Biofuels: More Bang -- or Is it Baggage? -- for the Buck

C02Science.org
Volume 13, Number 33: 18 August 2010

In an article recently published in Ecological Applications, Bouwman et al. (2010) assessed the global consequences of implementing first- and second-generation bioenergy production in the coming five decades, focusing on the nitrogen cycle and utilizing "a climate mitigation scenario from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) Environmental Outlook, in which a carbon tax is introduced to stimulate production of biofuels from energy crops." In doing so, they calculated that "the area of energy crops will increase from 8 Mha in the year 2000 to 270 Mha (14% of total cropland), producing 5.6 Pg dry matter per year (12% of energy use) in 2050." They also found that "this production requires an additional annual 19 Tg of N fertilizer in 2050 (15% of total), and this causes a global emission of 0.7 Tg of N2O-N (8% of agricultural emissions), 0.2 Tg NO-N (6%), and 2.2 Tg of NH3--N (5%)." In addition, they say that "2.6 Tg of NO3--N will leach from fields under energy crops."

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