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Biofuel research is worth doing and may be one of many essential tools to
limit damage from future climate change, but there are big environmental and
social risks if it's pushed too hard and too fast, March 2007 by Rick
DelVecchio.

That's the warning from some experts familiar with the history of biofuels
and the outlines of UC Berkeley's controversial $500 million energy research
pact with oil industry giant BP to create a research center at Berkeley to
be named the Energy Biosciences Institute.

The institute's primary goal will be facilitating the production of biofuels
on a scale large enough to result in a net drop of carbon emissions linked
to vehicles -- potentially a huge step in society's response to a changing
climate

"This is an exciting prospect and a real opportunity," said John Harte, a UC
Berkeley professor of energy and resources, "but we're going to blow it if
we don't get the whole project off the ground at the beginning in a way
that's compatible with good research on the social, economic and
environmental consequences.

"There are serious concerns about this technology. To many of us, it doesn't
appear to be a free lunch, and we want to understand how much this lunch is
going to cost us."

A cautious, skeptical analysis is needed, Harte added, "not a headlong rush
because a lot of promoters tell us it's great."

Enthusiastic supporters and bitter opponents of the BP deal emerged at last
Thursday's campus forum, sponsored by Cal's Faculty Senate. But moderate
voices are also being heard on campus and elsewhere. They argue for the
value of investigating biofuels as part of a broad strategy to develop clean
fuel sources but note the difficulties the research must overcome to meet
success.

Ken Cassman, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska and director of the
Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research, said Berkeley's focus should
be on both research and education.

"I think the magnitude of the scientific and environmental challenges is
underestimated," he said. "The difficulty of raising (crop) yields and at
the same time protecting the environment -- the science has been
underestimated. It's wonderful that program is under way, but it's going to
need more than that."

The research will focus on molecular-scale chemistry and biology and will be
done at Berkeley, which has some of the world's most experienced people and
finest machines for these tasks.

The real test of the venture will play out on the scale of industrial
agriculture -- long-range projections see energy farms covering 10 percent
of the land area of the Midwest and producing 120 billion gallons of ethanol
or other fuels annually.

With high-tech tools provided by Berkeley researchers, allied scientists at
a 640-acre experimental farm at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign will work to boost the productivity and overcome the
drawbacks of industrial farming for energy.

These include problems of pest control, soil depletion, water consumption,
land-use changes, the handling of waste, the potential for tough, nonnative
fuel superweeds to run rampant and the need for new kinds of farm equipment.
The experimental farm will be lined with sensors to track conditions and
transmit data wirelessly to a data center on campus. Supercomputers in turn
will crunch large amounts of data.

If the venture is to be successful, experts says, it will also have to
develop growing, processing and marketing systems that are adaptable all
over the world, with methods and costs within the reach of the world's
poorer regions, not just Midwest agribusiness.

And mass production of biofuels shouldn't lead to higher food prices as fuel
and food crops compete -- a threat pointed out in a federal study as long
ago as 1980. The losers in such a case would be the poor.

It's unknown how the climate would respond to broad changes in soil biology
and reflected sunlight from a new kind of industrial agriculture, Harte
said. Things could get hotter.

"There are a lot of issues that need to be studied. People haven't really
begun doing it," Harte said. "I have a concern with the British Petroleum
deal that this kind of research won't get done, there's so much concern over
getting the product out.

"We're not even sure the university gets it -- understands what's bugging
us," Harte said of student and faculty concerns.

Stanford Professor Chris Somerville, who is mentioned as the prime candidate
to run the Energy Biosciences Institute, said socioeconomic research will be
a substantial portion of the effort.

"I'm going to rely on them to put together a vigorous and completely
unbiased team," he said.

Robert Wiedenmann, who heads the etymology department at the University of
Arkansas, is impressed with the roster of scientists the deal's sponsors
have suggested to lead investigations into the risks of biofuels. Many are
his former colleagues at the University of Illinois.

If ecologists are included in the discussion, he said, that is a step
forward because a comprehensive study of the risks and benefits of biofuels
has yet to occur.

"Is there an economic push behind this? There definitely is, and rightly
so," he said of the BP deal. "They want to get some return on their
investment. I just think the questions need to be asked. The fact that
they're putting together a group to look at those questions is very
encouraging."

Wiedenmann's specific concern is that crops bred to be highly productive for
fuel pose ecological problems.

"It's interesting that many of the same traits that make a plant appealing
for a biofuel crop -- it grows like crazy, doesn't have insect or disease
problems, is self-sustaining, etc. -- are the very same things biologists
worry about plants becoming invasive," said Wiedenmann, who co-authored an
article in the journal Science in September that discussed a native
Southeast Asian tropical grass that is the current favorite of biofuels
research.

The weed, miscanthus, grows tall and bushy and is highly productive for the
amount of water, fertilizer and labor that goes into it. At current energy
prices, farmers in central Illinois could grow it profitably without
subsidies, according to a study co-authored by Steve Long and Tom Voigt,
University of Illinois scientists involved in the BP research project.

However, Wiedenmann said the weed's toughness and the way it propagates by
sending shoots underground are possible risks.

Breaking down the woody parts of weeds into combustible sugars is one of the
biggest challenges the institute faces in turning harvests into fuel.
Researchers are developing high-tech processes involving the latest
innovations in bioengineering and chemical engineering.

But, according to Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel, the amount of
energy that has to go into the dissolving of biomass as a first stage in
making fuels is daunting.

"Good luck," he said. "It's not an easy, simple solution."

Tad Patzek, a UC Berkeley civil and environmental engineering professor,
said he has been working on energy issues for the past 25 years and has
studied biomass intensively for the last four. He's not part of the BP
institute and questions whether energy farms are environmentally
sustainable.

"Suppose these researchers will succeed in what they say," he said, "then we
will be basically chewing and burning plants of this planet in real time,
and that would make it a lot less hospitable place. In a way Berkeley is
serving as a front end to a deal which in my opinion actually goes, despite
the rhetoric, in the opposite direction."

The sponsoring scientists challenge this analysis as outdated, saying it
discounts the positive impacts of future technology. The University of
Nebraska's Cassman agrees.

"I really don't get what the criticism is," he said. "Biofuels are slightly
positive now in terms of reducing greenhouse gases. But again, if we really
focus and bring to bear all our resources in basic genetics and engineering
and also the environmental discussion, there's no question we can't make
these systems much better."

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