How a Tortilla Crisis is Causing an Energy Innovation

The ‘Great Tortilla Crisis’ of 2006 is having an unexpected effect two years later – helping to determine the fate of ethanol as an energy source. Ethanol got the blame for rising food prices as American farmers used the corn they grew for fuel instead of food, making it too expensive for Mexico’s poor. Now, biofuel producers are searching for sources of energy that don’t take food off the table, turning to grass, grain stalks left behind by the harvest, garbage dumps and dinner table scraps.

From The Huffington Post:

Carlo Bakker’s tiny biofuel operation, World Mobile Plants, avoids edibles. He says his mini-refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck, roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. He says he plans eventually to use organic household waste as well.

Bakker says one mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which he sells for the equivalent of US$3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.

“We don’t compete with the food chain,” Bakker said during a biofuels conference in Amsterdam. “We see opportunities not only to make money but to help people.”

Now, we’re seeing a shift toward second-generation biofuels – those that use waste streams. Universities and corporate research laboratories are pouring millions of dollars into finding a way to break down woody or grassy biomass into cellulosic ethanol. We’re still a few years away from commercial plants, however.

Biofuel proponents are upset that all biofuels have been lumped together in this backlash, when some forms made from things like sugar cane don’t have an effect on the food supply. In Europe, biodiesel is made largely of rapeseed grown on disused land. Only 40% of crushed rapeseed is used for biodiesel while the rest is processed into animal feed.

However, biofuel still requires plenty of water and is sometimes grown on fertile cropland which, many argue, could be put to better use for food.

A long-term solution could still come from the biofuel industry, if they can solve these problems. Many people view biofuels as a ‘band-aid’ solution, however – only useful until we can move on to something that’s truly sustainable. There are those who believe that turning to genetic modification is the answer, but that’s a whole other can of worms and one that we hope will not be opened any time soon.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

U.S. Intelligence Reports Warn of Global Warming Consequences

Global warming will help Russia gain power as the U.S. and its dollar declines, according to a new U.S. intelligence report on what the world will likely be like by the year 2025.  The report, Global Trends 2025, warns that the warming earth will extend Russia’s growing season and allow it access to northern oil fields, strengthening its economy. Canada will also benefit for the same reasons.

From MSNBC:

It also says countries in Africa and South Asia may find themselves unstable and ungoverned, as state regimes collapse or wither away under security problems and water and food shortages brought about by climate change and a population increase of 1.4 billion.

The potential for conflict will be greater in 2025 than it is now, as the world’s population competes for declining and shifting food, water and energy resources.

The report, a year in the making, also suggests the world may complete its move away from its dependence on oil, and that the U.S. dollar, while remaining important, will decline to “first among equals” among other national currencies.

U.S. global power also will likely decline, as Americans’ concerns about putting resources into solving domestic problems may cause the United States to pull resources from foreign and global problems.

Well, it’s no surprise that global warming is going to mess things up, big time. We’ve already been warned that climate shifts will cause major food and water issues across the world, and that the stability of African nations in particular will decline.

What is surprising is that the Bush administration let this one through the ol’ global-warming-isn’t-real filter. They’ve been stifling research that affirms global warming as a real and serious threat for years, and Bush has certainly proven that he’s not going to go out quietly.  January 20th can’t arrive quickly enough.

Link [MSNBC]
Image credit: Flickr user AlphaTangoBravo

Green Meme Killers: Ethanol Is Causing The Food Crisis

I’m sure you’ve heard it, just as we have, from self-righteous sounding friends and family. You know the sort: they think that global warming is a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, and that environmentalists must be stopped. “The reason food prices are so out of control is because we’re sinking so much into ethanol and biofuels.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The meme generally goes like this:

Last year, food-to-fuel policies led to ¼ of U.S. corn being turned into ethanol. That number will rise to over 30% this year. By 2012 as much as 40% of our corn and 30% of our vegetable oils could be be diverted to fuel production.

This diversion of food crops is reducing the supply of food and feed and contributing to food price inflation. Today, food prices in the US are rising at twice the rate of inflation. Globally, food prices rose 83% in the last 3 years.

Compelling evidence, right? Not quite. The reality is that while the U.S. is embracing ethanol on a growing scale, that’s not what is driving food prices through the roof. First, we have to consider that–and we don’t say this lightly, being a resident of a state the neither the midwest nor the south seems ready to claim–the weather in the farm belt has been batshit crazy lately. Why does that matter? It means that the 25% of corn that went to ethanol in 2007 isn’t the same 25% of corn that was cheaply available in, say, 2000. Last year it was the drought that almost killed Atlanta. In 2006? Another drought. 2005? A third goddamn drought. And of course, to make up for all of this in 2008, we so far have been having rains that would make Noah blush–if you think food prices are high now, wait until the next harvest–there’s 4 million acres of corn that didn’t get planted this year because the weather was too bad. The farmers have insurance and soybeans to fall back on. What do we have? Stocking up.

Which segues nicely to the second point: despite all of these shortages, food would still be cheap if it weren’t for futures trading. This is America, man! We make money off of everything, including corn crops that aren’t even in the ground yet. Shares of corn futures–bushels, just like a barrel of crude oil– are sold like stocks in a company, and the more crazy the weather acts, the more intense the demand is going to be for those shares. In 2004, futures closed at $2.4175. In 2008? $4.28. This isn’t about ethanol sucking up all the available corn–it’s about that corn being bought for, and in turn having to be sold for, way more money. Because the weather in the places that grow corn (see also: flyover country) has been biblically bad.

It’s not just corn, either–wheat is up, and so are soybeans, a reflection that this is a problem that’s striking in systemic fashion, not merely a symptom of the evil environmentalists convincing everybody that oil is bad. Not that we’re not trying to do that, too. But biofuels are innocent, and anybody that says otherwise has tunnel vision.