Biofuel may Supply Half of the World’s Fuel Needs. So What Now?

Illinois researchers have found that biofuel crops cultivated on available land could produce up to half of the world’s current fuel needs without affecting food production. 

Civil and Environmental Engineering professor, Ximing Cai:

“The questions we’re trying to address are, what kind of land could be used for biofuel crops? If we have land, where is it and what is the current land cover? We hope this will provide a physical basis for future research. For example, agricultural economists could use the dataset to do some research with the impact of institutions, community acceptance and so on, or some impact on the market. We want to provide a start so others can use our research data.”

The study (published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology) differed from other previous studies; rather than focusing on biomass yield or regional productivity, it focused on land availability which hasn’t been researched in great detail before. The study identified marginal land for energy crop growth; if only abandoned and degraded cropland is considered, this leaves about 320-720 million hectares of land for cultivation. Grassland and savannah planted with so called “Low Impact High Diversity” biofuel grasses, this increases to 1107 million hectares with little effect on the environment. Researchers say that if this land was planted with second generation biofuel feedstock crops, this could supply 26-55% of the worlds current total liquid fuel needs without encroaching on land needed for food production.

Only marginal land (of low productivity and therefore unsuited to conventional agriculture) was considered in the study; crop land, pasture land and forests weren’t considered. With marginal land, soil properties, topography, climate and current use of the land were taken into account and then used to model scenarios for various types of marginal land.

What this research tells us is that diversity in our fuel options in the future is key. At best, 55% of our current fuel needs can be met by biofuel according to research; what the research doesn’t tell us is how this percentage will decrease as population, fuel usage and desertification increase, or how developments in biofuel technology could increase the percentage that can be met this way. Infrastructure for producing and distributing biofuel is another important consideration.

So, how do we fill the remaining 45-74% of fuel demand with no more marginal land to spare for energy crops? Using land currently reserved for food crops is not a sensible option; the “food or fuel” problem is well known. Biofuel produced from waste is one option currently being explored and commercialized by a number of companies; Solena and British Airways announced in 2010 that they had partnered to build a number of plants for converting waste into bio-jet fuel. Biofuel produced from algae is another; the Tokyo Institute of Technology along with several corporate partners announced that they were experimenting with growing algae in offshore tanks and are planning to scale up their efforts to build a pilot plant.

Alone, it’s unlikely that any one of these technologies will be able to meet the world’s fuel needs as our oil reserves dry up, but a combination of biofuel technologies might be able to do it.