The European Commission (EC) has proposed to limit the amount of food crops that can be used for making biofuels in the European Union. The move comes after several studies have shown that not all biofuels are equal in greenhouse gas emissions.
Under the Renewable Energy Directive, 10 percent of all transport fuels were to be renewably sourced by 2020. The related Fuel Quality Directive set a greenhouse gas reduction target of 6 percent by 2020 for fuels used in transport. When these goals were set, the contribution from biofuels was expected to be fairly high.
The European Commission wants to limit the use of food crops as a source of biofuel, and instead promote non-food sources, such as this Miscanthus, or elephant grass, grown in the UK, as a biofuel feedstock. (Source: Wikimedia Commons/David Wright)
The percentage of food-based biofuels allowed to contribute to that 10 percent will now be limited to 5 percent of the total, which is the current consumption rate, up until 2020. After that year, the EC wants to give financial incentives only to those biofuels that aren't produced from food and feed crops, and that lead to "substantial" greenhouse gas savings.
The EC's reasons for the changes are "to stimulate the development of alternative, so-called second generation biofuels from non-food feedstock, like waste or straw, which emit substantially less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels and do not directly interfere with global food production," according to a press release.
Some recent studies indicate that certain biofuels may actually add as much to greenhouse gas emissions as the fossil fuels they are designed to replace. The EC says this became clear when the studies accounted for changes in indirect land use. Those changes can happen when the production of biofuel from a food crop forces a shift in the production of human food or animal feed crops to land that has not been previously cleared for agricultural use, such as forests.
The proposal calls for several changes. It requires that, when assessing a biofuel's greenhouse gas performance, in order for it to be counted toward the targets and receive support, its estimated global land conversion impacts, or Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), must now be included in reports by fuel suppliers and member states. The proposal also increases the greenhouse gas savings threshold for new installations to a minimum of 60 percent.
Currently, biofuels must emit at least 35 percent less greenhouse gases than the fossil fuels they replace; increasing to 50 percent in 2017. This change is designed to improve biofuel production process efficiency and discourage more investments in existing installations with low greenhouse gas performance.
@GeorgeG: I don't think I agree with your statement that "in the long view, the more frequently a material is recycled, the more energy it uses." Obviously, recycling takes energy -- but the recycled product is presumably taking the place of a new (virgin) product, so the net energy usage is less than making two parts out of virgin material.
It sounds like you are saying that throwing things away is less wasteful than recycling them. That just doesn't compute.
That being said, the steel industry's lifecycle assessments may be significantly overstating actual recovery rates for recycling. A recent study published in Science magazine shows that, even though metals are infinitely recyclable in principle, the reality falls far short of that. Recovery rates, even for commonly-used metals such as steel, are not much above 50%. A typical piece of steel might be recycled 2 or 3 times in its lifetime before it becomes unrecoverable, certainly not hundreds or thousands of times.
I'm hoping to interview the author of this study for Design News later this month, so stay tuned.
Ann, reading your article makes me think the EU is trying to mandate magic fuels. Nuclear power is bad, fossil fuels are bad, food-based biofuel is bad. Fuels must not emit greenhouse gases. I'm at a loss for what is left.
It seems like Europe wants people to turn their skin green and photosynthesizing their own energy.
George, I did a story on the steel study, and I felt a tad queasy about it simply because it was commissioned by the steel industry. Even so, the results were interesting. Like many things (including cars) improvements may come easiest by improving existing systems rather than creating new systems. Our greatest gas savings may come from improved internal combustion engines rather than hybrids or EVs.
I agree, Dave. But I think we need to remember that the reason first-generation fuel feedstocks were chosen while ignoring their potential impact on food crops happened for several reasons. We had a focus on ethanol because researchers were looking for what appeared to be the fastest, more-likely to-be-a-drop-in replacement for gasoline. We looked at corn as a source of ethanol since we, the US, have a lot of it, and here the corn lobby may be relevant, as others have mentioned. But it's also true that we looked first for a drop-in replacement, due to the economics that drive our manufacturing, instead of first seeking the "best" technology from some other standpoint, such as least harm to the environment, easiest to produce, or easiest/simplest to distribute.
TJ, the article states that the EC wants to increase its production of biofuel for transportation applications, but decrease the amount of feedstock that comes from food-baseed crop sources. Instead, there are several other possibilities: food crop waste (like corn husks), or non-food crop biomass (like straw). Other possible sources include non-recycled plastics, and municipal waste, all of which we've reported on.
I'm saying that, the more often you recycle something, the more energy is used. Of course, as some point out, it's even a bit worse because of attrition - some part has to be made up of new material. Something like (1+(1-f)*(n-1))*En +f*(n-1)*Er where f is the fraction that is recycled, n is the number of lifetimes, En is the energy input for new material and Er is the energy input for recycling. Everything multiplies by n. Energy usage per unit of time is proportional to 1/Tl where Tl is the lifetime for one use and n(t) = t/Tl. Obviously, the more durable the product in which the material is used, the lower the cummulative energy input. For example, I remember when I purchased a new exhaust system for my car about every 3 years but now, even a car I've had for 10 years still needs no replacement. Ditto for front disk rotors. The energy content of the vehicle for these items is obviously easily 3 times less, even before we think about recycling. It would be ludicrous to say that recycling is not better than throwing away unless recycling takes more energy than making new material and I didn't say that.
" first-generation fuel feedstocks were chosen while ignoring their potential impact on food crops" ... no, they were not. The US policy was clearly one intended to increase the demand for corn and other grains. At the time, there was actual surplus capacity, where surplus means no market at the American price, and substantial curtailed capacity where curtailed means paying producers not to produce. 'Twasn't an accident. The option of importing inexpensive ethanol was always there. However, if it doesn't seem to make sense to an engineer, look for a politician in the works.
'Fuels must not emit greenhouse gases. I'm at a loss for what is left.' First sentence true. Nulle desperandum. Conservation, geothermal, tidal, run of river, wind and solar for a start. Even hydro although new hydro has an appreciable carbon footprint. Existing hydro has a long way to go: recall that most hydro is ancient and that knowledge in fluid dynamics, magnetics and meteorology has gone a long way in 50 years. Many existing head ponds are capable of a technological bonus of 150 to 200%. The problem, common to most of these technologies, is simply LCOE (cost) as compared to cheap and dirty burning stuff. Even with automobiles, we can get off of gasoline now ... at a cost. By and large, we're just too cheap to save our own skins.
What I'd hope that engineers would understand, especially good product and process engineers, is that economy of scale is huge (that's the Henry Ford story): if everyone buys a product, the price will go down - a lot. For new technologies, we talk about experience curves where the cost of production decreases in proportion to cummulative quantity sold. If you would like cheap EVs, try buying 100,000,000 of them. Engineers get budget from margin which comes from sales - engineers make things better given time and money - simple equation. Experience also generates data which is invaluable - practical engineering involves a substantial amount of SPC (the good stuff is mostly bleading edge - we just call it leading edge to seem smarter).
Like Dave, I've also seen the statements about metals being "infinitely" recyclable, especially aluminum. Sad to see that for steel, recovery rates are only around 50%. But that said, Dave, what makes the piece of steel unrecoverable after 2 or 3 recycling instances? By "unrecoverable" do you mean it begins degrading, or that it becomes lost in a landfill because people don't recycle it?
@Ann: Material is lost from recycling streams at all stages.
Metal loss in melting processes is non-neglible; metal is lost due to volatilization and oxidation. The amount of loss depends on the melting process. For induction melting of steel, about 1-2% of the charge material is lost; for cupola melting of iron, the loss might be as high as 10%.
Then, not all scrap metal makes it into the recycling stream; some winds up in landfills instead. This is probably the most obvious way that material can be lost. A less obvious one is that not all scrap makes it back into the correct recycling stream. For example, steel that is mixed into aluminum scrap becomes a harmful impurity.
The statement that a given unit of steel is recycled two or three times before it is essentially lost to the recycling process is based on Markov chain modelling of the various loss processes.
One of the conclusions of the Science article is that design engineers can play an important role in increasing the effectiveness of recycling efforts. I hope to get more details about how to do this when I talk with the author.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
The 100-percent solar-powered Solar Impulse plane flies on a piloted, cross-country flight this summer over the US as a prelude to the longer, round-the-world flight by its successor aircraft planned for 2015.
GE Aviation expects to chop off about 25 percent of the total 3D printing time of metallic production components for its LEAP Turbofan engine, using in-process inspection. That's pretty amazing, considering how slow additive manufacturing (AM) build times usually are.
A $1,500, hand-operated, bench-model, plastic injection machine crowdsource-funded via Kickstarter can be used to mold small, quality, plastic parts inexpensively, on demand.
The federal government is launching competitions to kickstart three more manufacturing innovation institutes, including one focused on Lightweight and Modern Metals Manufacturing Innovation.
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