Renewable Energy Magazine
16/6/2009

Biofuels lose another argument to bioelectricity, this time in terms of water consumptionLast month Renewable Energy Magazine informed readers about a University of California Merced study published in Science magazine showing that using biomass to generate electricity to power electric vehicles could be a more efficient solution, with lower CO2 emissions, than converting biomass into ethanol to fuel internal combustion engines. Another study has just been published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirming that biofuels also have a larger water footprint than bioelectricity. In some cases, up to 19,000 litres of water are required to produce one litre of biodiesel.

Researchers at the University of Twente (Holland) have calculated the ‘water footprint’ (the amount of water required for cultivation) of biomass crops, publishing their results in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of 2 June. The primary objective of the study was to estimate the water footprint per unit of bioenergy (e.g. per unit of electricity, ethanol and heat). Winnie Gerbens-Leenes, Arjen Hoekstra and Theo van der Meerfound found that bioenergy makes heavy demands on scarce water supplies compared to other sources of energy.

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