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Turning Soybeans into Diesel Fuel Is Costing Billions
- bognition 9y agoSure but how much is it saving us in the long term by being carbon neutral?
- cantrip 9y agoAre they carbon neutral? Sure the initial carbon dumped into the atmosphere to plow the fields is a short term increase, but then you're also deforesting lands to grow them, which permanently adds more carbon into the atmosphere.
- s0rce 9y agoAnd, I assume producing and transporting vast quantities of fertilizer which is not carbon neutral.
- afarrell 9y agoIIRC, soy has nitrogen-fixing bacteria.
- s0rce 9y agoYes, but there are other nutrient needs, also looks like in certain cases additional nitrogen fertilizers are used for soybean crops. https://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/nutrient-management/nutrient-lime-guidelines/fertilizer-recommendations-for-agronomic-crops-in-minnesota/soybean/ https://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/nutrient-managemen...
- jandrese 9y agoThey're more carbon neutral than dino diesel. Of course energy is still needed to convert the soybeans into something you can burn in an engine, plus all of the cultivation and transportation costs. The intent is that this is grown on lands that would otherwise lay fallow, so there shouldn't be a large deforestation concern.
- cantrip 9y agoYou either are or you aren't, you can't be "more" carbon neutral. And anyway, I'm not asking if it's better for the environment than fossil fuels, I'm asking if the claim that it is carbon neutral is true or not.
- stcredzero 9y agoYou either are or you aren't, you can't be "more" carbon neutral. Well, if you're going to be that pedantic about it, then nothing we know of is technically carbon neutral. We might be off by an atom or two!
- cantrip 9y agoI was clarifying in case the author of the comment was unsure what "carbon neutral" means. It's not a comparative term, so it confuses the discussion to use it as such, just as unfunny comments derail discussion.
- stcredzero 9y agoIt's not a comparative term, so it confuses the discussion to use it as such, just as unfunny comments derail discussion. "Either it is or it isn't," implies that it's a binary. That's incorrect and muddies the waters. It's quantitative in a practical sense, as in geography or geology, not in an absolute sense as in mathematics. So "more carbon neutral" can be sensibly interpreted in this quantitative sense. Your use of language implying that it's a binary, "confuses the discussion to use it as such." You probably think it's "unfunny" because you missed the logical distinction. Now that it has been explained to you how you were the one who derailed the discussion in the first place with bad logic, you probably still think it's "unfunny."
- cantrip 9y agoI honestly can't for the life of me understand what you're trying to say here. The poster said "They're more carbon neutral than dino diesel." I was simply stating that not only was I not arguing otherwise (if we're assuming "more carbon neutral" means better for the environment), but also clarifying what the term means (the binary state of being carbon neutral). I think your statement was unfunny because I did not personally find it funny, nor do I expect others to. Not for any other nefarious reason.
- bequanna 9y ago> but then you're also deforesting lands to grow them Other than anecdotal evidence, do you have any source for this? The cost to remove trees and put that land into production is quite high. Even then, most forested land is poor for growing crops. I would be very surprised to learn that in the US, farmers are removing trees and preparing the land to till on a large scale.
- netfire 9y agoThis is covered in the article. The forests in question are in Argentina, not the US, and it sounds like demand for Soybeans from China may be causing some of the deforestation (although it is unclear how much is due to that versus US-based demand).
- cantrip 9y agoThe article we're discussing is a good source. Also, Brazil enacted a soy moratorium over ten years ago to combat deforestation. You're limiting your "surprise" to the US, but that's not what I, or the article we're discussing, are talking about.
- rch 9y agoThe article focuses on Argentina as it was a source of low cost biodiesel. It is still probable that grasslands are a better carbon sink than the same land would be if used to grow soybeans. Here's a source that describes methods which would be broadly beneficial: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1287318.Holistic_Management https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1287318.Holistic_Managem...
- njarboe 9y agoMost of the land in the US East of the Mississippi was forested, cut down, and turned into farmland. Some marginal lands have returned to forest like in upstate New York and in the Appalachia Mountains, but Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and other mid-western states are/were the heart of US agricultural production. They are slowly beginning covered by urban and suburban development. I believe that people thought farming was not possible if the land did not already support trees. They were mostly right before irrigation and scientifically bred crops.
- paulirwin 9y agoThe biodiesel.org site, which is run by the National Biodiesel Board (a biodiesel industry trade group), references [1] a 1998 study that shows biodiesel to have a 78 percent reduction in net CO2 emissions. So not carbon neutral, but significantly less net emissions. I'd be interested in seeing the results of a more up-to-date study. However, that's the net reduction for B100, or 100% biodiesel. The more common and engine-friendly B20 blend at 20% biodiesel / 80% petroleum diesel would be a 15.6% net reduction in CO2. [1]: http://biodiesel.org/what-is-biodiesel/biodiesel-faq's http://biodiesel.org/what-is-biodiesel/biodiesel-faq's
- cantrip 9y agoI don't think linking to a biodiesel lobbying group constitutes as evidence.
- wtallis 9y agoThe research in question was merely cited by the lobbying group. Specifically, they write: > A 1998 biodiesel lifecycle study, jointly sponsored by the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Agriculture, concluded biodiesel reduces net CO² emissions by 78 percent compared to petroleum diesel.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoWhere are the people who funded those studies working today? Industry has a well established track record of planting shills and promising lucrative jobs to public officials who do their bidding.
- paulirwin 9y agoIt appears this is the study cited: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24772.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24772.pdf
- rch 9y agoIndustrial agriculture methods probably aren't carbon neutral anywhere, and it would be almost impossible if mature forests are cut down to grow soybeans.
- olivermarks 9y agoTLDR 'Scott Irwin, an economist at the University of Illinois calculates...the extra cost for biodiesel comes to about $1.80 per gallon right now, meaning that the biofuel law is costing Americans about $5.4 billion a year'. 'Biodiesel is very expensive, relative to petroleum diesel' 'Defenders of biodiesel insist that it's a much cleaner fuel than regular diesel, because it doesn't come from the ground, but from soybean plants that capture carbon dioxide from the air as they grow. In fact, by the EPA's calculations, replacing petroleum-based fuel with biodiesel will cut greenhouse emissions at least in half. A growing number of environmentalists, however, say that this calculation is dead wrong. They say that if more soybeans are needed to make fuel in addition to food, it inevitably means that people somewhere on Earth will have to plow up grasslands or cut down forests in order to grow that additional supply — and clearing such land releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.'
- jandrese 9y agoAs long as the subsidy is US only I think they can avoid having too much forest land plowed over to make room for Soybeans.
- tamcap 9y agoThe effects are connected. Converting more soybeans into fuel means it costs more to buy soy for food - higher incentive to make a new soy field anywhere.
- jandrese 9y agoDepends how the subsidy is set up. If it creates a price floor just above the production cost then it just reduces risk for the farmers without incentivizeing them to devote extra field space to soy. Basically the food market gets serviced until the price almost drops below the point where it would be sustainable and the excess is bought up by the Diesel producers (who receive the government subsidy).
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
- jimrandomh 9y agoThe US used to have a policy of paying farmers to maintain unused production capacity - ie, to leave some of their fields fallow. This creates an emergency-response capability: if some event shrinks the country's or the world's food production capacity, then that capacity can be activated. This policy was politically problematic because of the conspicuous waste, and economically problematic because fallow land can't necessarily be converted into food production fast enough. Mandating use of biodiesel seems like a better way of achieving the same goal: it ensures extra food-production capacity is maintained. Plus, it reduces the amount of soybean oil being used in food. That stuff's unhealthy (very high omega-6 content), and apparently there's a huge amount of it being produced essentially as a byproduct of soy meal.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThis is a poor policy decision in order to maintain ag production readiness (or, possibly, is blatant handout to the ag industry), very much the same way corn ethanol is a net negative. Crop production should never create competition between human nutritional consumption and transportation. You also can't give away your overproduction to less well off countries, as you cripple their ag market, preventing them from bootstrapping their own economy. It's a moot point with transportation electrifying as quickly as it is. I don't have enough knowledge to say what crops we should be planting above and beyond what meets human consumption needs, but I can say without a doubt we should not be subsidizing crop based biofuels (only algae based fuels, only to be used for air and marine transport).
- LeifCarrotson 9y agoIf an emergency created a huge shortage in global food supply, the policy's assumption is that the market competition for nutritional vs. transportation crops would shift (food would be more expensive and valuable to sell) so that the new nutritional needs were satisfied. You are correct that in the current equilibrium state it is sub-optimal. Prices are settled right now where a small number of hungry poor people are out-competed by the transportation market because they can't pay more than it can. That is bad, I completely agree. But fixing that isn't what the policy is for, the policy is for preventing starvation during World War 3. So you have to compare the suffering of people here and now against the potential suffering expected without the policy in place multiplied by the probability that WW3 occurs.
- diesel_health 9y agoDiesel exhaust is carcinogenic (causes cancer) [2012] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinogens#Mixtures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge... "IARC: DIESEL ENGINE EXHAUST CARCINOGENIC" [PDF] https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf https://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2012/pdfs/pr213_E.pdf ... Soybeans are also useful for bioplastics.
- jandrese 9y agoThat's for dinosaur diesel. Biodiesel would have a different set of combustion byproducts. Probably still carcinogenic though, at least in the state of California. High combustion temps tend to do that.
- MisterTea 9y agoIt's not so much what comes out chemically but what comes out physically. And happens to be particulate matter meaning partly combusted hydrocarbons in the form of soot. The soot is an inhalation hazard and has been linked to asthma and lung cancer.
- zentiggr 9y agoDo I remember correctly that fully burned pure diesel yields water and CO2? Soot is usually partially burned fuel plus a percentage of contaminants?
- jandrese 9y agoThat can't be right because where would the sulfur go? Not to mention all of the other junk in there.
- zentiggr 9y agoPer wikipedia, pure diesel is moderate size hydrocarbon chains. Everything else is impurities... so burning pure diesel in a 100% oxygen environment would yield water and COn gases. Of course, the rest of the world introduces different combustion products, including sulfur as part of the fuel oil fractions not completely distilled away.
- paulmd 9y agoBiodiesel is still way more environmentally friendly than ethanol, which is also heavily subsidized. And the idea of biofuels displacing food production also generically applies to any biofuel, again including Ethanol. This kinda reads like a corn industry hit-piece on a rival technology. Besides, having third-world countries be dependent on US exports of (heavily subsidized) surplus food is one of the things that causes famines (shortages in the US come out of exports first), and continues the cycle of economic dependency (domestic producers cannot compete with heavily subsidized US exports). The actual fix here would be to develop foreign food production and then have the US reduce emissions to offset.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoIn a world where hunger is still an unsolved problem, burning food for fuel is not just unethical, it's downright stupid.
- clementmiao 9y agoThe counter argument there is that hunger still existing is not so much a product of there not being enough food as much as the food not properly being allocated. There is easily enough food produced in the world to feed everyone as is.
- Leader2light 9y agoHunger is solved, in any country that is not a shit hole.
- Johnny555 9y agoFrom the end of the article: In fact, China wants so much soy meal that it's boosted global supplies of soy oil, because soybeans, when they're crushed, yield both meal and oil. By satisfying China's demand for meal, soy processors inevitably end up with plenty of oil to sell, too. So if soy meal is what's driving the Soy market, doesn't that limit the environmental cost for soy used for oil, since the oil is effectively a waste product from the soy meal production?
- digi_owl 9y agoSoy oil a waste product? Hardly. It can be used for all manner of food preparations.
- skj 9y agoWaste product according to the driving force.
- supreme_sublime 9y agoJust as Diesel used to be a "byproduct" of gasoline refinement. But of course manufacturers want to monetize everything they possibly can and did so with diesel.
- ptaipale 9y agoOriginally, gasoline was a byproduct of kerosene (lamp oil) refinement, and simply thrown into waste (even dumped into rivers). The man best known for getting rich by utilizing this byproduct was John D. Rockefeller.
- bluGill 9y agoThat is misleading. IT is used for a lot of other uses. However those other uses are nowhere near taking up the supply.
- curtis 9y agoFueling ground transport with bio-fuels probably doesn't make long-term sense -- the economics for battery electric already look like they're better. Bio-fuels for jet aircraft may make long-term sense though, because aircraft are vastly more weight sensitive than ground transport. Even though jet aircraft individually consume a lot of fuel, the entire air transportation sector is only responsible for a relatively small fraction of overall petroleum usage (on the order of 5%, I think). Fueling the worlds entire transportation sector with bio-fuels just isn't practical. Fueling 5% of it with bio-fuels might well be, though -- in particular the 5% where battery-electric is just not going to be feasible. That doesn't mean the current soybean to diesel programs make sense, but instead of canceling them, maybe we should be modifying them to produce jet-compatible fuel instead.
- stcredzero 9y agoI was also once an advocate of bio-fuel for mobile size/weight restricted transportation applications. For a 5% minority, it seems to make sense. Soybeans to fuel doesn't make sense, however. For awhile, the cheapest biodiesel in Houston was made from animal slaughter byproducts. You had to watch out for the winter, however, as that stuff had a rather high gelling and solidification temperature. It also has very high hysteresis, so the melting temperature of the resulting wax-like substance can be much higher than the freezing temp, as high as 60 degrees F. I know, because it temporarily bricked my car, and ruined my relationship with my Mercedes mechanic. I don't think that stuff would be good for aviation. Maybe palm or algae derived?
- curtis 9y agoI know jet aircraft have been tested with bio-fuel of some sort, but I don't know how they handle the gelling problem. I'm kind of assuming that the fuel tanks would need to be heated to make it work. On the flip side, if you wanted to use ethanol then the low temperatures wouldn't be a problem, but the big trade-off there is ethanol has a much lower energy density per unit weight.
- xyzzyz 9y ago
- calimac 9y agoMonsanto Lobbyists have nothing to do for it.
- TaylorGood 9y agoJust learned from a neighbor that unwanted meat scraps is used to create diesel or biodiesel. Can't recall which; either way, he said they're not selling drums above plant costs but have to keep the machines running for environmental compliance. Specifically, Crude Oil plants with less demand are switching to this.
- carapace 9y agoFor those of us interested in agro-ecology (Permaculture, etc.) David Blume makes a great case for small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated into your permie farm. Pretty much any sugar or carbs can be fermented to make alcohol. The byproducts can all be reused directly on the farm. The chemical elements that make up the fuel all come from air and water so your nutrients and trace minerals etc. are retained on the farm, the alcohol fuel is essentially packaged sunshine. He's got a comprehensive book "Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/ http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/
- jvanderbot 9y agoI personally believe that much of the requirements on bio-diesel and other crop-fed fuel sources are likely at least half motivated by courting heartland swing states.
- partycoder 9y agoWhat I understand is that ethanol can be produced from, among many things, byproducts of corn.
- xster 9y agoIs it me or terms like 'dumping' is only ever used in one direction and when the US exports heavily subsidized agricultural products, it's just plain old free market trade.
- acchow 9y agoSome examples, please? (tho, I bet if you read news from Brazil, it would go the other way)
- beat 9y agoSugar. The US has very highvpunitive tariffs on global sugar, and massive subsidies on American alternatives (beet sugar and high fructose corn syrup), enough that it is one of the top sticking points in trade agreements.
- tbihl 9y agoI don't think it's uncommon to say that the US dumps cheap corn on the world markets, especially Mexico. Or, in so much as that's talked about at all, 'dumped' isn't uncommon terminology. Or maybe I just have cynical friends.
- llccbb 9y agoRecognizing it is a little tangential to this article, it seems to me there would be a great benefit to the USA's domestic environmental policy if the Iowa caucus wasn't so early. Food to fuel is a tragic waste of resources.
- abakker 9y agoI guess my take is simpler than a lot of the arguments floating around here. if the current price tag is not acceptable, what price would be? Or, are we really saying that we'd rather spend the money elsewhere? Biodiesel has some advantages, and many disadvantages. To me, I could see this being a part of a energy mix, but it doesn't seem like it is worth the money we are spending on it today, given that we could get better renewable energy/dollar in several other ways. If anything must be spent here, it seems we need some research to figure out how to do this better.
- GreenStodd 9y agoThere is an episode from West Wing that touches on how awful Ethanol really is, really opened my eyes.
- acd 9y agoBackground. My family are gardeners since generations back. We are on a sourcing trip in Brazil to buy new plants where bio ethanol are made. Farmers inform us on the fields that the bio ethanol production is very resource instensive. Basically growing sugar plants which are the source used to make ethanol sucks up all the nutrients from the ground. It also uses a lot of water. Politicians back home fully sold on the “green” aspects of bio ethanol subsidies the ethanol fuel without knowing the growing damaging consequences. Soybeans may be similar to Sugar. You have to ask if it’s really clean also the growing part not just the fuel. A greener way is to put up electricity lines over highways. Then trucks can be driven electrically without hauling lots of resource instensive batteries. The mining of lithium in truck production scale probably is not clean. Mining is one of the largest emitters of co2 in the world. Cop report on largest co2 emitters doing 70% of the emissions. https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-Majors-Report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1...