Biofuels and Deforestation

Biofuels are seen as the eco-friendly, "green" version of fossil fuels. They are considered "carbon neutral" by some people, but are they really?

By the year 2022 the United States is supposed to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuel annually. In 2010 the U.S. produced 28 billion gallons, so we are well on our way to meeting the 2022 deadline. All of this biofuel production has put a strain on American farmers to meet not only the crop demands for human consumption but now the demands for biofuel production as well. Americans are producing more corn and less soybeans. This is causing countries in South America to try to pick up the "slack."

These countries are picking up the "slack" by tearing down rainforests to make room for more farmland. In between 2000-2005, 13 million hectares of forest was destroyed and replaced by farmland. All of those hectares of forest that absorb carbon, are lost and replaced with farmland, which generates a lot of greenhouse gasses through the process of agriculture. Over 283 gigatons (one million tons) of carbon is stored in the earths forests and each year, due to deforestation, 4.4 gigatons of carbon are not absorbed back into the forests. That is equivalent to the carbon dioxide emitted by 807 million vehicles, if each one emits 5 tons of carbon dioxide a year. This leads to higher temperatures across the world and lead to earlier and dryer planting seasons in the mid United States. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Summary Report and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council deforestation causes more global warming pollution than all of the fossil fuel based forms of transportation in the world. In the United States alone deforestation causes more global warming pollution than cars, trucks, buses and airplanes combined.

On the other hand, we will at some point run out of fossil fuels and biofuels do have advantages. One advantage is that biofuels do not require any drastic change to a vehicle in order for it to run, unlike other sources of renewable power like wind and solar. They also help us to reduce our dependency on foreign fossil fuels. Another advantage is they are a renewable resource, so we can keep producing them. Fossil fuels are also cheaper and many governments are offering tax deductions if you buy greener cars that run on fossil fuels.

I think the Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Department here at North Dakota State University can offer guidelines for ABEN Engineers throughout the world. We are striving to develop biofuels and biofuel production processes that are environmentally friendly and produce the most biofuel per bushel of grain. In the long run this will help minimize the the amount of crops needed to produce biofuel and help to minimize deforestation.

Biofuels are doing a good job of helping us reduce our foreign oil dependency and maybe will eventually reduce the number of oil wells being drilled in the United States. I think we should continue to produce and develop biofuels, but I also think there needs to be regulations put in place to reduce and eventually stop deforestation, especially of the tropical rainforests. These rainforests play a major roll in absorbing carbon. We need to get these countries to stop deforestation, maybe by paying them to maintain the forests instead of destroying them. Simultaneously we would need to implement a plan to regulate the amount of crops being used for biofuel production and human consumption in the Untied States. I feel this would help reduce the strain on foreign countries and save the forests.