Earthsky FC_AFF, Interviews
Janaki Alavalapati on forests’ renewable energy potential
01-07-2009 - Energy
Janaki Alavalapati: Biomass is anything above or below ground relating to forests, shrubs and woody trees. Every piece of biomass can be used for one kind or another of liquid energy sources.
Alavalapati spoke of studies showing that liquid fuel made from forest biomass is more energy efficient than corn-based ethanol.
Janaki Alavalapati: If you put one unit of energy in, you are getting approximately 5 units of energy out from forest biomass-based liquid fuels. Corn is, if you put one unit of energy, you might get 1.2 or 1.3, something like that.
And, in contrast to corn-based ethanol, fuel made from forest products isn’t created from a human food source.
Janaki Alavalapati: Forest biomass does not attract food versus fuel debates that we recently had across the world.
The technologies are in place, said Alavalapati, but this type of fuel production isn’t competitive yet at a commercial scale.
Our thanks today to the American Forest Foundation, leading the way in education and conservation.
Our thanks to Janaki Alavalapati
Janaki Alavalapati is a professor of Forest Resource Economics and Policy and head of the Department of Forestry at Virginia Tech University. With an advanced degree in Forest Economics, his research focuses on exploring market solutions for natural resources, energy, and environmental problems/issues at local, regional, and international level.
As a landowner in a rural, forested area, I want to weigh in. I wonder what kind of scientific support there is that cutting and burning our forests for energy and fuel is going to promote a good economy in the rural areas which will supply the trees? I suggest that science shows otherwise.
Undisturbed forests provide “ecosystem services.” For example, a significant portion of the grown wood in a forest remains in the system as stored carbon. Removing that from the system and burning it certainly results in stored carbon being released to the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.
Mature forests produce oxygen, scrub particulates from the air, protect watersheds, provide beauty, habitat and environmental stability, as other examples of ecosystem services.
Economists are beginning to value these services in dollars. The benefits are substantial.
We need to properly value our forests before we decide to sell off a significant portion of them. We also need to start viewing forests differently. Wood is not the only product that comes from a forest, and uncut forests are very valuable.
It was disappointing to hear this kind of industry propoganda. It was very shallow and weak.
Hello Mark,
What’s being discussed here is the use of brush and other biomass cleared from forests … not cutting the forests themselves.
All the best,
Deborah
Dear Deborah, Thanks for the response. The problem with that point of view (just going to do a little forest “cleanup” and use the waste) is that it isn’t realistic. The amount of material needed to sustain this industry is a lot more than just cleaning up a little brush. You are talking about building factories and keeping them supplied constantly. The demand will grow and will require mechanized forestry, and large acreages. An industry such as this will have a significant impact on a region’s environment.
We already have more than one highly mechanized industry utilizing our forests. We have only the tiniest of examples, probably 1% or less, of old growth forest that has survived the European settlement of the eastern U.S. If we want to move toward any kind of environmental stability, we need to be increasing the amount of landbase which is allowed to succeed to climax communities. The value of that to society, I believe, is much greater than what you get from cutting and burning the wood.
I’m all for finding environmentally sound alternatives to the coal and fossil fuel and nuclear energy infrastructure that we have but which has and is damaging the environment. But burning wood for energy production isn’t my idea of an environmentally sound alternative.
Mark D.
This report, which I heard this morning on my local NPR affiliate, is little more than a commercial bought and paid for by the forest industry. I look forward to the day when environmental groups are able to buy content like the forest industry has done through the “American Forest Foundation”.
Nevermind the fact that the practice of using “biomass” as an energy source is neither sustainable nor healthy. It won’t come close to satisfying our energy needs. Plus it ignores the fact that the “brush and other biomass” are necessary for a healthy forest in terms of healthy soil, humus, clean water, etc. Treating it as waste to be burned for an energy hungry nation is not viable on any number of levels.
There was a clear conflict of interest in this report. You can do better.
The reality is that we live in a world still on course to have 9 billion people by the year 2050. We have not quite 7 billion now. And most of the world still aspires to the comfortable lifestyles that we in the U.S. enjoy. That takes energy. There is – clearly – a growing demand for energy. Perhaps there will come a day, within our lifetimes, when breakthroughs will be made that will show us a clear path toward the production of enough clean energy for all of us on Earth. These forest studies are simply steps along the road to finding that path. They are not the answer. They’re just part of an ongoing process.
Mark and Craig, thank you both for your comments. EarthSky is a voice for science, but all of our voices are needed – all of our feelings and opinions and visions are needed – to find the correct path.
Deborah
Deborah.
I am sorry Earth and Sky took this unbalanced approach to the issue of biofuels from forests. Preaching the AFF and biofuels industry party line on a science show without a discussion on the full impacts is irresponsible. Yes, we will be able to see more sky with the tree gone.
The “thinning and debris” touted by the biofuels lobby is a trojan horse. I have been engaged in forums with these people for well over a decade, desparately seeking one biofuels proposal that can any way be proven to be sustainable over time. The litumus test..“show me one bioengery operation that plants, grows, harvests, processes, and distributes its product using soley it’s own product while making a profit”, went unanswered with resounding silence. We would need much more than the available land mass of the US to grow enough biofuels to replace our oil consumption. As we’ve already seen with the corn biofuel scam, the foreseeable consequences have shown up in the form of of higher food prices, higher fertilizer prices, the growth of the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico, groundwater contamination and escalating land prices.
Biofuels enterprise, particularly cellulosic ethanol, require vast amounts of forests to be economically viable even with subsidies. The “thinning, waste and debris” that the industry pretends to be targeting are actually the more vital nutrients for overall forest health since undergrowth, limbs and other understory non-tree species contain most of the recyclable nutrients. Tree make up on average only 15% of forest flora species. The mere act of mechanically removing “thinnings, waste and debris” will severely impact biodiversity in forests, essentially turning them into biological desert plantations. The real target for these industries are the forests themselves. It would behoove you to do some research on the subject and provide more balanced shows. As it is now, it appears that E&S has become yet another industry tool. I once enjoyed and respected your show. Sorry to see it go down this path.
I think that the renewable energy discussed here offers a small-scale opportunity. It seems like opening biomass from forests to the energy industry could prove to be a slippery slope for harvesting forest resources in a potentially unsustainable way. I’d like to know the amount of biomass Alvatapati believes is available for energy, how long it will last, and at what pace it will be renewed. In the long run, I think our best solutions for energy will be a non-combustible form of energy.
Denny, thank you for your comments. We value your voice here, and we welcome your opinions. EarthSky is a voice for science, but all of our opinions and values are needed to find the correct path forward.
Your voice is always welcome here.
Many thanks,
Deborah
Jay, I agree with you. My personal favorite forms of renewable energy are wind and solar. I’m excited that – after decades of development (my 4 decades of adult life for sure) – they’re beginning to become more viable alternatives.
Still, it’s my understanding that the technologies and infrastructures are still not in place yet to allow these forms of clean energy to power the American lifestyles that you and I have – and that the whole world wants.
I’ve heard many experts say we’ll need many forms of energy, going forward.
Deborah- I live in a rural part of Missouri which has several corn based ethanol plants nearby. Your report failed to mention the fact that it takes 4 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Many of the ethanol plants have had to cut back production because of this fact and one plant did not get started because the locals fought it due to the loss of ther water table. Ethanol production is a resource intensive product. Were you aware that there has been a $.77/gallon subsidy for the production of ethanol since 1977? Archer-Daniels-Midland is and has been producing ethanol for many years (ADM also contributes large sums of money to political campaigns). I would suggest that E&S do better research of their stories before you air them.
The problem is how to distinguish between sound scientific and engineering understanding, wishful thinking, and special interest hype. In many cases we encounter mixtures of each. Unfortunately, the lay public is at a very significant disadvantage when it comes to evaluation of claims.
Tad Patzek, UC Berkley, College of Engineering, Charles A. S. Hall, State University of New York, College of Environmental Science & Forestry and David Pimentel, Prof emeritus Cornell and perhaps some others have done very credible and detailed analysis of Biofuel cycles and have conclusively shown that no Biofuel cycles can ever be net energy positive. It’s in the Thermodynamics. Beyond that, it is necessary that such biomass remain on the forest floor to maintain the “health” of the soil necessary to sustain the forest. Neither industrial “mining” of the forest overgrowth, forest floor or cropland can ever be net energy positive. If Patzeg is correct, and I have every reason to understand that he is correct, then it follows that Janaki Alavalapati who was interviewed on the Earth & Sky program must be dead wrong in his claim of the sustainability of harvesting Biomass from the forest floor.
But it is Patzek’s paper Thermodynamics of the Corn-Ethanol Biofuel Cycle which provides an excellent treatise on what is possible and not possible and what the terms Sustainable and Renewable actually mean. This is covered very nicely in Section II, Sustainability & Renewability and in several sections in the appendices of this paper. This paper does presuppose a good working knowledge of Thermodynamics that is beyond the level of introductory college physics, i.e. the Fist and Second laws of Thermodynamics. But much more important is that Patzek’s “message” goes well beyond the issues surrounding Biofuels. He tells us (how to determine) what is possible and not possible.
There is far too much “gee wiz” “engineering” and “advocating” from the “uninformed” going on everywhere, especially from special interests, in regard to the Energy Question. It’s the whole System which must be understood. Everything is interconnected. But it is ultimately the continuous flow of “free energy” which enables anything to happen and the only indefinitely sustainable flow of “free energy” ultimately comes from the incident radiation from the sun. Some of that, a very small amount, was stored in fossil fuels over millions of years in the past. Some other “free energy”, a larger amount, is held in the the deposits of the U235 isotope and that could last for, perhaps, several thousands of years with fast breeder reactor technology. Atomic fusion might some day be possible and that would provide an effectively inexhaustible supply of “free energy”. So when we use the term Sustainable we really need to ask “sustainable for how long”. Radiation from the sun, which also drives the wind. ocean waves and etc, is an effectively inexhaustible but it is a very dilute inflow of “free energy” which, necessarily, requires concentration to be useful and that necessarily presents very significant and complex technological problems.
Best regards, John King
With this minute and a half infomercial dedicated to advancing the bottom lines of the corporate interests and funders of Earth and Sky, a line has been crossed, ethically, journalistically and scientifically.
Please, in what little remains of the eleventh hour of our planet, refrain from such obfuscation and misinformation around turning our forests into ethanol as a good thing. The explicit message is “food versus fuel” is all we have to be concerned with. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Most people can rightfully intuit forests have functions that go beyond corporate profiteering from ethanol blends. That the taxpayer is subsidizing 51 cents a gallon for ethanol production is reprehensible in itself.
While we can understand Earth and Sky’s deep appreciation for its corporate funders such as the American Forest Foundation, Shell, Monsanto, BP and others deeply invested in the biomass industry, there’s two decades of science to draw from to give us serious pause. From that science we can grasp the foolishness of thinking biomass is going to solve our problem of fossil fuel dependence creating catastrophic climate change. Reducing forests to ethanol greatly worsens the mass extinction going on, and accelerates ocean acidification and global climate change.
Biomass removal destroys structure and function of forest ecosystems and massive species declines are already our fate. The harm resulting from carbon released by forest biomass removal far exceeds any purported “efficiencies” your report blithely claims. Forests have functioned as carbon sinks, carbon reservoirs, essential plant and animal habitat, regulators of weather, and are necessary to sustaining watershed functions to name a few other benefits besides corporate commodities.
This website is suppose to be about acience and the “Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy” clearly states that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. I don’t know what universe that Janaki Alavalapati lives in, but he clearly needs a refresher course in Physics.
I have to say that I am the first to sniff out a lobbyist group but I did some checking around and the American Forest Foundation does not appear to be an organization representing the forest or natural resources industry, but quite the opposite. The AFF was originally started as the most widely used environmental education curriculum in American K-12 classrooms. Just look at their sponsors page http://www.affoundation.org/partners.html.
Deborah, One more comment. If you look at your picture accompanying the story, it shows a somewhat typical regenerating hardwood forest with an old road going thru it. Do you see one piece of “brush” in the photo?
Liza,
I may be wrong but your post seems to give the AFF a pass.
The AFF is an industry group that, among other things, provides free material to teachers that advances the forest industry agenda, which is not necessarily pro forest. The dairy industry does the same as well as other industry groups. As a teacher, I’m well aware of the tactic. The driving force of these groups is profit not education.
Their list of sponsors is the give away. Years ago these were the same groups who were advocating the practice of clear cutting to “improve” the forest. They are also now the same groups who advocate prescribed burns.
In other words, they’re getting taxpayer money to burn.
I have decades of observing one of the sponsors, the Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources Division of Forestry, burn a large area of forest acreage on state land near my home. The damage done is a testament to the lie that prescribed burns are necessary to improve the forest.
Please excuse my butting in from the other side of the planet,but I stumbled onto your discussion by accident and felt that some important points had to be made.My wife and I are trying to reforest cleared , badly degraded ,farmland and are watching the developements in biomass energy with interest as it will provide a market for the thinnings and lower grade offcuts that are normally just a fire hazard waiting to happen.There is a lot of poor quality farmland around here that should never have been cleared ,and a good result for us may encourage some of our neighbours to look at forestry in a different light.At this stage, whenever the subject comes up, the first question is “what about the greenies?”.I know what they mean,I come from 5 generations of tree growers, mixed age, mixed species, natural australian forest.When others tripled the value of their land by clearing it or magnified its value tenfold by housing subdivisions, my family stuck with forestry, with interfearance from people who should have been trying to help. If the green movement had decided to back sustainable forestry instead of concrete, steel, plastic etc the planet would be in a lot better shape.
Welcome to this discussion Bruce. We value all opinions here.
Deborah
We need to keep our forests with all of its components. small trees and undergrowth feeds the ecosystem, and protects wildlife. we need the forest floor intact. downded wood should be left to compost and build soil. No roads, noise, skid trail, or truck tires. please, Sincerely Kristi Hanson