Carbon Recycling
In a recent post Phil asked, "So are we better off strictly recycling, or with a mix of recycling for metals and plastic, while reclaiming energy from paper and other organic waste?"
There's an interesting parallel between recycling and "reclaiming energy." Recycling allows you to use the same raw materials over and over. Reclaiming energy allows us to use carbon over and over.
Fossil fuels release carbon that's been sequestered since the fossils they were made from were living. Ethanol releases carbon too, but it's the product of plants that sequester carbon while they grow (paper and organic waste sequestered carbon recently). Instead of a one-way release of carbon, we'd get to take advantage of a carbon cycle. This makes it closer to being carbon neutral.
But NPR reported today on a study that apparently shows that ethanol is worse for the climate than gasoline. Their reasoning: when we devote more of our corn crops to ethanol, world food production is shifted to places like Brazil where rain forests are slashed and burned for farm land. And burning of rain forest releases a lot of carbon.
This highlights the importance of using things other than food to make ethanol. Making cellulosic ethanol from biological waste (like corn stalks) or switch grass could be carbon neutral. Using land that's not being used for crops wouldn't be a problem. Algae for diesel and ethanol can be grown in the desert.
Unfortunately that's not the message that most people will take away from that study. "Ethanol is worse than gas." Well, no. Ethanol can be much better than gasoline for the environment. We just have to be careful about unintended consequences. Perhaps it's time to end corn ethanol subsidies.
Comments
Ethanol is bad in ways not yet understood by advocates. One of those ways is apposite to this discussion of recycling. When crop stubble or manure remains in fields rather than being hauled away to be burned the carbon and mineral nutrients are recycled in the soil. What ethanol advocates call waste is actually the input, the feedstock, for the soil factory. A rule of thumb is that whatever is taken away must be replaced or there will be monotonic decline in soil quality. The hurrier you go, the behinder you get.
When we hear statements of magical thinking from advocates that promise something for nothing, perpetual motion machines in effect, we ought to be properly sceptical of the form of the argument even when we lack specific criticisms since such arguments are always false. They can't possibly be true and as it happens not much investigation is required to find a host of flaws in all ethanol proposals. Ethanol is politics.
We would do well to seek to increase recycling of nutrients back to the fields they were taken from rather than decrease them further. We already have debts to pay. There are far better ways to supply our energy needs.
Posted by: back40![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 7, 2008 10:06 PM
Back40:
It's certainly important to use some biological waste for fertilizer. But ethanol isn't a perpetual motion machine. There's a rather obvious external energy input - the sun.
A corn crop produces a lot of biological waste that corn farmers are not using for fertilizer. Most of it is hauled away and burned. Instead of wasting it, why not burn it in our cars?
Posted by: Stephen Gordon![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 8, 2008 06:12 AM
Energy isn't the whole story. Far more than energy is hauled away from the fields and that's also a problem, something we need to work. We have lots of problems that all need to be worked at once. That we are not doing things well now is not a justification for policies that require doing things poorly. . . IMO.
Posted by: back40![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.blog.speculist.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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February 8, 2008 08:42 AM