First American Scientific Corp. (fka FASC)

[Jagman]

Terry, bottom line for now which, IMO, applies to biomass boiler fuels also (except where the material is already available at the plant as with sawmills, palm oil industry, etc.)

Biofuels provide less energy than their production requires.

I expect this article to fuel the continuing controversy over bio-fuels, but it is an important contribution to this ongoing discussion.

A research article just published in a Springer Press research journal states that more fossil fuel energy is required to produce a given amount of bio-fuel than is contained in usable energy in said fuels.

The full reference is:
Ethanol Production Using Corn, Switchgrass, and Wood; Biodiesel Production Using Soybean and Sunflower. D. Pimentel (Cornell University) and T.W.Patzek (UC Berkeley). Natural Resources Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 65-76, 2005.

I believe the article itself requires subscription, but the abstract is open to the general public:

Abstract:
Energy outputs from ethanol produced using corn, switchgrass, and wood biomass were each less than the respective fossil energy inputs. The same was true for producing biodiesel using soybeans and sunflower, however, the energy cost for producing soybean biodiesel was only slightly negative compared with ethanol production. Findings in terms of energy outputs compared with the energy inputs were: • Ethanol production using corn grain required 29% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using switchgrass required 50% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Ethanol production using wood biomass required 57% more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel produced. • Biodiesel production using soybean required 27% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced (Note, the energy yield from soy oil per hectare is far lower than the ethanol yield from corn). • Biodiesel production using sunflower required 118% more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced.
(end abstract)

The article is very well written and provides an extremely intersting analysis, including a review of other recent reports and their divergent findings.
The authors clearly state that some recent reports have found negative energy return, while others have found positive return. The authors provide their own analysis, which is compiled from available and previously published data. They come to different conclusions from those reports stating positive energy return largely because they use a more comprehensive set of inputs (in other words, they consider a larger number of factors required for production that use energy).
For starters, the article refers to previous studies conducted by the US Dept of Energy, that suggest a negative energy return for bio-ethanol (ERAB 1980, 1981). Apparently, these reports were reviewed by a panel of independent experts, and the conclusions were found to be valid. A review conducted by one of the two authors here (Pimentel 2003) of those reports showing a positive energy return, indicated that in those reports many inputs (requiring energy for production process) were omitted.

Nevertheless, I feel that it is important to state that all of these reports and findings are based on estimates and have a range of errors in predicted outputs.

The authors also state that they did not consider all secondary environmental impacts in their evaluation.

The authors conclude that bio-fuel production results in a net negative energy return for a variety of reasons, and that photovoltaics are a more energy efficient way of converting energy from solar radiation.

Bottom line, this is very informative and important reading for those on this board who are interested in various alternatives to fossil fuel based energy production.

http://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/biofuels-provide-less-energy-than-their-production-requires.2752....