the amount of money it takes to bring new products to market. New cars and new drugs frequently take that much money — half a billion dollars — to bring them to market. And as a research pot of money to start with, I actually don’t regard it as that much money.

The chance, though, that this amount of money would alter what a university does is a concern to me, and the degree to which a university might see grants like this as a reason or as an excuse or as a mechanism to alter what they would work on — say, move away from some areas and move into others — is a concern if it was being done in a way that I thought that the company had that driving force.

And so far in the process here, I’ve been quite pleased with the degree to which the intellectual terms of the discussion, in terms of what to study, not the broader politics of biofuels, has been well represented. Whether that continues or not is something that we’re hopefully going to be vigilant to and look at, but I don’t think it’s a guaranteed feature that you will necessarily be able to steer clear of that. It’s going to take a degree of oversight to make sure that we don’t have corporate interests running essentially what US or other universities would do.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Altieri, your concerns?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: Well, my concerns is that, first of all, Professor Kammen is saying, it’s very little money, and eventually it’s little money for BP, but a lot of money for UC Berkeley. And what they’re going to do with this money is basically skim off what 200 years of public investment has done. It would be very expensive for BP to build a university and a research facility. They will come with $500 million. They skim off what the public university has built over years, and then they bring fifty scientists from BP that are going to have access to students, and so therefore what they’re going to do is influence the research agenda of the public university. And it’s already happening.

AMY GOODMAN: How?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: Well, a lot of fields that should be emphasized at Berkeley are dying off, like biological pest control, alternatives to pesticides, agroecologist sustainable agriculture. And they are emphasizing fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering and etc. And basically what the chancellor has done is basically has put in power, in a position of power, people that are chemists, engineers and chemists and genetic engineering, and so on, in charge of an agenda of complex ecological issues, rather than ecologists. Ecologists have been actually — most of them that are critic — have been actually taken out of any dealings with this, with this deal.

AMY GOODMAN: Has the deal been signed?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: No. As far as I know, not.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know, Professor Kammen? It sounds like there’s a lot of speculation, also a lot of concern, about the transparency of this. Have the heads of BP and the heads of the University of California signed on the dotted line?

DANIEL KAMMEN: No, they haven’t. There’s actually still quite a bit of debate still going as to how to structure it, largely around the reasons that Miguel mentioned, because the structure of the proposal that we wrote — and I was one of the authors of the initial proposal, not of the final legal deal, which is being handled by the legal teams, but of the final — but of the initial plan that we sent to BP — was in fact one that I thought addressed many of these issues, and they’re still being debated today, and that was that research done on the University of California side and that of our partners — and our partners in this deal include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is a government lab run by the University of California — and working out the arrangements so that work done on so-called “our side” of that equation is fully the intellectual property of our team members, not of BP, was a central point in the proposal that we wrote up. And those are the features that are now being discussed, and that’s why it has not been finalized yet, trying to work out that arrangement.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about that, Professor Altieri. How does this work? Do employees of BP — I said “Beyond Petroleum,” that’s what the commercials say; I don’t think that’s actually their name — it’s just BP, is that right?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: Yeah, BP.

AMY GOODMAN: The scientists at BP will work at UC Berkeley?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: Yeah, they will be housed at UC Berkeley. Actually, I understand that the state is going to put four to seven million dollars to build a facility for them in the campus. They’re going to have a status of visiting scholars, and they’re going to participate in academic life. Supposedly, they need to be invited to do that, but obviously they’re going to be doing it, and they’re going to be having access to students, having access to research facilities that have been built, but with public money. And they’re going to influence the research agenda. There’s no doubt about that.

And anybody that has protested — faculty — have been basically dismissed and disregarded as a colorful — as part of the colorful character of the campus. You know, we have to have these people that are always protesting.

And what worries me is that, on the one side, they’re promoting the wrong technology: biofuels is the wrong way to go. There’s no discussion, for example, in this proposal about alternative transportation systems, how to curb consumption patterns of petroleum and how to promote other alternatives that are much more viable. And biofuels are going to cause tremendous problems not only in the United States, but in third world countries especially, because if we devoted all the corn that is in this country, 125,000 square miles, we would only satisfy 12% of the gas needs. So obviously what’s going to happen is that it’s going to be grown in the third world, and basically the people in the third world are going to be paying the price for the over-consumption and the old-based style of living of Europe and the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Kammen, your response?

DANIEL KAMMEN: Well, I think there’s a couple really good points in what Miguel just said. The first one is I’m actually, as well, concerned, that I thought that the debate on campus is not one that has been as open as it could be. And you’re right, there has been sort of high-profile protests, but protests and actually having sit-downs between the sides has been somewhat lacking. And I actually really view that as a feature that the campus is responsible for the lack of that, not BP so far, and the campus needs to do a better job in that regard.

In terms of the fuel issues around the world, I actually take quite a different view than that by Miguel. It is true that if we devoted all of our corn to making ethanol in the US, we would only reach about 10% or 12%, so it wouldn’t be a significant effort, and you wouldn’t want to give up all that corn use for ethanol. But an interesting and, I think, a critical feature of the BP proposal is that, in fact, corn ethanol is excluded. Everyone who works on ethanol and biofuels worldwide recognizes that alternate fuels are available that are far better, the so-called cellulosic crops, that even include using garbage and using the waste carbon dioxide that comes out of power plants on just the land sitting next to those power plants. Those are areas for research in this proposal, not corn.

And so, if there was to be an approach that would look at alternatives that did not make the tension between food and fuel worse, it’s a project like this. In fact, in many parts of the developing world, the potential to grow crops that are useful for farmers locally at much higher efficiencies than they draw today — for food stocks, again, not corn — is an option that this proposal should be looking at. And the degree to which we do a good job there, I think, is very much due to the sort of things that Miguel said, and that is having this broader discussion and analysis not only of what we should be doing, but also how it goes on.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Altieri?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: I think it’s going to come too late, because right now what’s happening is that corn and soybean and sugar cane are the crops that the corporations — I mean, the University of California-BP deal is nothing compared to the tremendous alliance between corporations like ADM, the grain merchants — ADM, Bunge, Cargill — the corporations of petroleum, the corporations of biotechnology, the car corporations and some environmental groups. And actually, they are promoting already these types of feed stocks that are going to do a huge destruction, deforestation, more gas emissions, because of the industrial nature of the agriculture they’re going to practice, and so on. So the BP-UC deal is going to come too late with the cellulosic alternatives that Professor Kammen is talking about.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor?

DANIEL KAMMEN: Well, [inaudible] jump in there, because, on one hand, you’re saying that, well, this is a bad thing, but on the other hand you’re saying that, well, this is just an approach that could do it if we did it right. And I actually think that while it’s true that we have come relatively recently to cellulosic fuels in the last few years, to then say we shouldn’t work on them or that we have no chance to make them a big part of the equation is, I think, too early. That might be the case, but it’s not yet. And we do need to explore them.

And, in fact, one of the reasons that California and UC Berkeley was sited for this institute is that the State of California, in work that our lab and others at UC Davis have worked on in detail, is setting standards for our fuels for the future that would in fact be cleaner. And the way that we’re doing this is around something called the low-carbon fuel standard, which effectively means that if we want to use biofuels, corn is not going to be a feedstock. And the reason for that is that we’re rating fuels based on how much greenhouse gases come out.

Now, greenhouse gas is not the only environmental concern I have — there’s also water and erosion and local land use — but it’s the one that is a direct and a first step to allow us to say a fuel that’s worse than gasoline, in terms of its greenhouse impacts, is going to be disallowed in the state, and we’re going to push toward the cleaner ones. And BP, as well as campus researchers setting up this project, cited that effort and parallel efforts going on in Germany and in UK and in EU system-wide right now as part of that new framework. So you’re right, we might not make it. But I do believe we need to do the research to find out if it’s possible.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Altieri, last words. What are you calling for now? What are the organizations on campus and outside — because groups like Greenpeace, Essential Action, have also weighed in here, concerned about the corporatization of public institutions.

MIGUEL ALTIERI: I think what we need is, first of all, is to call again for an open debate, which has been suppressed, because basically the people that were questioning this have been accused of attempting against academic freedom. And basically what academic freedom now means in Berkeley is just that you cannot question the financial associations of faculty.

I mean, we need to look at the record of BP. We cannot associate with BP. It has a horrible record in terms of environment, in terms of human rights, and so on. And they have been, you know, destroying the environment for many years, and now they come as the doves of ecology.

We need to also put in place people that are going to be looking critically at the social, ecological impacts. We cannot leave in charge climate change and ecological questions to a bunch of engineers and chemists and genetic engineering people. We need to bring ecologists, social scientists, but also that are critical and are independent, that are not associated with this proposal and therefore open to debate, and also bring the public of California to question their public university that is being funded by them. They need to reclaim their university, their public university.

AMY GOODMAN: And do you see any of this happening in the discussion?

MIGUEL ALTIERI: No, I don’t see that. Everything is secret. I don’t know anything. None of the faculty that are not associated with this know anything about the negotiation. Professor Kammen seems to be updated, but, you know, the rest of the faculty are not aware of what’s going on.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we will leave it there, but follow the discussion further. I want to thank Professors Altieri and Kammen for joining us from the University of California, Berkeley.