Greenenvironmental's Blog

Tax petroleum to build a Biofuel infrastructure before it is too late!

There are many  making a big stink about greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from Biofuels.  The results of various studies indicate that the best biofuels may only emit some percentage(around 80%) of GHG s as compared with petroleum based fuels.  The issue is that growing fuel is in no way comparable to mining that fuel (petroleum) out of the ground.  Petroleum was formed by organisms that grew in ancient times, and burning the petroleum releases the carbon they absorbed back in ancient times and redistributes it into today’s atmosphere.  The difference is that biofuels remove CO2 and other compounds from today’s environment, while they are growing, and it is irrelevant to consider what percentage of compounds are re-released  into the atmosphere upon combustion.   Burning or combusting any carbon based fuel will release carbon compounds into the environment, but biofuels are reusing ‘pollutant’ compounds where petroleum is releasing stored pollutants from millions of years ago.

Petroleum requires an infrastructure to extract, process and distribute to make fuel and other products, and this infrastucture has the advantage of having been built up for over 100 years.  Biofuels also require an infrastructure to produce, process and distribute these materials (like algae) to make  fuel and other compounds in a manner that is very similar to the processes used to process petroleum.  While petroleum can be used to make many of the compounds we require in modern life,  from asphalt to gasoline, the side effects of that production also creates many unintended consequences such as oil spills and ground water contamination.  Additionally, extraction processes such as  tertiary extraction(using solvents) and hydraulic cracking are used to remove petroleum from underground by injecting compounds (generally pollutants) into the ground in order to loosen them up for removal.  However, increasingly there are more and more homeowners that have the ability to light their own tap water on fire, and what does that indicate about safety of the water they must drink?  It is ironic that smoking comes with warning labels, but hydraulic cracking does not, yet!

The potential of Biofuels is also being denigrated by the food versus fuel debate, and more recently has been criticized as a ‘drinking versus driving’ debate.  Biofuel feedstocks are being attributed to causing ground water contamination, specifically because of nitrate fertilizers used to promote growth; though this problem did not caused as much uproar where food agriculture is concerned. However, water contamination from fertilizers, weather from agriculture or biofuel production is a management issue, not a process issue; though asking our bean counting leaders to manage something properly may be too unrealistic.

Discounting the nattering of professional politicians who are desperate to keep their jobs, biofuels must be developed to ensure the future survival of humanity(how can we survive when all of our drinking water becomes flammable?).  We must demand that this process be developed fully, and on an emergency basis much like the Manhattan project.  Left on their own politicians will ‘debate’ this issue until it is too late, and our society is past the point of no return (you can’t start producing biofuel once the petroleum has run out, nor avert a financial crisis by listening to those stealing the money).

Companies like Genesis Biofuels, Origin Oil, and Gevo (among others) are generating biofuels by treating wastes such as the emissions from Power Plants, Cement Plants and even Pine Beetle infestations.  These type projects are critical for many reasons, including reusing the CO2 generated by power generation, and using it to generate more fuel rather than simply allowing it to become a pollutant.  Cogeneration has become a standard industrial practice today, and it began through a concerted effort to reduce waste; both economically and environmentally.  The ‘waste’ now has become not reusing the CO2 generated, and it is much like throwing the ‘baby out with the bathwater’.

For now the only real issue is generating the money that this new infrastructure will require;  money that is an investment in the future and not some ‘pork barrel’ spending program that will never realize any returns.  Generating fuel produces a necessary commodity, and can be produced locally to provide not only small scale economic benefits, but also benefits for the entire planet, as well as the future of the human race.  There is only one logical source for funding and development of the infrastructure for biofuel, and that is utilizing the current energy infrastructure created by the oil industry.  Gasoline taxes are never popular (nor are any other taxes), but this extremely large industry is one of the few remaing sectors that has the ability to generate money.  Gas taxes dedicated to biofuel production are an investment in the future, and our leaders need to stop being subservient to the financial industry and their clever ideas on ‘derivatives’ and other forms of generating money without producing anything (like moving their manufacturing to China in order to make more money).

We need to start demanding action from our leaders, if not, they will continue to have arguments full of sound and fury that signify nothing.  A tax on fuel can be easily added to existing fuel taxes, and could be designed to avoid increasing shipping costs by not raising the tax on diesel fuel.  Those of us who can afford to drive everywhere can also afford to pay a little more for that luxury, and we would know that we are helping to pave the way to the future.