Course:IGS585/OK2019WT2/SpeakerIanThomson

Ian Thomson - Advanced Biofuels

To add your reflection, log in using your CWL and select edit. Starting below any other material on the page, add your name using the heading style. It will appear as your name with a horizontal line. Below this, add your reflection. Your reflection should be no more than 500 words.

If you are commenting on another reflection, select edit and insert your comment after the original reflection. Use the 'Sub-heading 2' style to add your name above your comments.

Below is an example of how a reflection and a comment should be organized. You can copy the content inside the box and paste it to get the formatting right.

The following table are the pairings for commenting on each other's reflections. These pairings are unique for each reflection.

Author - Commenter Pairs

Nicole Bamber	Ariele Parker	Amarpreet Kaur	Stephenie Hendricks	Aditya Shingvi
Nadia Mahmoudi	Madeline Donald	Jeff Nishima-Miller	Maria Correia	Ian Turner

Ariele Parker

Reflective Thinking. I greatly enjoyed the presentation from Ian Thomson. I enjoyed his humour, presentation slides and level of detailed knowledge provided. He has clearly had a successful career in the field of sustainability and let us know that his company has done well in raising funds (15 million). This tells me that the industry is gaining traction, which I found to be re-assuring and exciting as I always believe actions speak louder than words and that money is the international currency that speaks the loudest.

Analysis. This was the first time that I was exposed to the biofuels industry in great detail. My prior knowledge was very surface level having heard of it only last semester when Stephanie described how she used oil from deep friers to run her vehicle for many years. I felt that Ian's description of the opportunities and challenges in the industry were comprehensive and I now have a well-rounded understanding of what biofuels are and how they can at times be used as a replacement for traditional fossil fuels. Beyond my enjoyment of the presentation material I did find myself frustrated that it seemed Ian did not directly answer many of the questions that were asked. I would have enjoyed if he integrated more news sources and/or video into the presentation as I am a very visual learner and enjoy learning through relevant and recent case studies. I did however find it fascinating that he mentioned some jet fuels will be replaced with biofuels, yet I found his description of electric cars and batteries to be a bit weak and unclear.

Making Connections. As I have reiterated in each reflection, I am a Canadian citizen that grew up in Alberta till the age of 16 then moving to British Columbia. I also have a bachelor’s degree in business management from UBC Okanagan and nine years working in the marketing industry prior to starting my masters. I have a strong appreciation for businesses that find opportunities and niches in the marketplace. I believe that Ian and his team have done this well and are continuing to find opportunities as they scan government websites and continuously keep up to date on ever changing policies. Coming from Alberta I do have a lot of family that still make a living on the pipelines and I know that many of them are uncomfortable but interested to learn more about biofuels as the industry could potentially be a good way for them to transition their skills into a similar field with more longevity. I think that if the biofuels industry can continue to make replacements such as the hydrofluorocarbons example that Greg Garrard gave in one of our earlier classes where a switch in products was cheaper and better, I believe that the biofuels industry will continue to grow and that we have a large workforce in the oil and gas industry that we can train to take on new jobs in this sector. At the end of the day, beyond the cost and performance of biofuels, consumer education and marketing will need to be done well for the industry to grow and I am excited at the opportunity to potentially become more involved.

Madeline Donald

Ariele's optimism is encouraging. I find it difficult to dig up the positive outlook that seems to come so easily to her. And while I find this positivity hopeful, I am also frightened by it. It is this kind of story, about the "[t]he spiralling environmental cost of our lithium battery addiction", that is behind poorly addressed questions by charismatic business folks. The word "clean" hides many a destructive process, industrial monocropping and lithium mining alike, while calming the consciences of North Americans who have bent the landscapes of this continent into automobile-dependent lifeways. I appreciate Ariele's experience and hope that all of the underlying stories support her on her path, especially if I get a chance to vote for her one day.

Nicole Bamber

Since I am missing this week’s class, I am instead writing my reflection about the City Council meeting that we attended on Monday. In a similar theme to my last reflection, I noticed again a contrast between “words” and “actions” around climate action done by the city. On several occasions, they highlighted how their development plans that they were discussing in the meeting were working toward their stated “priority to reduce GHG emissions”. The main development plan mentioned in the meeting that will both save them money and reduce GHG emissions was a plan to transition all streetlights to LEDs. I agree that this is a great plan, and I believe that the best plans to reduce GHG emissions are the ones that are win-win like this. That being said, LED streetlights seem far from the strong actions against climate change that Colin Basran seemed to promise in a recent interview following a protest with the aim of getting the city to declare a climate emergency. In that interview he said that he could declare a climate emergency, but he would rather focus on actions rather than words. However, the impression I got from the council meeting was that the mayor and councillors were intentionally adding statements about their commitment to reducing GHG emissions and how their development plans would help to do so. To me, this felt like a lot of words and not a lot of action. If I was to design a project or a policy to address the climate emergency, it would not be switching to LED lights. That project is undeniably impactful in terms of reducing emissions, however it is not one of the most impactful actions (e.g. compared to fossil fuels or animal agriculture).

If the city wants to show that they are committed to taking action against climate change, I would like to see them propose a plan to cut emissions based on scientific evidence for what actions are the most impactful, and social scientific evidence for how to most effectively take action in line with the desires of the citizens. This brings me to another question I had about the policy process in City Council. It is unclear to me how much knowledge the councillors have on the issues being brought up (such as climate change, or housing), and how much experts are consulted in the decision-making process. From my perspective, it appears that someone generally makes a presentation about an issue, who generally has a good understanding of that issue, then the councillors may ask some questions and then they take a vote. It may not be important for small issues such as approving waste treatment at a gravel pit, but for larger issues (such as what actions to take about climate change, or homelessness), I wonder if they have multiple expert opinions in order to make decisions based on evidence, without bias. In general, I’d like to know more about the actual process of using scientific evidence in policy decision-making.

Nadia

Nicole,

I see your point, and I do not want to disagree with you; however, I think that you are overlooking some points. It is not that easy to propose an all-inclusive sustainable plan to cut emissions. Any action that is taken has side effects. The damages usually are done to the vulnerable groups of people, seniors, poor, disabilities, minorities, and you name it; the people who are already suffering from not having their voice in the community. as a result every plan needs to be studied well, have proper social cost-benefit analysis and be taken into action step by step, in a slow process not evoke the social impacts.

In the city hall, we just observed one session of their decision-making process. In my view they did good, they majorly were talking about the sustainable transportation, they also talked about food management, traffic, revitalization, housing, land use, flood mitigation, and finally the street lighting, which was the subject of your critic. Street lighting can be necessary for the sustainability of the city, as I have already mentioned it in my previous reflection. The city lights can impact the plants and vegetation inside the city. It can unsettle the day and night pattern of the plants as well as some animals that live in the city (though I have not seen much animals in this city, which can be a topic for further thinking.) also, the lighting impacts birds flying over the city in the night and also, our share of seeing the night sky. Overall, these reasons, in addition to the GHG emission that you already have mentioned, can make street light an important area of study.

Nicole, you are totally right that the city council is not directly targeting global warming and sustainability, and they are more into money-making projects. But in the end, I think undertaking big sustainable projects also need project funding.

Ian Turner

While listening to Ian Thomson talk about the incorporation of biofuels into the Canadian fuel markets, and the steps along the way since he bean this journey, I couldn't help but feel as though the recent rise of plant based milks, in particular oat milk, is in a shockingly similar place now as biofuels were at their inception. As Ian pointed out, a key feature of getting biofuels to markets is the need for a value-added proposition to get farmers to grow feedstocks. In the early 2000s, when Ian began his work, canola was produced in Canada at a rate of roughly 6 million tonnes per year. Production has since ballooned to closer to 20 million tonnes a year in 2017 and 2018 . Similarly, oat production levels in Canada totaled just over 4 million tonnes in 2019, an increase of just over a million tonnes relative to 2015 production levels. However' we're also seeing a market explosion, with oat milk sales having increased by 250% as of November 2019, compared to November 2018. As this demand rises, which I think it certainly will due to the reduction in environmental impacts relative to traditional dairy milks, almost non-existent animal welfare concerns, and the value people place on getting products that are domestically produced which much of the oat milk in Canada is, we will see a significant value added proposition for oat farmers across the country. Similar problems around market control should also be expected, given the supply management system the Canadian dairy industry operates under which, if demand for dairy milks drops, will run into a problem with the ratchet effect where it will be difficult to convince farmers to produce less (not to mention the reputation of the "Quebec dairy cartel"). Yet, perhaps government regulations will eventually be necessary to reach a stable equilibrium between conventional and plant based dairy production in Canada. Furthermore, as with conventional fuel production, conventional milk production is exhibiting significant externalization of pollution costs, a difference between these two and their plant base alternatives that would certainly shine through if the prices associated with pollution for each process was instead internalized.

Generally, I think it will be very interesting to see what kind of guidance can be taken from the biofuels industry in terms of moving forward with sustainable alternatives. I think the progress that has been made by the biofuels industry over the past twenty years could provide significant learning opportunities in terms of how to deal with governments to other sustainable "startups" (for lack of a better word), how to get stakeholders involved, and how to get people on the same page. I think this will be especially useful for those industries looking to make alternative uses of field crops, since the feedstocks will be largely similar in terms of where and how they're grown throughout the country, and the people in charge of those feedstocks will also be largely similar.

Aditya Shingvi

I appreciate you bring up up parallels between the traditional diary production in Canada and the oil industry. Well possibly the way forward could be substituting a portion of our milk production with plant based alternatives similar to the role of biofuel in traditional gasoline. Diary forms an important part our diet and I think it will be difficult to curtail production at this moment especially with the concerns around world hunger and food security taking precedence over things like impact on the environment or climate change. But again, I am not an industry insider and this is what I make of it as an observer.

Donald

“The environment is not the ecosystem, … the built, colonial environment is the one that receives attention intended for the Earth, with the hope that some of this energy will cascade down and touch the ground.”

This quote from Harold Rhenisch’s blog OknanganOkanogan sums up how I felt about our most recent speaker, rather more eloquently than I did in class. In the self-same post Harold writes: “Humility is needed now. We are living an Earth story, not a human story, at least not primarily so.” This is what I felt to be missing in our last class, the Earth story. We can wax poetic about technology and innovation but when it comes down to it, everything is “primary product”, everything is “natural”. The ways in which humans engage with land, that is our most important discussion. A discussion we seem all too ready to bypass.

Humility must surface in order for us to take our rightful place in a complex world we try so hard to learn about that we forget to learn from.

As for biofuels, small scale production of non-petrocarbon fuels from material that would otherwise enter landfills: wonderful. Let’s do more of that. And then let’s use the product of that process strategically, in transition to an Earth story. Large scale production of biofuels from B. juncea juncea is not wonderful. This is not a food vs. fuel story, calories are calories. No, this is a colonial story. A story of burgeoning agriculture where before there was nothing. No, not nothing. There was an Earth story, there for anyone who was ready to listen. The buffalo have gone now. And the earth story remains, it has grown and changed its tune. This is a story of planting food for dollars to buy food. Monocropping for efficiency, making new worlds possible, making biofuels possible. We look down our noses to those farming palm plantations in the tropics. How is this any different? The prairies are the subsistence landscape of this part of the world. We will, it seems, squeeze every last drop of oil they will or have produced, above or below ground.

If the right angle is chosen, anything can be pitched as “sustainable” or, as Ian puts it, “clean”. It is clear that he has fought through thrashing waves of bureaucracy in his quest for policy change. Ian pitches and he pitches well. He has done well on his quest. However, we are living an Earth story and talking a human story. He is talking a human story and we did not question that. We are taught to respect his work, we do respect his work. Do we also see beyond this work? Beyond the work and into the soil? Often I think not. Often I think there are forces at work to stop us from seeing beyond. The walls for one.

Ariele Parker

Madeline,

I really enjoyed how you used a quote at the beginning or your response to summarize your thoughts. It was eloquent and scholarly. The statement you made "As for biofuels, small scale production of non-petrocarbon fuels from material that would otherwise enter landfills: wonderful. Let’s do more of that. And then let’s use the product of that process strategically, in transition to an Earth story" I greatly agree with. As you mentioned in the following sentence, "Large scale production of biofuels from B. juncea juncea is not wonderful" and how you said it is a colonial story I also agree with. This to me seems to all too well summarize the wicked problem of sustainability. As soon as we find options to reuse we become efficient, capitalism enters the picture then we run out of material or consumers. I do not know the answer to this as it is a complex and familiar problem but I do greatly appreciate how you discussed this problem and related it to a relevant reading. Great reflection and "biofuel for thought"!

Jeff Nishima-Miller

I found Ian Thomson’s introduction to be inspiring. As explained to us, Ian identified a problem, Thought of a solution, and put it into action. Rather than tacking climate change as a whole, Ian Thomson was able to single in on one area, with determination to make a difference. I think this is an important takeaway, as climate change is a wicked problem with no single solution. When, however, we break climate change down into the contributing factors, we can chip away at focused and specific area.

On the other hand, a singular focus has the potential to obscure our vision of the wider impacts of our projects. Madeline raised an excellent point after the presentation, pointing out that by simply switching to, or increasing or reliance on biofuels, will just change the area of impact (i.e. with an increased reliance on biofuels comes deforestation/land-use change, monocrop agriculture, soil nutrient depletion, etc.). Furthermore, with biofuel production comes positive feedbacks (i.e. through deforestation/land-use change), which makes me wonder how exactly a model which integrates intensive biofuel production fits into long term climate change mitigation?

I recognize that relative to fossil fuels, the impacts of biofuels (resulting from refining, transporting, and combustion) are significantly smaller, but none the less, may result in largely negative environmental consequences. As we have discussed, climate change is a wicked problem, and singular solutions are impossible. In this case, maybe biofuels are a small piece of the mitigation puzzle or part of the evolution of a more long-term solution?

While Ian Thomson was presenting, the little voice in my head was wondering if clean fuel standards, etc. are simply prolonging our denial in that we must make large-scale societal changes from our reliance on ‘fuel’ of any type –‘Petro or Bio’. It seems to be ‘tippy toe walk’ around confrontation of our unsustainable lifestyles. It seems to ignore important lifestyle changes such as living locally (cutting out our reliance on motorized vehicles), decreased consumption, increased reliance on organic agricultural methods, and ending our travel-bug aviation romance (for example).

Are these lifestyle changes ideal? I think so. Realistic? Depends on who you ask…

Stephanie’s experiences using biofuel in California offered an interesting middle ground, which I would be interested in exploring. As she mentioned, the biofuel was produced from using neighborhood waste. While my knowledge of biofuel production is limited, this seems like an interesting solution to the negative environmental impacts associated with intensive biofuel production (i.e. deforestation/land-use change, monocrop agriculture, etc.). Local solutions offer productive means for mitigating climate change, without causing other large scale environmental issues.

Amarpreet Kaur

Hi Jeff,

I totally agree with your point, "maybe biofuels are a small piece of the mitigation puzzle or part of the evolution of a more long-term solution?" and also believe that bio-fuels are the part of the solution but not the only solution to rely on. It might seem as a good and efficient idea to produce energy but only in those cases when the things are economically stable and balanced in food-stock related needs. Additionally, the system should also be capable enough to mitigate the issues like soil erosion, food security, deforestation and biodiversity.

At last, it might be tough to reach a particular decision but by using multiple alternative energy production approaches we might reach an economically and environmentally optimal and efficient result.

Maria Correia

My reaction to Ian Thompson’s presentation in class was positive for two reasons.  First, I was happy for a shift to climate change solutions from the more pessimistic lectures that covered constraints to climate change (the Why We Disagree on Climate Change lectures) and the Kelowna/Okanagan realities and challenges of limited actions on climate change at the regional and city levels.  I was particularly interested in learning about where we are with airline fuel alternatives, and advances with renewable biogas from methane derived from landfills, livestock, wastewater etc. as an alternate energy source for heating homes and for transportation. (In our household, for example, we shifted from natural gas to biogas some time ago.)  Second, I was inspired by Ian’s own enterprising path to create a national organization that competes by producing biofuels in the energy sector, influences industry, and informs government policy.  This was most remarkable because by his own admission, he knew nothing about biogas when he started out.  As someone who has worked on social entrepreneurship, but from the luxury of a stable well-paying job, I was impressed.

The strongly held objections to Ian’s presentation by some of the class members however, prompted me to investigate biofuels further.  I learned that the biggest concern is that of diverting farmlands and crops from food to biofuels, thus creating shortages and driving up food prices.   Similarly, shifts to biofuels have led to massive deforestation in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, loss of biodiversity and habitats, soil erosion, and increased pressures on water.  There are also questions about the carbon emissions cost-benefits of biofuels compared to conventional fuels.  According to one study, producing ethanol from corn requires 29% more energy than what it generates, and similar issues exist for other crops such as soybeans.  Biofuels from waste products such as poultry processing waste, in contrast is promising.  So yet another example of climate change as the most wicked of wicked problems.  There are no quick-fixes.

And yet, I conclude from my cursory review, that biofuels is in the mix of energy alternatives along with sun, wind, hydrogen and others.  Jeff above notes that the elephant in the room is the need to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and make fundamental change to our lifestyles and the way we manage socio-ecosystems.  Yes, absolutely.  But the climate crisis cannot wait, and we need action now.  I am inspired by and grateful for people like Ian who are taking risks and acting to address these intractable problems that many of us, myself included, only have the courage to talk abut.

Stephenie Hendricks

I agree with you, Maria, that Ian was a refreshing guest speaker working proactively on sustainability strategies to help ameliorate climate change.

I’ve heard the argument before about concerns that biofuel crop production threatens food production. Wondering about this myself, I did find several interesting peer reviewed articles that address these issues and suggest technological support for balancing land use, so scholars are working on this, which gives me hope new solutions will emerge.

I, too, think there needs to be a focus on multiple ways to generate energy.

While we were musing about this issue this week, another new paper has been published whose scientists claim to have made electricity from “protein” and air. This changes the entire equation if it can be replicated reliably. Stay tuned for new developments!

Valentine, J., Clifton‐Brown, J., Hastings, A., Robson, P., Allison, G. and Smith, P. (2012), Food vs. fuel: the use of land for lignocellulosic ‘next generation’ energy crops that minimize competition with primary food production. Global Change Biol Bioenergy, 4: 1-19. doi:10.1111/j.1757-1707.2011.01111.x

Sanjib Kumar Karmee, Liquid biofuels from food waste: Current trends, prospect and limitation, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Volume 53, 2016, Pages 945-953,ISSN 1364-0321, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.09.041.

“Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires” by Xiaomeng Liu, Hongyan Gao, Joy E. Ward, Xiaorong Liu, Bing Yin, Tianda Fu, Jianhan Chen, Derek R. Lovley and Jun Yao, 17 February 2020, Nature. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2010-9

Stephenie Hendricks

Ian Thomson was yet another very interesting guest speaker. The old adage, “Never underestimate the power of one committed person” is amply demonstrated with Ian. His dedication to helping Canada get off of fossil fuels is inspiring.

I was struck by how complex Ian’s journey has been on solving this “wicked” problem. To build effective alliances, he had to include natural gas powered vehicles and bio fuels probably made from chemically intensive mono-cropping (such as corn for ethanol and soybeans for biodiesel). This may have forced him to compromise in ways that went against his values.

He mentioned the Carbon Institute. I am familiar with that group, having first met one of the founders in Vancouver years ago. They since moved to California, where, the last I heard, they were advocating for locally produced multi-crop organic plant production to supply biodiesel for the local region where the crops are grown. Each locality would provide themselves with their own home grown fuel - the overarching scheme.

I would have liked to have heard more from him about the processes for making fuel from waste.  The company I used in California for 11 years collected the used grease from our local restaurants and then refined it and sold it to those of us with bio diesel vehicles.

It is true that at their highest capacity they could never make enough to serve everyone. Then came a pump in my community, another not too far away in Berkeley and others all over the Northern California area. For the most part, the pumps were pumping bio diesel made from waste. Yet demand was so great that at least one pump used biodiesel made by Shell Oil – made from chemically intensive farming of soy crops in the Amazon (where priceless rain forest was sacrificed for the Shell oil product).

We did not address the issues around electric cars with the precious earth minerals being mined in developing nations by children and other workers not getting paid, as well as being in hazard’s way from the toxic effects of mining.

Then there is the end of life situation for the batteries and cars – are they sent to poor countries to be dismantled and taken apart – also by people not getting paid, also being exposed to toxic substances?

Add to that the electricity being generated by nuclear power plants or coal plants that is needed to make these products and run the electric vehicles and we have a challenging “cradle to cradle” situation. Ian did mention taking into account these things, but I don’t feel I heard specific insights or summaries about this informing a best practices system.

Still, Ian has done a yeoman’s job pulling together this alliance and seems to have made renewable fuels a credible commodity for Canada.

I appreciate Ian doing the work he is doing, and I also am grateful he took time out to speak with us. Thanks to John, also, for the time and energy it took to book Ian.

Maria Correia

Steph, thanks for your thoughts.  My overall reaction to your reflection, is that we need a lot more time if we want to understand the cost/benefits of alternative fuels, including biofuels, as well as other issues such as electric cars, which you and others raised.  Ian’s presentation was effective in rousing our interest and motivating us to think about the multi-facetted nature (and wickedness) of these alternatives.  I think the value of such a presentation and our subsequent discussion and reflection is getting us to focus on these issues – and not just us but the general public.  The more we talk about these problems, reflect on them, care about them, the more chance we have of finding innovative, creative, and sustainable ways forward, which is what Ian’s and your California examples demonstrate.  Lethargy, apathy and resignation are the real problems with the wicked issue of climate change.

On electric cars, as you know, we own a fully electric vehicle, and admittedly when we purchased the car we did not do a life cycle analysis, nor consider the Lithium-ion batteries, the cobalt mines in the Congo, the afterlife of the batteries, etc.  The focus was on dealing with the immediate problem – addressing the proximate existential issue.  I suspect others who own electric cars are similarly single-issue minded.

As a result of your and others’ comments, however, I did do some research on batteries. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about how recycling of Lithium-ion batteries in the US is being carried out in places such as in neighbouring Trail.  This was just a cursory review and certainly not the whole story, but it looked promising. As for the cobalt mines of the Congo, this is quite a different situation.  I have worked in that country and understand the intractability of dealing with issues in failed states.  However, the problem with cobalt mines is much easier to solve than those of other industries that also exploit vulnerable groups (the garment industry is a case in point).  I am actually optimistic when it comes to cobalt.  The realization of the exploitation that goes into the manufacturing of batteries and other electronics can help us to pressure the companies using these minerals and ultimately improve the conditions of these mining workers.

Amarpreet Kaur

The online session with Ian Thompson showcased an intuitive and strong alternative of daily using carbon-based fuels. I thoroughly enjoyed the session and found it informative. Specially, by using the corn (ethanol) and seeds oil (bio-diesel) as a locomotive fuel for commuting will help us reduce the GHG emission by 50%. Perhaps, the only thing that ticks my mind is, weather this bio-fuel solution is good in long run...? As we know very well that climate change is a wicked problem and cannot have a single solution. Thus, the need of finding an optimize and efficient solution is significant.

I also liked the point, Madeline came up with, that shifting all together to bio-fuels might not be a feasible solution as it will create more pressure on land use, increase deforestation food security, biodiversity and soil erosion. Further, the usage of crops and other organic material in making the bio-fuel may lead us to a compromised situation in the availability of the material and might also raise their prices.Moreover, a economical balance should also be maintained between the crop production , consumption and energy production. As the result this shift might reduce the GHG emissions but also has the tendency to effect economic stability and increases the land and soil related problems. Hence, we can avail bio-fuels as the part of solution but not the only solution.

In my opinion,  a good solution would be using multiple alternatives of the carbon-based fuels like solar, electrical, bio-gas and other renewable sources of energy to reduce the impact of the petroleum or coal-based fuels. On the same time, we also need to take the important decision of which alternative should be used when. As in my country INDIA, more then 40% of the population is malnourished and struggle enough to get one time food. In such situation considering a fact of producing energy using feed-stock looks immoral and unethical. Lastly, a economically optimal and efficient decision should be made so that we can benefit from all the aspects and reduce the negative impacts.

Jeff Nishima-Miller

Amarpreet,

You bring up some valid points on biofuel in this reflection. You rightfully point out that biofuels should not be seen as the ‘only solution’, but part of the solution in decreasing GHG emissions. I agree that we should not rely on biofuels to solve our reliance on fossil fuel energies, as there are concerns about land use changes, etc. But at the same time, they offer some immediate solutions (as pointed out in Maria’s reflection), which should be seen as effective ways in mitigating climate change.

I am interested in your point regarding the need for an economic analysis of biofuel production. I found an article on the energy return on investment (EROI) for Corn-Based Ethanol, pointing out that the EROI for Corn-Based Ethanol ranges (approximately) from 0.82:1 to 1.73:1. Interestingly enough, the EROI for Cellulosic Ethanol (which is create by using switchgrass and other non-food biological material) is calculated at 17.8:1.

The large variability and economic differences in biofuel types may offer solutions to some of the issues raised in your reflection. First, Cellulosic Ethanol may provide the basis for an economic argument of transitioning towards increased biofuel production. For example, Canadian tar sands produced fuels have an EROI of 4:1 -With Cellulosic Ethanol at 17.8:1, the argument for making the transition seems clear. Second, since Cellulosic Ethanol uses non-food biological material, it might offer solutions to the immoral and unethical perspectives on biofuels (i.e. food for energy), helping them gain legitimacy as a future option for energy in countries where malnourishment and food security issues unfortunately persist.  

Nadia Mahmoudi

Ian Thompson provided us with a fascinating and informative talk. I enjoyed it, mainly because my team with professor Lovegrove is working on a hydrail project. A train with hydrogen fuel. This is another form of having sustainable clean fuel. The current challenge in our project is how to store hydrogen because the standard compressed gas tanks are extremely explosive; the liquid form has a lot of daily leakages and other technical problems. Listening to a talk about biofuels was exciting for me. We discussed in the class how electric cars and their batteries could be unsustainable, and in fact, we are shifting the area of polluting the environment, and not cleaning it.

It is still not clear to me if the biofuels are going to be produced by plants, or wastes. In my view, if it is plan-based, it won't be as sustainable that it is desired since producing enough energy for a regenerative city means a vast agricultural land for producing enough fuel. Which, for me, is translated as destroying natural environment and habitats, and eventually impacting the balance of nature in another way. Another problem with growing crops for fuel is that they take up land that could be used for growing food. In a world with a population of around 7 billion and that is already short on food, there will necessarily be a tradeoff between food crops and biofuel feedstock.

However, if it is based on waste, like human waste or animal waste, it can sound like a sustainable regenerative plan. I do not have enough information about fuels, and this field of sustainability, I am on my learning path, and making a useful comment for this session was not easy for me.

Nicole Bamber

Nadia,

I'm glad Ian Thompson's talk was so good, I'm disappointed I had to miss it. I totally agree with you about the issue of burden shifting when it comes to sustainability efforts such as electric cars or biofuels. From my limited knowledge in the field, it is 2nd generation biofuels that show the most promise. Those are biofuels from waste products such as municipal waste, or plant residues that are not used in agriculture. These seem like the best option since they do not take agricultural land away from food production, and provide a method of creating energy from waste products that would otherwise need to be disposed of. I hope that as new sustainability initiatives are developed, we continue to critically assess them to make sure that they are not simply producing emissions or waste somewhere else and not actually fixing the problem. This is what we aim to do in my field of Life Cycle Assessment, which examines the entire supply chain of a product to determine its sustainability. It is a very useful tool for assessing different types of environmental impacts, as well as impacts at different stages along the supply chain.

Aditya Shingvi

This weeks seminar was by Ian Thomson who is a part of Canada’s Advanced Biofuels advocacy group. I noticed a glaring conflict of interest in the part of marketing biofuels to the public. On one side they seem to push the adoption of biofuels as a more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels to the general (uninformed) public and at the same time a majority of the revenue for the member companies that form a comes from the oil and gas industry say for example, in the form of substitution of gasoline with ethanol. In other words, they don’t really benefit from the decrease in the demand of fossil fuels.

It is a known fact that selling green fuel to the consumer directly is not economically feasible (nothing beats extracting free oil from the ground from a price point of view) and the infrastructure is just not in place in even some of the most developed countries in the world. These companies are heavily dependent on regulations by the government that force big oil marketing companies  such as Petro Canada to substitute their product with ethanol. While in the current scenario this may work, it is my personal belief that for a sound business environment one party can never be  forced to perform a transaction with another party.

There have been concerns regarding the source of these bio-fuels where I remember someone mention that in Brazil, Amazon’s rainforest are cut down for growing sugarcane that is raw material for the production of ethanol. Like Ian said, I did some digging of my own and strongly agree that a life-cycle assessment must be performed where the environmental impacts are summed up right from production of the raw material to the combustion of the fuel in a consumers car, in order to determine if a bio-fuel is truly an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

Ian Turner

You raise a very good point here about the value of LCA research with regards to the environmental sustainability of biofuels. As an agri-food LCA scientist myself, however, I've learned we have to be careful with this kind of LCA research in Canada because we have to deal with a glaring lack of representative data characterizing common agri-food supply chain activities (I have a paper accepted by the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment talking about this that should be available soon). In particular, in Canada we have no life cycle inventory data characterizing fertilizer production, leading us to make use of models that are representative of other countries, despite the fact that fertilizer production in Canada is actually quite efficient and less impactful than its international counterparts. LCA research can definitely be very valuable for the biofuels sector, but really in Canada we need a proliferation of agri-fod LCA researchers collaborating and making data available to one another to ensure those models are actually accurate.