Just to confirm Monbiot's argument...very large scale production of
fuel from biomass would have to involve very large areas, so the land
would not be high quality. This means ethanol or methanol production
from woody inputs.

The following summary indicates how far short we would fall from
meeting present demand.

Ted Trainer
Sydney.

Biomass can't save us.

Most people assume that renewable energy resources can be substituted
for fossil fuels, enabling society to continue the pursuit of high
levels of consumption, travel, trade, "living standards" and economic
growth. Lovins and the tech fix people reassure us that all we need
to do is crank up technical advance and we can have uninterrupted
affluence and growth while cutting ecological and resource costs to
manageable proportions. No radical change is needed, let alone
scrapping consumer-capitalist society.

It takes only a glance at some basic figures re the production of
liquid fuels from biomass inputs to show that this vision is totally
mistaken. (The detailed derivation is available at
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D74.RENEWABLE-ENERGY.html)

The best option is to produce methanol from woody biomass. The yield
is likely to be methanol equivalent to about 150 litres of petrol
from each tonne of input material, after the energy costs of
production are subtracted.

For very large biomass production a yield of 7 dry tonnes per ha is
unlikely, but will be assumed here. Some plantations average c 14
t/ha/y, and short rotation crops, such as willows, in favourable
conditions can be around this yield. However world forest growth is
only c 3 t/ha/y. Large scale biomass production would have to use
hundreds of millions of ha, most of which would be well below the
typical willow etc. yield.

If we assume the equivalent of 150 litres of petrol produced per
tonne and 7 tonnes per ha, methanol can be produced at the
equivalent of 1050 litres of petrol per ha per year, or 34.7 GJ/ha.

Australian per capita oil plus gas consumption is 128 GJ/y, which
would require 3.7 ha., so total Australian consumption would require
74 million ha to be cropped at 7 t/ha/y, continually. Australian
crop land totals only c 22 million ha, and reasonable forest only c
40 million ha. How likely is it that we can find another 74 million
ha capable of 7 t/ha/y yield?

Australia has far more useable land than any other rich country.
Total crop, pasture and forest area is 4.9 ha/person. For the US the
figure is 2.8, for Europe 1.6, Asia .5, and for the world as a whole
it is 1.4 ha/person. World population will probably rise to more
than 8 billion. Productive land per person then will be c .8
ha/person, to meet all needs, include food, water, settlement,
pollution absorption and energy.

If we used all the present 1.4 ha of crop, pasture and forest land
per person just for biomass energy production, it would yield 48.5 GJ
per person, which is only 38% of the present Australian oil plus gas
consumption, (and only 20% of our total energy consumption.)

Let's take the most optimistic assumptions I have come across.
Johansson assumed (In Renewable Energy, 1993) that we might find 890
million ha in the world for biomass production. (As he said, most of
this would be degraded land, so 7 t/ha is most unlikely.) By 2070
that will be about .15 ha per person, and from above it would yield
5.2 GJ per yearŠthat is, 4% of the amount of oil plus gas energy now
consumed each year by each Australian.

Let's put it another way; if 8 billion were to have Australian oil
plus gas use via methanol 30 billion ha would have to be in
plantations constantly yielding 7 t/ha. But there are only 13
billion ha of land on the planet!

By the way, energy use in Australian is growing at around 2.5% p.a,
so it will be twice as great in about 30 years.

So make whatever optimistic assumptions you choose re technical
fixes, energy conservation, "factor four" reductions and Lovinsian
hypercars and you have no chance whatsoever of showing how liquid
fuels from biomass can supply all people with anything remotely like
the present rich world rates of transport etc.

If you think it can all be done by switching to hydrogen, see the
detailed paper.

Light green people heroically refuse to attend to this kind of
analysis, preferring to reinforce the message everyone in consumer
society wants to believe, ie., that with a bit more effort to recycle
and more technical advance, and more use of the magic words
"sustainable development", the environment and other problems can be
solved without us having to think about reducing our
over-consumption, or scrapping the growth economy.

This is why I do not believe consumer-capitalist society can save
itself. Not even its "intellectual" classes or green leadership give
any sign that this society has the wit or the will to even think
about the basic situation we are in. As the above figures make
clear, the situation cannot be solved without huge reduction in the
volume of production and consumption going on. This means radical
and far reaching change in the direction of simpler ways, frugality,
self-sufficiency, non-material pursuits and satisfactions,
cooperative systems, locally self-sufficient and self-governing
communities, and zero growth economies. (For the detail, see
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/12b-The-Alt-Sust-Soc-Lng.html)


--
Ted Trainer
School of Social Work,
University of New South Wales,
Kensington. 2052. Australia.
02.93851871
Fax: 02 96628991
Email: F.Trainer@...
Website: http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/

UNSW CRICOS provider code number 00098G

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