[HN Gopher] Biofuels Policy, a Mainstay of American Agriculture,...
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Biofuels Policy, a Mainstay of American Agriculture, a Failure for
the Climate
Author : rntn
Score : 66 points
Date : 2025-06-15 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (insideclimatenews.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (insideclimatenews.org)
| lazide wrote:
| This has been obvious for anyone doing the basic math since the
| beginning.
|
| It was great for farmers though.
| itsanaccount wrote:
| It was great for large investor backed farmers who bought out
| their neighbors via debt, leased expensive John Deere equipment
| via debt, and are now trapped.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| iirc it is scientifically possible to take corn stover and
| convert it to bioethanol with net negative carbon emissions.
| rgmerk wrote:
| There was a bunch of activity in the 2000s and 2010s trying
| and failing to do this commercially.
|
| Never say never but for ground transport BEVs seem like they
| will eat the market well before anyone gets the technology
| working.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| yes I'm aware. in that era, which was last i tracked this
| field, BP had a pilot plant that reached commercial and
| greenhouse breakeven, but then they lost the deepwater
| horizon case and scuttled their biofuels research, I'd be
| surprised if no one caught up. did no one catch up?
| pfdietz wrote:
| BEVs powered by PV use two orders of magnitude less land
| than ICEVs burning biofuels.
|
| Biofuels are just incredibly land (and water) hungry. In
| the post fossil fuel age, biofuels will be reserved for
| special applications, if that (and for providing
| carbonaceous feedstocks for the organic chemical industry.)
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > use two orders of magnitude less land
|
| not if you use stover and cob. in those cases, you use
| net zero new land (you were growing kernels anyways)
| magnuspaaske wrote:
| There are people who use pyrolysis to turn left over biomass
| to biochar which can then be added to the soil and, depending
| on your energy use for other things, can turn the process
| carbon net negative. It is a roundabout way to sequester
| carbon though as you need to consider the opportunity cost of
| doing other things with the land (like leaving it for nature
| to take over and sequester carbon that way).
|
| It's always worth being sceptical about some of these claims
| about processes magically being carbon net negative since
| cleaning up the atmosphere might not actually be what's
| paying the bills leading to inherent conflicts between
| selling a product (ethanol) and doing an environmental
| service. Switching to EVs will allow you to use much less
| land to fuel the cars with wind or solar energy and then the
| leftover land can be used for carbon sequestration and
| rewilding/biodiversity projects where that's the sole focus
| of the operation.
| worik wrote:
| Yes
|
| Deeper topsoil is a good way to sequester carbon.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Isn't a large part of ethanol it's use as a fuel additive that it
| boosts octane and is relatively cheap? Compared to leaded
| gasoline it seems very "green".
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Turning solar power into something we use to destroy the
| environment doesn't strike me as very "green" at all. Quite the
| opposite. I can't imagine it's a very efficient use of money,
| either.
|
| Granted, we will likely always need to do this, but where was
| the need at this _absurd_ scale? Most of our heavy industry
| runs on diesel anyway.
| asdff wrote:
| It goes full circle: where does the carbon in the biofuel
| come from? The plant. Where does the carbon in the plant come
| from? The air. This is why biofuels are carbon neutral in
| theory at least. There is of course loss in process like in
| most things.
|
| In terms of a use of money it is a good way to subsidize the
| american corn farmer. Whether you believe that is worthwhile
| depends on your views of WWIII.
| Qem wrote:
| The devil is in the details. Where did the land used to
| plant it came from? What was there before? Deforestation
| emits a lot of CO2. Fertilizer needs fossil fuels to be
| manufactured, tractors and harvesters burn diesel, et
| cetera.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| We could also just feed the food to people who want to kill
| us and maybe they'll want to kill us less.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Leaded gasoline hasn't been a thing for decades now.
| strongpigeon wrote:
| Except in general aviation, where lead free alternatives are
| just coming out of the approval pipeline.
| Qem wrote:
| Most crops beyond sugarcane in tropical areas lack biomass
| output high enough to compensate the need for fossil fuel
| inputs and land use emissions.
| adrianN wrote:
| The easiest fix might be pushing for faster adoption of BEVs.
| Nobody can easily take subsidies away from farmers.
| paddy_m wrote:
| BEV are not a serious climate solution unless you are talking
| about ebikes. BEV also contribute a load of pollution to
| waterways via tire wear. ebikes are cheaper to purchase and
| make a significant change.
| decimalenough wrote:
| They're not a panacea, but they're better than
| gas/petrol/diesel (or biofuel) cars across the board.
| Emissions have dropped and air quality has measurably
| improved in places with high BEV adoption, like Norway and
| China.
|
| Even the weight thing is a bit of a red herring: if we really
| cared about that, we should restrict car weights across the
| board. (Few BEVs clock in at over 2T, while virtually every
| F-150 style truck does.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 90M light vehicles are sold globally every year. As long as
| consumers demand cars, BEVs are the most climate friendly
| cars to sell them. Anyone saying "don't buy cars!" is living
| a pipe dream.
|
| China is going to build as many EVs as the world can consume.
|
| (don't disagree that we should build and sell as manly
| electric bikes as possible, but they are not a replacement
| for vehicles in many cases)
| rainsford wrote:
| Ebikes might have more positive impact, but that doesn't
| matter unless you can convince a critical mass of people to
| use them instead of their cars. I say this as someone who
| thinks ebikes are cool, but that's absolutely not going to
| happen in any significant way at least in the US. Replacing a
| gas car with an ebike requires a significant shift in your
| lifestyle, which most people either can't or don't want to
| do. The benefit of a BEV is that you can mostly use it
| exactly like you use the gas car you already have, with some
| added benefit of being able to "refuel" it at home while you
| sleep. Changes that people actually adopt are at the end of
| the day the most impactful ones.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| BEV - Battery Electric Vehicle
|
| (just in case it's not obvious)
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Are you aware that by having agriculture directly integrated
| inro the fuel/electricity market, you have ai compete
| directly against people for basic survival neccssities?
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Wouldn't it technically be "the use of AI complete
| directly..." a well-functioning market would easily solve
| this by prioritizing the basic survival needs over what AI
| use provides.
| jajko wrote:
| No word about cutting down whole rain forests (ie on Borneo or
| mainland Malaysia) just to have more biofuels? I've seen those
| endless fields of that palm monoculture where almost nothing else
| lives from above and in person, and also how proper rain forest
| next to it looks like, it was a very depressing view.
| alephnerd wrote:
| The palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia are targeted at
| human consumption - palm oil is the primary cheap cooking oil
| across Asia, and demand is high.
|
| Paraguay and Brazil are where a significant portion of
| plantation farming is targeted at biofuels.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Because just about every country is greenwashing "Energy
| Security" as "Alternative Energy".
|
| Countries that are supporting BEVs are those countries that have
| slip capacity to other fuels (renewable AND coal) and rare earth
| processing, just like those pushing for Hydrogen are those with
| alternative sourcing supply chains for biofuels and coal, those
| pushing for continued ONG usage have plenty of access to refining
| capacity, and those continuing to push for biofuels have the
| ethanol processing capacity.
|
| The brutal reality is large countries can eat the financial and
| humanitarian cost of climate change easily, but those worst
| affected live in countries that cannot. There is a moral case to
| be made for multilateral climate engagement, but NatSec will
| always trump morality.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Ask ChatGPT what would happen if all ethanol corn farmland were
| replace by solar panels. Then ask about agrosolar
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Instead, why don't _you_ tell us what your point actually is?
| pfdietz wrote:
| His point is probably we'd save 99.5% of the land that is
| going to make bioethanol.
| Arubis wrote:
| Duh. It was never meant to actually be good for the climate. We
| USians just wanted to point more subsidy money domestically
| (particular at farmers, the target for virtually every non-
| kinetic subsidy for decades) instead of using MBTE, which was
| IIRC mostly of Canadian manufacture.
| worik wrote:
| The perfidious outcomes of viewing climate change as a "business
| opportunity" rather than an urgent crises is making things worse
|
| There are the obvious effects outlined here
|
| There is also an opportunity cost. Bad policy displaced good
| policy
|
| We see something similar with planting trees in New Zealand. Huge
| land area planted out with pine trees, allowing polluters to tick
| a box, take good productive land out of use, impoverish the
| people living around it, and in the end they burn
|
| What a waste
| dehrmann wrote:
| The part that is useful is there's strategic benefit to surplus
| food production, and it's an outlet for surplus food.
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