{"id":177,"date":"2009-01-16T17:40:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T21:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=177"},"modified":"2009-01-16T17:40:25","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T21:40:25","slug":"cleaner-better-biofuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/01\/16\/cleaner-better-biofuels\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaner, better biofuels?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><a href=\"http:\/\/news.msu.edu\/story\/5836\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright img-fluid\" style=\"float: right;margin: 10px\" src=\"http:\/\/news.msu.edu\/images\/Bruce_Dale.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"192\" height=\"238\"><\/a>The promise of biofuels \u2013 fuel made from plant material \u2013 has taken a nosedive as scientists predict its generation could cause far more greenhouse gas emissions than it would make up for in preventing the use of fossil fuels.\u00a0 But a Michigan State chemist has asserted in a <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/es802681k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #993366\">paper <\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\">in <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/journal\/esthag\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #800080\">Environmental Science &amp; Technology<\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\"> online that if sustainable management practices, such as no-till farming, are put to widespread use, then producing biofuels could take a fraction of the time to overcome its \u201ccarbon debt.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u201c\u201dSustainable management practices, such as no-till farming and planting cover crops, can reduce the time it takes for biofuels to overcome the carbon debt.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Bruce Dale\u00a0(pictured) and\u00a0his colleagues report that sustainable farming techniques, such as low- or no-till farming practices and planting cover crops, could reduce the time it takes for grassland conversion to overcome its carbon debt from the worst-case estimates of up to 1,000 years to as little as three years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">It\u2019s all a matter of assumptions, and each model of biofuel sustainability uses different ones. Dale assumes that the use of sustainable farming practices is \u201cmore than 50 percent and increasing,\u201d which contradicts many other accounts (see the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kbs.msu.edu\/faculty\/robertson\/PDF\/Robertson%20et%20al.%202008%20Science.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #800080\">Science policy forum paper <\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\">by Robertson et al., Oct. 2008).\u00a0 Incentives for sustainable farming could, of course, increase the relative value of biofuels in the <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=167\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"color: #800080\">grand scheme <\/span><\/a><span style=\"color: #000000\">of alternative fuels.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The promise of biofuels \u2013 fuel made from plant material \u2013 has taken a nosedive as scientists predict its generation could cause far more greenhouse gas emissions than it would make up for in preventing the use of fossil fuels.\u00a0 But a Michigan State chemist has asserted in a paper in Environmental Science &amp; Technology online that if sustainable management&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[130,119,131,132],"class_list":["post-177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","category-research","tag-add-new-tag","tag-biofuels","tag-cellulosic-ethanol","tag-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}