Feasibility of Large-Scale Biofuel Production

Giampietro, Mario; Ulgiati, Sérgio; Pimentel, David

doi:10.2307/1313165

Cited by 236 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(39 reference statements)

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“…A review of erosion rates on different slopes and soil types, in different countries (US and Brazil), and for different feedstock types (including maize and sugarcane) reveals that erosion rates typically vary between 0.1 and 5 kg P ha -1 year -1 (Sharpley 1995;Giampietro et al 1997;Sparovek and Schnug 2001a, b;Pimentel et al 2008;Boddey et al 2008). Erosion can be reduced with better land management (Pimentel et al 1995), but this requires investment, which may not be economical with current fertilizer prices (Sparovek and Schnug 2001a, b).…”

Section: Scope For Recycling Of P In the Production Of Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Not all of this P is efficiently recycled, some manure is deposited in areas subject to excess fertilization. Most of the waste from biofuel production is in liquid form (Giampietro et al 1997;Simpson et al 2009). Several new technologies to transform effluent into products that can be used as fertilizers have been developed, but their cost-effectiveness varies as a function of the biofuel type and the characteristics of the facility (Driver et al 1999;Schuchardt et al 2008).…”

Section: Scope For Recycling Of P In the Production Of Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of First-Generation Biofuels on the Depletion of the Global Phosphorus Reserve

Hein

Leemans

2012

AMBIO

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The large majority of biofuels to date is ''firstgeneration'' biofuel made from agricultural commodities. All first-generation biofuel production systems require phosphorus (P) fertilization. P is an essential plant nutrient, yet global reserves are finite. We argue that committing scarce P to biofuel production involves a trade-off between climate change mitigation and future food production. We examine biofuel production from seven types of feedstock, and find that biofuels at present consume around 2% of the global inorganic P fertilizer production. For all examined biofuels, with the possible exception of sugarcane, the contribution to P depletion exceeds the contribution to mitigating climate change. The relative benefits of biofuels can be increased through enhanced recycling of P, but high increases in P efficiency are required to balance climate change mitigation and P depletion impacts. We conclude that, with the current production systems, the production of first-generation biofuels compromises food production in the future.

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Section: Scope For Recycling Of P In the Production Of Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Scope For Recycling Of P In the Production Of Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of First-Generation Biofuels on the Depletion of the Global Phosphorus Reserve

Hein

Leemans

2012

AMBIO

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“…Most present biofuels have agricultural origin, and the modern agriculture is dependent on extensive fossil energy inputs. Giampietro et al [2] puts it in following way:…”

Section: -Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Limits to biofuels

Johansson

2013

EPJ Web of Conferences

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Summary. -Biofuel production is dependent upon agriculture and forestry systems, and the expectations of future biofuel potential are high. A study of the global food production and biofuel production from edible crops implies that biofuel produced from edible parts of crops lead to a global deficit of food. This is rather well known, which is why there is a strong urge to develop biofuel systems that make use of residues or products from forest to eliminate competition with food production. However, biofuel from agro-residues still depend upon the crop production system, and there are many parameters to deal with in order to investigate the sustainability of biofuel production. There is a theoretical limit to how much biofuel can be achieved globally from agro-residues and this amounts to approximately one third of todays' use of fossil fuels in the transport sector. In reality this theoretical potential may be eliminated by the energy use in the biomass-conversion technologies and production systems, depending on what type of assessment method is used. By surveying existing studies on biofuel conversion the theoretical limit of biofuels from 2010 years' agricultural production was found to be either non-existent due to energy consumption in the conversion process, or up to 2-6000 TWh (biogas from residues and waste and ethanol from woody biomass) in the more optimistic cases.

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“…Similar effort has been devoted to research focused on measuring the desirability of different energy technologies (Giampietro et al 1997;Farrell et al 2006). Much of this research has been concerned with estimating the energy return on energy investment (EROEI) of different technologies, defined as the ratio of the energy produced by a technology to the energy, both direct and indirect, consumed by the production process (Hall et al 1986).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This will be driven by the agricultural demand for water which is currently responsible for 90% of global freshwater consumption (Renault and Wallender 2006). Water shortages could become much more acute if there is wide-spread adoption of energy production technologies that require water as a significant input (Giampietro et al 1997;Berndes et al 2001). The need to leverage our declining fossil fuel supplies and efficiently allocate fresh water resources in the face of increasing demand and a changing hydrologic cycle are intimately linked and must be investigated as interdependent issues.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burning Water: A Comparative Analysis of the Energy Return on Water Invested

Mulder

Hagens

Fisher

2010

AMBIO

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While various energy-producing technologies have been analyzed to assess the amount of energy returned per unit of energy invested, this type of comprehensive and comparative approach has rarely been applied to other potentially limiting inputs such as water, land, and time. We assess the connection between water and energy production and conduct a comparative analysis for estimating the energy return on water invested (EROWI) for several renewable and non-renewable energy technologies using various Life Cycle Analyses. Our results suggest that the most water-efficient, fossil-based technologies have an EROWI one to two orders of magnitude greater than the most water-efficient biomass technologies, implying that the development of biomass energy technologies in scale sufficient to be a significant source of energy may produce or exacerbate water shortages around the globe and be limited by the availability of fresh water.

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Feasibility of Large-Scale Biofuel Production

Cited by 236 publications

References 42 publications

The Impact of First-Generation Biofuels on the Depletion of the Global Phosphorus Reserve

The Impact of First-Generation Biofuels on the Depletion of the Global Phosphorus Reserve

Limits to biofuels

Burning Water: A Comparative Analysis of the Energy Return on Water Invested

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