Washblog

It just happened that I sat in on the monthly meeting of NW Biodiesel Network recently.  So I asked them about the accusations in the second article.  Based on that feedback and further reading, I sent a note to the people who gave me the articles.  Here goes (edited):

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The article on producing ethanol from coal brings up an important concern. There are environmentally important differences in how ethanol is produced. We should be paying attention to the way our emerging alternative energy industry is being structured here in WA.

I find the second article, by George Monbiot, to be unreliable, and to contain outright inaccuracies.  First, judging by the biography that he provides on his blog, his journalistic and scientific bona fides are questionable.  He's had several visiting professorships and, "during seven years of investigative journeys in Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at, beaten up by military police, shipwrecked and stung into a poisoned coma by hornets."   I shouldn't make fun of his problems; he's evidentally taken personal risks to do good things.  But I don't see those as relevant qualifications for him to provide to back up his assertions.

And he's wrong that biodiesel production is intrinsically more environmentally damaging than petroleum production.   Perhaps it can be. I can't judge about what's going on with palm oil.  But palm oil is not where we get our biodiesel here in WA -- at least not any significant amount.  We get it, I'm understanding, primarily from US Midwestern source -- soy.  And this is soy that is a by product of animal feed.  That's why it's cost-competitive.

[Author's note, 5/17/06. See Jesse Nelson's post, Grays Harbor and Biodiesel. Mr. Monbiot's article is looking more on-point on the palm oil issue, here. Much of the agricultural stock for this new Washington plant will be from Malaysia (crushed palms) and other areas of the United States. Imperium Renewables, the owner of the Grays Harbor plant, has indicated that they are committed to buying from sustainable palm sources.]

Monbiot dismisses the possibility that biodiesel will come from environmentally sound sources:  "you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed  oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth."

Actually, here in Washington, when we get up and running to implement HB 6508, which just passed this session (the alternative fuels standard which will require all diesel to have 2% biodiesel content -- and petroleum to have 2% ethanol ) -- our crops for biodiesel here in Washington will be primarily two mono-crops -- the rapeseed  oil (canola) that Mr. Monbiot tells us won't be used, and mustard seed.

I hope we will have more diversity than that and that there will be many opportunities for community-based enterprise opportunities.  Total reliance on monocrops and centralized production is something we want to avoid for security, economic, social justice, and ecological reasons.  However, our situation, if not ideal, is certainly not dire the way Mr. Monbiot paints it.  As far as algae, the biodieselists told me that actually there is potential here in WA to produce some of our  biodiesel from algae.   But the likely picture, the almost certain picture is that mustard and canola will be it.  My understanding is that both these crops -- especially the mustardseed, are  relatively benign.   A side product of mustard is a biopesticide -- very helpful, as the application of petroleum-based pesticides to mono-crops for biofuels should be, obviously, minimized.

I was also told (I think I remember this correctly) that, despite what Mr. Monbiot says about  these crops taking up land that would be used for food production, that mustardseed will be used as a covercrop -- to rotate with wheat, for example, thus not supplanting food crops.

Neither of these crops, mustard or canola, can produce biodiesel that is economically competitive right now.  So the race is on to find value-added  uses that can solve this problem for Washington State.  One potential is the fumigant quality of mustardseed.  Patrick Mazza of Climate Solutions has written that it has been estimated that mustardseed can provide 10% of the US pesticide market -- thus replacing primarily petroleum-based pesticides with an organic.  

Currently, soy oil provides most biodiesel in the US.  And it is not, for the most part, grown for  this purpose -- but is already grown to feed animals.   The waste is what is turned into biodiesel.  Soy doesn't grow so well here in WA, thus our probable reliance on mustardseed and rapeseed.

There are other alternatives out there besides biodiesel that could power our cars.  Institute for Washington's Future is working on a dairy manure conversion project in rural Washington that would produce other types of alternative fuel: liquified natural gas and compressed natural gas.  It is important that we try to develop these alternative ways to produce alternative fuels.  The more that smaller, community-based and value-added production like this can be developed, the more capacity we will have in Washington to make our energy -- and our food -- supply more decentralized, reliable, secure, and environmentally and socially friendly.

As for Mr. Monbiot's contention that the amount of fossil fuels we can replace is negligible -- his efforts would be better spent advocating for greater diversification of sources and production.  There's a great of potential out here in Washington State with current technology -- and more developable potential to come.  We may have limited ability to affect what's going on in other countries.  But, as they say, peace starts at home.  Attention is needed right here in WA to ensure that our emerging alternative fuels industry develops in the ways most advantageous to us and to the cause of peace.

I don't appreciate Mr. Monbiot's villification of the biodiesel crowd. The NW Biodiesel Network meeting I went to was run by practical-minded environmentalists and peacemakers.   They're into this because of their convictions, because they want us to find ways to be off big oil.   Maybe the people who attacked Mr. Monbiot were baddies from "big multinational alternative oil," But he he didn't specify and he should have.  This is the kind of information we need.