A note about websites:

Using websites as information sources is tricky, because you never know when the website might be taken down, or when the information may simply disappear. Website text is quoted here for the sake of permanence. If you "cut and paste" any of these websites to find them yourselves, beware that your computer may insert a space in the web address where there is a "hard return" in my document. You may need to remove such spaces from the web address to find it.

1. Nitske, W. Robert, Wilson, Charles Morrow, Rudolf Diesel, Pioneer of the Age of Power, University of Oklahoma Press. 1965

2. http://www.woodgas.com/History.htm

"Woodgas" is my name for the various gases that can be easily made from wood or biomass. Various forms are: synthesis gas, typically 40% hydrogen, H2, 40% hydrogen, 3% methane, and 17% Carbon dioxide; producer gas, made by gasifying biomass with air (and therefore containing ~50% nitrogen); pyrolysis gas, similar to synthesis gas, but including lots or water and tar and accompanied by production of 10-30% charcoal.

The Industrial Revolution was fueled by gas starting in 1800 (primarily from coal by pyrolysis) initially used for city and home lighting, then for cooking and power generation. Coke for steel making was a useful by-product. By 1850, the major cities of the world had "gaslight" (see Dickens novels). The internal combustion engine was invented to make electricity from producer gas about 1880. See all the wonderful old coal systems in our book "Modern Gas Producers" on our Books page. All of this changed starting in 1930, when welded pipelines brought natural gas from oil wells to our houses and now few of us remember the producer gas (manufactured gas, city gas, water gas etc.) era.

During World War II over a million gasifiers were built for the civilian sector while the military used up all the gasoline. Now that world oil supplies are being depleted and global warming is perceived as a threat to our environment, there is renewed interest in gas from BIOMASS. The National Academy of Sciences published a great booklet on "Producer Gas: Another Fuel for Motor Transport" in 1983, and we are into our third printing at the BEF PRESS (see BEF Books). We show here a few interesting old pictures from that book. (Click each thumbnail to view large and return here with Back button)

Old & Modern Gasifiers

On March 9, 2001 I visited a Mr. Mel Strand at his home in Boulder, CO. Mel was born in Minneapolis, but during WWII he was stranded in Norway during the occupation and drove a gasifier truck - delivering groceries in the day and weapons to the underground at night.

Mel returned to the U.S. after the war and has has career has been in machining and fabrication. As a hobby a few years ago he decided to construct the gasifier he remembered it from a 1948 Chevy pickup. What a beauty he made!

Mel turned on the auxiliary starting fan, and started the gasifier on large aspen chunks with a newspaper. After a few minutes he lit the gas at the front of the truck and started the engine. We drove around Colorado Springs for several hours. I realized what an art it was to drive a gasifier car, since he could control the spark advance, air fuel ratio and throttle, all from the steering column, while talking about the old and new days.

Modern Small Gasifiers

A great deal of development of gasifiers is going on around the world.

In 1999 I collaborated with the company Community Power, CPC, Corporation, CPC, to build a 5 kW "Turnkey, Tarfree" gasifier using new principles I had discovered and learned. The picture at the right shows Kurt Kirscher, Shivayam Ellis, myself, Agua Das and Robb Walt (President of CPC) outside my laboratory.

CPC developed this gasifier with the aid of grants from the US DOE, Shell International, the California Energy commision ant others into field gasifiers tested in Alaminos in the Philippines and the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in California.

CPC is now quite active in many aspects of gasifier research and has a dozen 15 kW "Turnkey, Tarfree" gasifiers in the field and used by the US Forest Service and Others to turn forest litter and biomass trash into heat and power. CPC is now also developing a 5 kW heat/power and a 50 kW gasifier.

THE DASIFIER FOUNDRY GASIFIER

Here's a nifty gasifier developed by my colleague and co-author, Agua Das, for melting bronze and other metals with biomass. Built from tincans and a refrigerator compressor, it burns all kinds of biomass trash. I also call it an "up-down draft gasifier. See the description at "Dasifier".

BIG GASIFIERS

I have lots of descriptions of large gasifier projects in my book "Survey of Biomass Gasification - 2000" (see Books). Here is the famous Burlington Vt. 5 MW fluidized bed that makes a very rich gas of 15 MJ/m3. It is based on the double fluidized bed developed at Battelle and has been scaled up by FERCO and the US Dept. of Energy. It operates on wood chips from the Vermont forests. I believe it is no longer in operation (July, 2004).

The BEF is involved with research, design and construction of all gasifier sizes.

GASIFIERS FOR FUELS AND CHEMICALS

When biomass is gasified with air the resulting gas has ~50% nitrogen, and so is good only for use at the point of origin. For pipelines, for some storage or for chemical synthesis, oxygen gasification produces a gas with twice the energy (~12 MJ/m3) while pyrolytic gasification can produce a gas with 20 MJ/m2.

In 1973 at MIT, I wrote the lead article for the journal Science, "Methanol: A versatile Fuel for Immediate Use", (Vol. 182, pp 1299, 1973). Unfortunately, the US chose not to develop fuels alternative to gasoline and so has been exporting money for oil to finance terrorists. Read the sad story at our Methanol page.

In 1980 we built an oxygen gasifier at SERI/NREL which eventually was tested on pure oxygen at the 25 ton/d level. This is discussed in our book FUNDAMENTAL STUDY AND SCALE UP OF THE AIR-OXYGEN STRATIFIED DOWNDRAFT GASIFIER on the Books Page.

This page was last updated 07/28/04

3.http://ethanol.org/whatisethanol.html

WHAT IS FUEL ETHANOL?

Also referred to as ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, or ETOH, ethanol is a clear liquid with an agreeable odor. Ethanol is made by fermenting and distilling simple sugars. Today, ethanol is a fuel produced from crops such as corn, grain sorghum, wheat, sugar, and other agricultural feedstocks. Most fuel ethanol produced in the U.S. is derived from corn—latest figures indicate that 10% of the U.S. corn crop is dedicated to ethanol production. In Brazil, the world's top producer of ethanol, sugar is the primary feedstock. Since it is produced from crops or plants that harness the power of the sun, ethanol is considered a renewable fuel.

Pure fuel ethanol contains chemical properties identical to that of other grain alcohol. As such, it must be denatured or made unfit for human consumption. In the U.S., the most common denaturant is gasoline. There are three major types of fuel ethanol:

E95 : Pure ethanol, or the alcohol produced in an ethanol production facility. E95 must be denatured so humans cannot consume it. While it can be used by some vehicles in its pure form, most E95 is currently blended with gasoline for resale in petroleum markets.

E85 : A mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, E85 is a leading alternative fuel used in the U.S. Over 3.5 million autos run on E85 fuel, and it can be purchased at approximately 200 refueling sites in the U.S. When E85 is not available, these "flexible" fuel vehicles can operate on any blend of ethanol or straight unleaded gasoline.

E10 : The most common from of ethanol, E10 contains 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline. Nearly 3 billion gallons of ethanol is consumed each year in the U.S., the vast majority of which is E10. All automobile manufacturers in the U.S. approve the use of E10.

Approximately 30% of all gasoline consumed in the United States will be blended with ethanol in 2004. Because the ethanol molecule contains oxygen, it allows an auto engine to more completely combust fuel, resulting in fewer emissions. Fuel ethanol blends are successfully used in all types of vehicles and engines that require gasoline. Approval of ethanol blends is found in the owners' manuals under references to refueling or gasoline.

Chemical Properties of Ethanol

Ethanol (CH3CH2OH) is a group of chemical compounds whose molecules contain a hydroxyl group, -OH, bonded to a carbon atom. Ethanol melts at -114.1°C, boils at 78.5°C, and has a density of 0.789 g/mL at 20°C. Its low freezing point has made it useful as the fluid in thermometers for temperatures below -40°C, the freezing point of mercury, and for other low-temperature purposes, such as for antifreeze in automobile radiators.

Ethanol has been made since ancient times by the fermentation of sugars. All beverage ethanol and more than half of industrial ethanol is still made by this process. Simple sugars are the raw material. Zymase, an enzyme from yeast, changes the simple sugars into ethanol and carbon dioxide. The fermentation reaction, represented by the simple equation C6H12O6 2 CH3CH2OH + 2 CO2 is actually very complex, and impure cultures of yeast produce varying amounts of other substances, including glycerine and various organic acids. In the production of beverages, such as whiskey and brandy, the impurities supply the flavor. Starches from potatoes, corn, wheat, and other plants can also be used in the production of ethanol by fermentation. However, the starches must first be broken down into simple sugars. An enzyme released by germinating barley, diastase, converts starches into sugars. Thus, the germination of barley, called malting, is the first step in brewing beer from starchy plants, such as corn and wheat.

The ethanol produced by fermentation ranges in concentration from a few percent up to about 14 percent. Above about 14 percent, ethanol destroys the zymase enzyme and fermentation stops. Ethanol is normally concentrated by distillation of aqueous solutions, but the composition of the vapor from aqueous ethanol is 96 percent ethanol and 4 percent water. Therefore, pure ethanol cannot be obtained by distillation. Commercial ethanol contains 95 percent by volume of ethanol and 5 percent of water. Dehydrating agents can be used to remove the remaining water and produce absolute ethanol.

Much ethanol not intended for drinking is now made synthetically, either from acetaldehyde made from acetylene, or from ethylene made from petroleum. Ethanol can be oxidized to form first acetaldehyde and then acetic acid. It can be dehydrated to form ether. Butadiene, used in making synthetic rubber, may be made from ethanol, as can chloroform and many other organic chemicals.

Ethanol is miscible (mixable) in all proportions with water and with most organic solvents. It is useful as a solvent for many substances and in making perfumes, paints, lacquer, and explosives. Alcoholic solutions of nonvolatile substances are called tinctures; if the solute is volatile, the solution is called a spirit.

Most industrial ethanol is denatured to prevent its use as a beverage. Denatured ethanol contains small amounts, 1 or 2 percent each, of several different unpleasant or poisonous substances. The removal of all these substances would involve a series of treatments more expensive than the federal excise tax on alcoholic beverages (currently about $20 per gallon). These denaturants render ethanol unfit for some industrial uses. In such industries undenatured ethanol is used under close federal supervision.

When an alcoholic beverage is swallowed, it passes through the stomach into the small intestine, where the ethanol is rapidly absorbed and distributed throughout the body. The ethanol enters body tissues in proportion to their water content. Therefore, more ethanol is found in the blood and the brain than in muscle or fat tissue. The ethanol is greatly diluted by body fluids. For example, a 1-ounce shot of 100-proof whiskey, which contains 0.5 fluid ounces of ethanol (about 15 mL), is diluted 5000-fold in a 150-pound human, producing a 0.02% blood alcohol concentration.

Ethanol is toxic, and the body begins to dispose of it immediately upon its consumption. Over 90% of it is processed by the liver. In the liver, the alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme converts ethanol into acetaldehyde, which is itself toxic. This is destroyed almost immediately by the aldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme, which converts it to acetate ions.

The hydrogen atoms represented by these equations are not unattached, but are picked up by another biologically important compound, nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide (NAD), whose function is to carry hydrogen atoms. NAD is involved in both of the above processes, being converted to NADH (NAD + H NADH).

NADH must be recycled to NAD for the disposal of ethanol to continue. If the amount of ethanol consumed is not great, the recycling can keep up with the disposal of ethanol. The ethanol disposal rate in a 150-pound human is about 0.5 ounce of ethanol per hour, which corresponds to 12 ounces of beer, 4 ounces of wine, or 1 ounce of hard liquor.

Ethanol acts as a drug affecting the central nervous system. Its behavioral effects stem from its effects on the brain and not on the muscles or senses themselves. It is a depressant, and depending on dose, can be a mild tranquilizer or a general anesthetic. It suppresses certain brain functions. At very low doses, it can appear to be a stimulant by suppressing certain inhibitory brain functions. However, as concentration increases, further suppression of brain functions produce the classic symptoms of intoxication: slurred speech, unsteady walk, disturbed sensory perceptions, and inability to react quickly. At very high concentrations, ethanol produces general anesthesia; a highly intoxicated person will be asleep and very difficult to wake, and if awakened, unable to move voluntarily.

Alcohol levels in the brain are difficult to measure, and so blood alcohol levels are used to assess degree of intoxication. Most people begin to show measurable mental impairment at around 0.05 percent blood alcohol. At around 0.10 percent, mental impairment will show obvious physical signs, such as an unsteady walk. Slurred speech shows up at around 0.15 percent. Unconsciousness results by 0.4 percent. Above 0.5 percent, the breathing center of the brain or the beating action of the heart can be anesthetized, resulting in death. Reaching this level of blood alcohol by ingestion is unlikely, however. In a 150-pound human, it would require rapid consumption of a fifth gallon of a 100-proof spirit

4. http://www.answers.com/topic/alcohol-fuel

alcohol fuel

Wikipedia

alcohol fuel

The use of alcohol as a fuel for internal combustion engines, either alone or in combination with other fuels, has been given much attention mostly because of its possible environmental and long-term economical advantages over fossil fuels.

Both ethanol and methanol have been considered for this purpose. While both can be obtained from petroleum or natural gas, ethanol may be the most interesting because many believe it to be a renewable resource, easily obtained from organic material such as grain or sugarcane.

Fuel alcohols

Proposals to use alcohol as a fuel are generally concerned with its use in transportation, chiefly as a total or partial replacement for gasoline in cars and other road vehicles. However, other less conventional approaches have been advanced, such as the use of alcohol in fuel cells, either directly or as a feedstock for hydrogen production.

Fuel alcohols can be produced from a variety of crops, such as sugarcane, sugar beets, maize, barley, potatoes, cassava, sunflower, eucalyptus, etc. Two countries have developed significant bio-alcohol programmes: Brazil (ethanol from sugarcane) and Russia (methanol from eucalyptus). Alcohol can also be obtained synthetically, via ethene or acetylene, from calcium carbide, coal, oil gas, and other sources.

Agricultural alcohol for fuel requires substantial amounts of cultivable land with fertile soils and water. It is hardly an option for densely occupied and industrialized regions like Western Europe. For example, even if Germany were to be entirely covered with sugarcane plantations, it would get only half of its present energy needs (including fuel and electricity). However, if the fuel alcohol is made of the stalks, wastes, clippings, straw, corn cobs, and other crop field trash, then no additional land is needed. However using these sources for this purpose would require additional replacement animal feedstock, fertilizers and electric power plant fuels.

Ethanol

Ethanol can be derived from corn, wheat, potato wastes, cheese whey, rice straw, sawdust, urban wastes, paper mill wastes, yard clippings, molasses, sugar cane, seaweed, surplus food crops, and other cellulose waste. Petroleum is also used to make industrial ethanol.

Ethanol, which is the same chemical as the alcohol in alcoholic beverages, can approach 96% purity by distillation, and is as clear as water. Higher purities require different industrial processes. It is flammable and burns more cleanly than many other fuels. When fully combusted its combustion products are only carbon dioxide and water. For this reason, it is favoured for environmentally conscious transport schemes and has been used to fuel public buses. However, pure ethanol attacks certain rubber and plastic materials and cannot be used in unmodified car engines. Additionally, ethanol has a much higher octane rating than ordinary gasoline, requiring changes to the spark timing in engines. To change a gasoline-fueled car into an ethanol-fueled car, larger carburetor jets (about 50% larger) are needed. Also, a system is added to inject a little warmed ethanol into the carburetor to solve the cold starting problem. If 10% - 30% ethanol is blended with gasoline, then no engine modification is needed.

A mixture containing gasoline with at least 10% ethanol is known as gasohol. It is commonly available in the Midwest of the United States and is required by the state of Minnesota. One common gasohol variant is "E15", containing 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline. These concentrations are generally safe for regular automobile engines, and some regions and municipalities mandate that the locally-sold fuels contain limited amounts of ethanol. One way to measure alternative fuels is the "gasoline-equivalent gallons" (GEG). In 2002, the U.S. used as fuel an amount of ethanol equal to 137 petajoules (PJ), the energy of 1.13 billion gallons of gasoline. This was less than one percent of the total fuel used that year.[1]

The term "E85 ethanol" is used for a mixture of 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol. Beginning with the model year 1999, a number of vehicles in the U.S. were manufactured so as to be able to run on E85 fuel without modification. Most of the vehicles are officially classified as light trucks (a class containing minivans, SUVs, and pickup trucks). These vehicles are often labeled dual fuel or flexible fuel vehicles, since they can automatically detect the type of fuel and change the engine's behavior to compensate for the different ways that they burn in the engine cylinders.

When farmers distilled their own ethanol, they sometimes used radiators as part of the still. The radiators often contained lead, which would get into the ethanol. Lead entered the air during the burning of contaminated fuel, possibly leading to neural damage. However this was a minor source of lead since tetraethyl lead was used as a gasoline additive.

In Brazil and the United States, the use of ethanol from sugar cane and grain as car fuel has been promoted by government programs. Some individual U.S. states in the corn belt began subsidizing ethanol from corn (maize) after the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The Energy Tax Act of 1978 authorized an excise tax exemption for biofuels, chiefly gasohol. The excise tax exemption alone has been estimated as worth US$1.4 billion per year. Another U.S. federal program guaranteed loans for the construction of ethanol plants, and in 1986 the U.S. even gave ethanol producers free corn.

Methanol

Methanol, too, has been considered as a fuel, mainly in combination with gasoline. It has received less attention than ethanol, however, because it has a number of problems of its own. Its main advantage is that it can be easily manufactured from methane (the chief constituent of natural gas) as well as by pyrolysis of many organic materials. Pure methanol has been used in indy cars since the mid-1960's.

However, unlike ethanol, it is a toxic product; extensive exposure to it could lead to permanent health damage, including blindness. US maximum allowed exposure in air (40 h/week) are 1900 mg/m³ for ethanol, 900 mg/m³ for gasoline, and 260 mg/m³ for methanol. It is also quite volatile and therefore would increase the risk of fires and explosions.

Nevertheless, a drive to add a significant percentage of methanol to gasoline got very close to implementation in Brazil. A pilot experiment that was to be conducted in São Paulo was vetoed at the last minute by the city's mayor, out of concern for the health of gas station workers (who are mostly illiterate and could not be trusted to follow safety precautions). The idea has not been heard of since.

Alcohol and hydrogen

There is an emerging view that current consumers of fossil fuels should move to using hydrogen as a fuel, creating a new so-called hydrogen economy. However, hydrogen is not a fuel source in and of itself. Rather, it is merely an intermediate energy storage medium existing between an energy source (be it solar power, biofuels, and even fossil fuels) and the place where the energy will be used. Because hydrogen in its gaseous state takes up a very large volume when compared to other fuels, logistics becomes a very difficult problem. One possible solution is to use ethanol to transport the hydrogen, then liberate the hydrogen from its associated carbon in a hydrogen reformer and feed the hydrogen into a fuel cell. Alternatively, some fuel cells can be directly fed by ethanol.

In early 2004, researchers at the University of Minnesota announced that they had invented a simple ethanol reactor that would take ethanol, feed it through a stack of catalysts, and output hydrogen suitable for a fuel cell. The device uses a rhodium-cerium catalyst for the initial reaction, which occurs at a temperature of about 700°C. This initial reaction mixes ethanol, water vapor, and oxygen and produces good quantities of hydrogen. Unfortunately, it also results in the formation of carbon monoxide, a substance that "chokes" most fuel cells and must be passed through another catalyst to be converted into carbon dioxide. The ultimate products of the simple device are roughly 50% hydrogen gas and 30% nitrogen, with the remaining 20% mostly composed of carbon dioxide. Both the nitrogen and carbon dioxide are fairly inert when the mixture is pumped into an appropriate fuel cell. Once the carbon dioxide is released back into the atmosphere, it is reabsorbed by plant life.

Alternate sources

Sugar cane grows in the southern United States, but not in the cooler climates where corn is dominant. However, many regions that currently grow corn are also appropriate areas for growing sugar beets. Some studies indicate that using these sugar beets would be a much more efficient method for making ethanol in the U.S. than using corn.

In the 1980s, Brazil seriously considered producing ethanol from cassava, a major food crop with massive starchy roots. However yields were lower than sugarcane, and the processing of cassava was considerably more complex, as it would require cooking the root to turn the starch into fermentable sugar. The babaçu plant was also investigated as a possible source of alcohol.

There is also growing interest in the use of biomass as a source for ethanol and other types of fuel. This is a broad-ranging idea, using various types of organic matter including purpose-grown crops of plants and trees as well as leftover waste products — even including animal waste.

At this time, most of the different processes for converting biomass into ethanol and other fuels are very complicated and not particularly efficient. A few processes have seen increasing buzz, including thermal depolymerization (though that process produces what is described as light crude oil).

Net fuel energy balance

To be viable, an alcohol-based fuel economy should have positive net fuel energy balance. Namely, the total fuel energy expended in producing the alcohol — including fertilizing, farming, harvesting, transportation, fermentation, distillation, and distribution, as well as the fuel used in building the farm and fuel plant equipment — should not exceed the energy contents of the product.

Switching to a system with negative fuel energy balance would only increase the consumption of non-alcohol fuels. Such a system would only be worth considering as a way of exploiting non-alcohol fuels that may not be suitable for transportation use, such as coal, natural gas, or biofuel from crop residues. (Indeed, many U.S. proposals assume the use of natural gas for distillation.) However, many of the expected environmental and sustainability advantages of alcohol fuels would not be realized in a system with negative fuel balance.

Even a positive but small energy balance would be problematic: if the net fuel energy balance is 50%, then, in order to eliminate the use of non-alcohol fuels, it would be necessary to produce two gallons of alcohol for each gallon of alcohol delivered to the consumer.

In this regard, geography is the decisive factor. In tropical regions with abundant water and land resources, such as Brazil, the viability of production of ethanol from sugarcane is no longer in question; in fact, the burning of sugarcane residues (bagasse) generates far more energy than needed to operate the ethanol plants, and many of them are now selling electric energy to the utilities. Also, in countries with abundant hydroelectric power, the net fuel energy balance of the cycle could be improved to some extent by using electricity in the production, e.g. for milling and distillation.

The picture is quite different for other regions, such as the United States, where the climate is too cool for sugarcane. In the U.S., agricultural ethanol is generally obtained from grain, chiefly maize, and the net fuel energy balance of that route is still critical.

Energy balance in the United States

Many early studies concluded that the use of corn ethanol for fuel would have a negative net energy balance. Namely, the total energy needed to produce ethanol from grain — including fermentation, fertilizing, fuel for farm tractors, harvesting and transporting the grain, building and operating an ethanol plant, and the natural gas used to distill corn sugars into alcohol — exceeds the energy content of ethanol. Critics have argued that since production energy comes mostly from fossil fuels, gasohol isn't just wasting money but hastening the depletion of nonrenewable resources. Most such studies were based on data collected in the 1970s and early 1980s, but some analyses in 2001, continued to indicate that ethanol has a negative energy balance. A peer-reviewed study by Cornell University ecology professor David Pimentel seemed to confirm this conclusion. Pimentel's study was disputed by other specialists, forcing him to revise his figures. Still, in August 2003, he stated in a Cornell bulletin that production of ethanol from corn only takes 29% more energy than it produces.

However, continuous refinements to ethanol production procedures have much improved the benefit/cost ratio, and most studies of modern systems indicate that they now have a positive net energy balance.

Many other studies of corn ethanol production have been conducted, with greatly varied net energy estimates. Most indicate that production requires energy equvialent to 1/2, 2/3, or more of the fuel produced is required to run the process. A 2002 report by the United States Department of Agriculture concluded that corn ethanol production in the U.S. has a net energy value of 1.34, meaning 34% more energy was produced than what went in. This means that 75% (1/1.34) of each unit produced is required to replace the energy used in production. MSU Ethanol Energy Balance Study: Michigan State University, May 2002. This comprehensive, independent study funded by MSU shows that there is 56% more energy in a gallon of ethanol than it takes to produce it.

Arguments and criticisms

The use of alcohol as fuel is advocated with various arguments, mainly relating to its beneficial effects on the local and global environment, its independence from foreign oil, and its economic advantages. Critics generally dispute those arguments, claim that the switch would be expensive, and object to perceived need for increased government subsidies, taxes, and regulations.

Air pollution

There has long been widespread acknowledgement that ethanol is a cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline. Ethanol has far fewer standard regulated pollutants such as carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, compared with plain gasoline in equivalent tests. See, for example, the air pollution and environmental studies listed at the Renewable Fuels Association website http://www.ethanolrfa.org/pubs.shtml

There has been concern about increased evaporative smog-forming hydrocarbon emissions. For example, the conservative organization RPPI claims that "adding ethanol to gasoline will at best have no effect on air quality and could even make it worse. Studies show ethanol could even increase emissions of nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, which are major ingredients of smog." [2] Other critics have argued that the beneficial effects of ethanol can be achieved with other cheaper additives made from petroleum.

It is important to distinguish the issues. Ethanol in a blend with gasoline replaces tetra ethyl lead, benzene and MTBE -- all of which are additives that are meant to raise octane levels. Ethanol, with an octane rating of 110, far surpasses regular gasoline and precludes any need for other additives that are dangerous. However, ethanol can increase vapor pressure of gasoline causing increased evaporative emissions which, on balance, are far less serious than lead, benzene or MTBE.

Ethanol as a straight fuel is far cleaner than gasoline in its own right and this has been recognized from the dawn of the automotive age. See, for instance, Kovarik's "Fuel of the Future" http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/lead

Fire safety

Ethanol appears to be less of a fire hazard than gasoline; while methanol, being more volatile, is somewhat more prone to fire and explosions. However, since ethanol and methanol dissolve in water (rather than floating on it like gasoline) their fires can be extinguished with ordinary water hoses.

Greenhouse gases

A separate (and perhaps more important) benefit of switching to an ethanol fuel economy would be the decreased net ouptut of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), since all the CO2 that would be liberated in the manufacture and consumption of ethanol would have to be absorbed by the plantations. In constrast, the burning of fossil fuels injects massive amounts of "new" CO2 into the atmosphere, without creating a corresponding sink.

Needless to say, this advantage will be accrued only with agricultural ethanol, not with ethanol derived from petroleum — which, due to its much smaller cost, presently accounts for most of the alcohol produced for industrial consumption. This point must be taken into account when estimating the cost of the switch.

Renewable resource

According to its proponents, another advantage of (agricultural) alcohol as a fuel is that it is a renewable energy source that will never be exhausted; whereas an economy based on fossil fuels will sooner or later collapse when the world runs out of oil.

However, David Pimentel disputes that "ethanol production from corn" is a renewable energy source.

Dependency on foreign oil and international crime

A somewhat related (but more compelling) argument is that developed regions like the United States and Europe consume much more fossil fuels than they can extract from their territory. Those countries have therefore become dependent on foreign suppliers, and their economies have thus become hostage to international events. The dependency has also been a major cause of wars, coups d'etat, and attendant misery and human rights violations. For each U.S. dollar spent on gasloine by customers at the pump, 15 cents of the dollar is spent on terrorism in the Middle East. Oil dollars build terrorist schools that turn young arabian men into terrorists. A switch to alchohol fueled cars in western nations would bankrupt much of the terrorist activities in the Middle East. Thus switching to an agricultural ethanol economy, by lessening that dependency, would stabilize the economies of consumer countries, reduce terrorism, and make the world a better place for all.

Statism

Some critics, mainly on ideological grounds, dislike the idea of an ethanol economy because they see it as leading to increased government subsidy for corn-growing agribusiness. The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation of Decatur, Illinois, better known as ADM, the world's largest grain processor, produces 40% of the ethanol used to make gasohol in the U.S.. The company and its officers have been eloquent in their defense of ethanol and generous in contributing to both political parties.

Tax Incentives for ethanol and petroleum: U.S. General Accounting Office, September 2000. This study examines subsidies historically given to the oil industry and to the ethanol industry and finds that the amounts of those to the oil industry are far higher. At the same time, this study applies only to historical subsidies and doesn't not investigate the question of what the case would be if petroleum fuels were substantially replaced by ethanol.

The Brazilian experiment

In Brazil, ethanol is produced from sugar cane which is a more efficient source of fermentable carbohydrates than corn as well as much easier to grow and process. Brazil has the largest sugarcane crop in the world, which, besides ethanol, also yields sugar, electricity, and industrial heating. Sugar cane growing requires little labor, and government tax and pricing policies have made ethanol production a very lucrative business for big farms. As a consequence, over the last 25 years sugarcane has become one of the main crops grown in the country.

Ethanol production basics

Sugarcane is harvested manually or mechanically and shipped to the distillery (usina) in huge specially built trucks. There are several hundred distilleries throughout the country; they are typically owned and run by big farms or farm consortia and located near the producing fields. At the mill the cane is roller-pressed to extract the juice (garapa), leaving behind a fibrous residue (bagasse). The juice is fermented by yeasts which break down the sucrose into CO2 and ethanol. The resulting "wine" is distilled, yielding hydrated ethanol (5% water by volume) and "fusel oil". The acidic residue of the distillation (vinhoto) is neutralized with lime and sold as fertilizer. The hydrated ethanol may be sold as is (for ethanol cars) or be dehydrated and used as a gasoline additive (for gasohol cars). In either case, the bulk product was sold until 1996 at regulated prices to the state oil company (Petrobras). Today it is not regulated anymore.

One ton (1,000 kg) of harvested sugarcane, as shipped to the processing plant, contains about 145 kg of dry fiber (bagasse) and 138 kg of sucrose. Of that, 112 kg can be extracted as sugar, leaving 23 kg in low-valued molasses. If the cane is processed for alcohol, all the sucrose is used, yielding 72 liters of ethanol. Burning the bagasse produces heat for distillation and drying, and (through low-pressure boilers and turbines) about 80 kWh of electricity, of which 50 kWh is used by the plant itself and 30 kWh sold to utilities.

The average cost of production, including farming, transportation and distribution, is US$ 0.63 per gallon; gasoline prices in the world market is about US$ 1.05 per gallon. The alcohol industry, entirely private, was invested heavily in crop improvement and agricultural techniques. As a result, average yearly ethanol yield increased steadily from 3,000 to 5,500 liter/hectare (0.30 to 0.55 liter/m2) between 1978 and 2000, or about 3.5% per year.

Electricity from bagasse

Sucrose accounts for little more than 30% of the chemical energy stored in the mature plant; 35% is in the leaves and stem tips, which are left in the fields during harvest, and 35% are in the fibrous material (bagasse) left over from pressing.

Part of the bagasse is currently burned at the mill to provide heat for distillation and electricity to run the machinery. This allows ethanol plants to be energetically self-sufficient and even sell surplus electricity to utilities; current production is 600 MW for self-use and 100 MW for sale. This secondary activity is expected to boom now that utilities have been convinced to pay fair price (about US$ 30-40/MWh) for 10 year contracts. The energy is especially valuable to utilities because it is produced mainly in the dry season when hydroelectric dams are running low. Estimates of potential power generation from bagasse range from 1,000 to 9,000 MW, depending on technology. Higher estimates assume gasification of biomass, replacement of current low-pressure steam boilers and turbines by high-pressure ones, and use of harvest trash currently left behind in the fields. For comparison, Brazil's Angra I nuclear plant generates 600 MW (and it is often off line).

Presently, it is economically viable to extract about 80 kWh of electricity from the residues of one ton of sugarcane, of which about 50 kWh are used in the plant itself. Thus a medium-size distillery processing 1 million tons of sugarcane per year could sell about 5MW of surplus electricity. At current prices, it would earn US$ 18 million from sugar and ethanol sales, and about US$ 1 million from surplus electricity sales. With advanced boiler and turbine technology, the electricity yield could be increased to 180 kWh per ton of sugarcane, but current electricity prices do not justify the necessary investment. (According to one report, the World bank would only finance investments in bagasse power generation if the price were at least US$ 70/MWh.)

Bagasse burning is environmentally friendly compared to other fuels like oil and coal. Its ash content is only 2.5% (against 30-50% of coal), and it contains no sulfur. Since it burns at relatively low temperatures, it produces little nitrous oxides. Moreover, bagasse is being sold for use as a fuel (replacing heavy fuel oil) in various industries, including citrus juice concentrate, vegetable oil, ceramics, and tyre recycling. The state of São Paulo alone used 2 million tons, saving about US$ 35 million in fuel oil imports.

Program statistics

Except where noted, the following data apply to the 2003/2004 season.

land use: 4.5 million hectares = 45,000 km2 in 2000

labor: 1 million jobs (50% farming, 50% processing)

sugarcane: 344 million metric tons (50-50 for sugar and alcohol)

sugar: 23 million tons (30% is exported)

ethanol: 14 billion liters = 14 million m3 (7.5 anhydrous, 6.5 hydrated; 2.4% is exported)

dry bagasse: 50 million tons

electricity: 1350 MW (1200 for self use, 150 sold to utilities) in 2001

The labor figures are industry estimates, and do not take into account the loss of jobs due to replacement of other crops by sugarcane.

Effect on oil consumption

Most cars in Brazil run either on alcohol or on gasohol; only recently dual-fuel ("Flex Fuel") engines have become available. Most gas stations sell both fuels. The market share of the two car types has varied a lot over the last decades, in response to fuel price changes. Ethanol-only cars were sold in Brazil in significant numbers between 1980 and 1995; between 1983 and 1988, they accounted for over 90% of the sales. They have been available again since 2001, but still account for only a few percent of the total sales.

Ethanol-fueled small planes for farm use have been developed by giant Embraer and by a small Brazilian firm (Aeroálcool), and are currently undergoing certification.

Domestic demand for alcohol has grown from 4 to 12 billion liters between 1982 and 1998, and has remained roughly constant since then. In 1989 more than 90% of the production was used by ethanol-only cars; today that percentage has fallen to about 40%, the remaining 60% being used with gasoline in gasohol-only cars. Both the total consumption of ethanol and the ethanol/gasohol ratio are expected to increase again with deployment of dual-fuel cars.

Presently the use of ethanol as fuel by Brazilian cars - as pure ethanol and in gasohol - replaces about 10 billion liters of gasoline per year, or about 40% of the fuel that would be needed to run the fleet on gasoline alone. However, the effect on the country's oil consumption was much smaller than that. Although Brazil is a major oil producer and now exports gasoline (7 billion liters/year), it still must import oil because of internal demand for other oil byproducts, chiefly diesel fuel (which cannot be easily replaced by ethanol).

Environmental effect

The improvement the air quality in big cities in the 1980s, following the widespread use of ethanol as car fuel, was evident to everyone; as was the degradation that followed the partial return to gasoline in the 1990s.

However, the ethanol program also brought a host of environmental and social problems of its own. Sugarcane fields are traditionally burned just before harvest, in order to remove the leaves and kill snakes. Therefore, in sugarcane-growing parts of the country, the smoke from burning fields turns the sky gray throughout the harvesting season. As winds carry the smoke into nearby towns, air pollution goes critical and respiratory problems soar. Thus, the air pollution which was removed from big cities was merely transferred to the rural areas (and multiplied). This practice has been decreasing of late, due to pressure from the public and health authorities; but the powerful sugarcane growers' lobby has managed to prevent a total ban.

Many nations have produced alchohol fuel with no destruction to the environment. Advancements in fertilizers and natural pesticides have eliminated the need to burn fields. With condensed agriculture, like hydroponics and greenhouses, less land is used to grow more crops. Now it is possible to grow crops in the desert and other unarable lands, where there are much fewer native plants and animals to disturb.

Social implications

The ethanol program also led to widespread replacement of small farms and varied agriculture by vast seas of sugarcane monoculture. This led to a decrease in biodiversity and further shrinkage of the residual native forests (not only from deforestation but also through fires caused by the burning of adjoining fields). The replacement of food crops by the more lucrative sugarcane has also led to a sharp increase in food prices over the last decade.

Since sugarcane only requires hand labor at harvest time, this shift also created a large population of destitute migrant workers who can only find temporary employment as cane cutters (at about US$3–5 per day) for one or two months every year. This huge social problem has contributed to political unrest and violence in rural areas, which are now plagued by recurrent farm invasions, vandalism, armed confrontations, and assassinations.

Politics

The Brazilian alcohol program has been often criticized for many motives, including excessive land use, environmental damage, displacement of food crops, reliance on misery-wage temporary labor, statism and dependency on government subsidies, etc..

Until 1996, the brazilian oil company (Petrobras) was forced to buy ethanol from the private distilleries and sell it to gas station chains, both as pure (hydrated) ethanol and gasohol. Nowadays Petrobras only buy ethanol as a anti-knocking additive. However, for lack of internal demand, Petrobras is virtually forced to sell its surplus gasoline in the international market at a rather low price, US$ 0.13/liter. Since the domestic market price is about US$ 0.50/liter, Petrobras could increase its revenue by over 1 billion US$ per year if the ethanol program were cancelled. Petrobras also produces methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), a compound that could replace ethanol in gasohol as an anti-knocking and anti-pollution additive.

On the other hand, the sugarcane agribusiness sector is politically powerful and so far it has successfully defended the program from its critics. The positive effect of the program on Brazil's overstrained foreign trade speaks louder than all its environmental and social problems.

5. ibid

6. http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/9o.html

PhysicalGeography.net | FUNDAMENTALS OF PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

CHAPTER 9: Introduction to the Biosphere

(o). Trophic Pyramids and Food Webs

So far we have described food chains as morphological systems of energy flow. The energy flow within food chains can also be described in more quantitative terms. Several different quantitative models are commonly seen in the academic literature. One of these models, called a pyramid of biomass, quantifies all of the living biomass found in each of the trophic levels. Biomass can be defined as the weight of living matter (usually measured in dry weight per unit area). Figure 9o-1 describes the pyramid of biomass for an aquatic community living in a shallow experimental pond.

Figure 9o-1: Pyramid of biomass for a pond. (Source: Data from Whittaker, R.H. 1961. Experiments with radiophosphorus tracer in aquarium microcosms. Ecological Monographs 31:157-188).

In most ecosystems, the amount of biomass found in each trophic level decreases progressively as one moves from the beginning to the end of the grazing food chain. As described in previous sections, primary producers or plants are the original source of fixed organic energy in ecosystems. The energy that plants fix supports the life found in all other trophic levels. However, only the primary consumers or herbivores directly feed on the primary producers.

The amount of organic energy incorporated into the biomass of the primary consumers is significantly smaller than the amount found in the primary producer level. Theoretically, herbivores could consume all available plant life within an ecosystem. However, in reality this rarely occurs because plants have developed, through evolution, a number of mechanisms that protect most of their tissues from consumption. As a result, herbivores can only consume a portion of the available plant biomass. All that is consumed does not become herbivore biomass. Significant losses of biomass occur because of digestive inefficiencies and respiration. Assimilation efficiencies for most terrestrial herbivores range from 20 to 60 percent. Some of the assimilated biomass is lost through the process of respiration.

The next level in the pyramid of biomass is the secondary consumers or primary carnivores. These organisms harvest a portion of the herbivore biomass for their nutrition. Once again, not all herbivores are eaten because of defensive mechanisms. Most herbivores possess some evolutionary adaptation that generally protects them from carnivore attack. These adaptations include the ability to fly and run, body armor, quills and protective spines, and camouflage. In general, carnivores have higher assimilation efficiencies than herbivores. Their assimilation efficiencies range from 50 to 90 percent. Only a portion of the assimilated organic energy becomes carnivore biomass because of the metabolic energy needs of body maintenance, growth, reproduction, and locomotion.

Many food chains have no more than four or five trophic levels. In the example above, the studied ecosystem had four. This final level is composed of the tertiary consumers who feed on the secondary consumers. The amount of biomass found in this trophic level is very small relative to the other levels. This is to be expected because of the processes, as described above, that cause continuously less energy to be available to successive consumers.

Trophic pyramids have also been constructed to show the transfer of energy in caloric terms and the number of organisms found in each trophic level.

A model describing the organisms found in a food chain is called a food web (Figure 9o-2). Food webs describe the complex patterns of energy flow in an ecosystem by modeling who consumes who. The illustration below describes a portion of the food web for a typical tidal marsh ecosystem located on the southern coast of British Columbia.

7. Martineau, Robert J., Novello , David P., The Clean Air Act Handbook , Chicago, Ill., American Bar Association, 2004

8. http://www.thesoydailyclub.com/BiodieselBiobased/biodieselbuses

12092003.asp

Community Buses to Burn the Bean

Bloomington, IN - December 5, 2003 - Bloomington is once again making news! That's because it is one of the first cities in the state to use environmentally friendly soy biodiesel within the community's three major transportation organizations. Several buses operated by the Monroe County School System, the Indiana University Transportation Department and the Bloomington Public Transportation Corporation will all begin "burnin' the bean" as early as this week.

Click on Picture to enlarge

Source: Indiana Soybean Board

"Bloomington is Burnin' the Bean and they have the bean graphics to prove it. Standing in front of one of the soy biodiesel-powered buses owned by Bloomington Public Transit are the following Indiana soybean farmers: Donald Reifel, Benton County; Jack Reed, Washington County; Mark Seib, Posey County; James and Janice Peterson, Monroe County; Bill Miller, Vigo County and Mike Sprinkle, Daviess County."

"We started burning B20 soy biodiesel in a few of our buses this year after studying the benefits of renewable fuels," says Monroe County Community School Corporation Transportation Director Mike Clark. "With as many miles as we cover in the county, that's a lot of beans. Initially, my goal is to support an alternative fuel that helps maintain cleaner air," says Clark. "But an additional concern was to lower the diesel exhaust levels inside the bus." Clark has attended workshops regarding alternative fuels, and is aware of the EPA standards and push for cleaner air mandates by 2007.

Biodiesel is a cleaner burning fuel than traditional petroleum diesel, with fewer emissions for the children riding the bus and fewer emissions released into the air. "This is a product that offers so many advantages," says Clark. "It works well, and the biodiesel we buy is made only from soybean oil. We have a lot of soybean-growing parents right here in the county. We're trying the fuel in several buses this year, with the goal of making a switch for all 128 of our buses in the future."

Jim Hosler, of the Indiana University Campus Bus Service is also adopting a B20 blend in several buses. The buses will be easily identified on campus, thanks to large placards announcing the "clean, green, powerful bean" powering each bus. "We're pleased to be running a fleet of newer model buses at I.U. which are already very efficient and built to meet lower emissions standards," he says. "By burning soy biodiesel in several of our older buses, we will be able to study the fuel's performance and also make a positive impact on campus. Air quality is always a concern, especially when we have so many students and residents living and traveling in such a compact geographic area."

Air quality concerns are shared by the city of Bloomington's Public Transportation General Manager Lew May. "We've explored a number of alternatives for Bloomington," says May, citing electric, electric/hybrid and compressed natural gas vehicles as examples. "We want to do what's right, but also what is responsible. Soy biodiesel required no investment in infrastructure or new equipment. We've adopted a B20 blend in several of our buses because it is an environmentally and financially sound alternative with great potential."

Clark, Hosler and May agree that the drivers behind the wheel of each soy-fueled bus can feel good about their ability to 'burn the bean.' "Once we got all the facts, this was not a hard decision to make. We're supporting local tax-paying soybean growers. We expect this clean-burning B20 fuel to be good for the environment. We also anticipate it will benefit the children on our buses. It is a positive step all the way around," concludes Clark.

"Biodiesel is a win-win situation," echoes James Peterson, a local director of the Indiana Soybean Growers Association. "The city, the university and our local schools are enjoying cleaner burning fuel, while Indiana farmers gain a new market for soybeans they produce."

"Bloomington is a progressive community, and the move to soy biodiesel is no exception," says White River Co-op Petroleum Manager Audrey Myers. White River Co-op is the local energy company that supplies the soy biodiesel to the three accounts. "According to the Central Indiana Clean Cities Alliance, biodiesel is the fastest growing alternative fuel in the nation," she continues. "White River Co-op is farmer-owned--we're committed to marketing high-quality, high-performing fuels for our customers. Soy biodiesel is good for agriculture, good for engines and good for the air." In common blending proportions, Myers notes users notice no difference in power or performance. Biodiesel has been proven to run well in all diesel engines and requires no modifications whatsoever. It can be used year-round in all weather conditions, and does not void any engine warranty.

Co-op soy biodiesel is marketed through a network of member cooperatives and almost two dozen retail outlets in the state. As consumer awareness grows, so does the number of outlets marketing this environmentally friendly alternative fuel.

"We have a strong community commitment here in this county," says Myers. "From the School Board to the campus leadership to our community's officials, everyone is looking out for the best interests of riders and residents with this decision. It is clearly a better choice, and I'm glad the Co-op could be the first to help Bloomington start burnin' the bean. I expect them to be burning it for years to come."

Belinda Puetz

Communication Programs Manager

Indiana Soybean Board/Indiana Soybean Growers Association

5757 W. 74th St.

Indianapolis IN 46278

Phone: 317-347-3620

Fax: 317-347-3626

Website: www.indianasoybeanboard.com

9. http://www.americancapital.com/news/press_releases

/pr/pr.cfm?p_pr=pr20040624a.html

American Capital

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 24, 2004

Contact:

Jeff MacDowell, Principal (214) 273-6633

Brian Maney, Director, Corporate Communications (301) 951-6122

VALLEY PROTEINS: TOP RENDERER

By Maureen Flanagan

Valley Proteins, Inc. is one of the largest independent recyclers and renderers of food processing by-products in the U.S. Headquartered in Winchester, Virginia, the company was founded in 1949 by Clyde Smith, the grandfather of the current owners. Over the past 55 years, three generations of the Smith family have developed the business by organic expansion and acquisitions with operations that extend from the East to South Central states.

In a June 24, 2004 transaction, Valley Proteins refinanced the company's debt to further strengthen its balance sheet. In support of the refinancing, American Capital Strategies, Ltd. (Nasdaq: ACAS) provided $10 million of subordinated debt financing. US Bank NA provided a revolving credit facility and senior term loan.

Rendering is the process of collecting inedible animal by-products and recycling them for sale to producers of livestock feed and pet foods. The company employs a fleet of some 450 trucks to collect raw materials, including by-products, used restaurant grease and dead animal stock, from over 40,000 suppliers that range from small restaurants, butcher shops and grocery stores to the world's largest poultry and meat processors. These food purveyors rely on the company to dispose of their by-products in compliance with strict federal and state regulations governing meat processing and waste disposal. A renderer can also reduce the risk of environmental contamination as well as enable processors to generate incremental income by selling unwanted scraps.

Valley Proteins turns the raw materials it collects into commodity goods which are sold to over 170 customers that include producers of livestock feed ("feed mills"), pet food and refiners of fatty chemicals. The company's finished products are quoted on established commodity markets or priced relative to substitute commodities. The primary finished goods include fat and protein products, which are used in hundreds of commercial applications. Fat products are sold predominately to commercial animal feed manufacturers and to manufacturers of pet foods, fatty acids, chemicals and lubricants. The products are also used as an ingredient in bio-diesel (a blend of petroleum fuel and methyl esters derived from animal fats or vegetable oils), a cleaner burning substitute for diesel fuel. The company in fact has modified its own boiler equipment to use the lower priced fats it produces in its rendering plants and thereby minimize boiler fuel expense.

The company's protein products are used in commercial animal feeds and pet food as a concentrated source of protein. These products include meat and bone meal, poultry meal, feather meal and various blends thereof.

Valley Proteins also provides services including grease trap disposal, cooking oil disposal (which the company subsequently renders into fat), dead stock removal (rendered as well), and other services. The company operates a fleet of specially equipped vehicles to pump waste from the grease traps that are part of many suppliers' waste water processing equipment. The company operates 20 facilities, including rendering plants, pet food product plants, grease processing plants and transfer stations, in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico.

Since 1997, American Capital has invested more than $2.7 billion in middle-market companies. For more information about American Capital's portfolio click here.

Valley Proteins' revenues are directly correlated to chicken and turkey consumption since 63% of the company's raw material purchases are poultry. Since 1980, U.S. chicken and turkey consumption has grown at an annual rate of 2.2% and 2.5% respectively, while beef and pork consumption slightly decreased during the same period.

The company's collection services are also increasingly important. Industry demand for restaurant collection services, particularly grease trap and cooking oil, has been on the upswing as a result of the growth of the U.S. population and desires of large restaurant chains to consolidate vendors. State and federal regulations that require rendering of certain animal parts also contribute to the company's volume.

As a top renderer of food by-products, Valley Proteins has a well-established infrastructure, market position, and customer rapport to serve the growing industry needs for fast, efficient and environmentally friendly disposal of food by-products.

10. Personal Commuication with Valley Proteins, See also Render Magazine

11. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/usa.html

Consumption

The United States consumed an average of about 20.4 million bbl/d of oil during the first ten months of 2004, up from 20.0 million bbl/d in 2003. Of this, motor gasoline consumption was 9.0 million bbl/d (or 44% of the total), distillate fuel oil consumption was 4.1 million bbl/d (20%), jet fuel consumption was 1.6 million bbl/d (8%), and residual fuel oil consumption was 0.8 million bbl/d (4%)l. Total 2005 petroleum demand is projected to grow by just 1.4% (280,000 bbl/d), to an average 20.7 million bbl/d, in response to the combined effects of somewhat slower economic growth and relatively high crude oil and product prices. All the major products (except residual fuel oil) are expected to contribute to this growth. Motor gasoline demand is projected to increase 1.8%, to 9.22 million bbl/d. Jet fuel demand is projected to post a growth rate of 3.1% in 2005 to average 1.67 million barrels per day, still below 2000 jet fuel consumption but sharply up from post-9/11 lows it reached in 2002 and 2003. Distillate demand in 2005 is projected to grow only 1.5% year-over-year as industrial growth slows. Demand for residual fuel oil is projected to remain about flat in 2005.

http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Energy

Oil consumption: 19.7 million barrels per day (2002E)

(per capita): 67.85 barrels per day per 1000 people

12. Personal Commuication with Valley Proteins, See also Render Magazine

13. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/datatables/table10.html

table not duplicatable in text form

14. Brown, Lester, State of the World 1993, Norton, NY, 1993, p.12

15. Brown, ibid., p.13

16. Gardner, Gary, Shrinking Fields, Cropland Loss in a World of Eight Billion, WorldWatch Paper 131, WorldWatch Insitute, 1996, p. 20

17. Grist Magazine, February 10, 2006, also see US Department of Agriculture Research Service, http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FATUS/monthlysummary.htm

18. http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2004/02/09/you/

How Low-Carb Should You Go?

Low-carb diets have a high impact on the planet

By Stan Cox, Marty Bender

09 Feb 2004

Lose That Extra Weight ... While Eating the Foods You Love!"

Pleased to meat you.

For decades, such headlines were fixtures of supermarket checkout lanes, to be taken no more seriously than claims of alien abduction. But times have changed. High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets have become wildly popular because they help adherents lose dozens of pounds without having to gnaw on rice cakes.

It seems too good to be true, and some critics say it is. The debate over the long-term health effects of Atkins and similar weight-loss plans might grind on for years with no satisfactory conclusion. But whenever we're faced with a fast-growing trend on this shrinking planet, scientists should look beyond human health to weigh ecological consequences as well. That's what we decided to do for Atkins-style diets.

We started with the Worldwatch Institute's estimate that 1 billion of Earth's inhabitants are overweight and assumed that on average they eat 56 grams of animal protein a day. That is the average in Western countries, and most overweight people eat Western diets.

If all of those people went on an Atkins-style diet, their requirement for animal protein would rise to about 100 grams. A billion dieters each eating an extra 44 grams could not easily be satisfied by giving them a bigger share of current animal protein production. As it is, humans worldwide average only 28 grams per day. Instead, by our calculations, the meat, dairy, poultry, and seafood industries would have to increase output by 25 percent.

Don't get caught bread-handed.

The dieters would no longer get much of their protein from plant sources (grains being too heavily "polluted" with carbohydrates), so less cropland would be required for that. Still, the net result of their big switch to animal protein would require almost 250 million more acres for corn, soybeans, and other feed grains. That's because feeding grain to animals and then eating the resultant meat, milk, eggs, or farm-raised fish is much less efficient than eating plant products directly. (Cattle in particular are good at converting grain into wastes like carbon dioxide, methane, and manure. With worldwide per capita grain production in decline since the 1980s, that bovine talent is less well appreciated by the planet's hungrier people.)

Finding a quarter-billion acres for adequate feed grain harvests would mean at least a 7 percent increase in cropland worldwide at a time when farmers are already using most of the better land. Much of the newly plowed acreage would likely be marginal, prone to greater erosion, and subject to extra generous applications of fertilizer and pesticides.

Furthermore, feeding that grain to all those extra animals would lead to greater air and water pollution from feedlots, poultry and hog confinement operations, and slaughterhouses. Trying to spare the land and squeeze more protein from the already-overfished oceans would likely be even more damaging.

No ruminant at the inn.

Photo: USDA.

And that's not all. Cattle and other ruminant animals, whose numbers would have to rise by 25 percent to supply our dieters, get a large share of their food from pasture and rangeland. If most of the additional animals were raised on current range and pasture that are already fully stocked, the result would be overgrazing and degradation. If new pastures were to be created for, say, half of the additional animals, a billion more acres would have to be found. Most of this would probably be obtained by deforestation, which could mean that 10 percent of the Earth's remaining forests would have to go.

It's unlikely that all 1 billion of the world's overweight people will have the desire or the means to make the move to expensive animal-based food. Nevertheless, the kind of ecological damage we have described will occur in direct proportion to the number of people who do adopt the diet.

It is possible, with considerable ingenuity and effort, to achieve the intake of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber recommended by Atkins while on a wholly vegetarian diet. But, for all but a very few dieters and tofu enthusiasts, meals consisting largely of vegetable protein would not mean "eating the foods you love." Without that enticement, the key to Atkins' popularity is missing.

So menus and grocery aisles will continue making room for more animal protein. Already, industry analysts are giving much of the credit for sharply higher beef and egg prices to high-protein, low-carb dieters. Stepped-up production is sure to follow.

While it's true that overconsumption in the industrial West doesn't exactly qualify as "breaking news," we're now seeing a new twist to an old story. The obesity epidemic, caused largely by excess food consumption, has proven to be one of our society's most vexing problems. The diets now in vogue may be a breakthrough in addressing obesity, but their success entails even greater consumption of global resources.

19. http://www.heifer.org/Learn/World_Ark_Online/

Lester_Brown.shtml

The Global Food Gap: Overcoming Scarcity

By Lester R. Brown

One of the remarkable achievements of the 20th

A woman in Ileb, Philippines, removes grains of rice from plants in preparation for dinner.

© Heifer International

century was the near tripling of the world grain harvest between 1950 and 1996, an achievement that not only fed people throughout the world but allowed their numbers to grow.

Environmental trends now threaten that achievement, making it much harder for farmers to feed the Earth's increasing population. A frightening gap between consumption and production has developed.

Falling grain stocks and rising grain prices may signal a new era in the world food economy, one dominated not by surpluses but by scarcity. If stocks fall farther, as is likely, dropping far lower than at any time in modern history, the world will move into uncharted territory.

China, the most populous nation, so far has been able to feed its people by drawing on its grain stocks. These stocks are nearly depleted, and the country is starting to look abroad. China may soon need to import up to 50 million tons of grain a year. Such demand could overload world grain markets—creating major problems for the United States, which controls nearly half the world's grain exports, as well as for the rest of the world.

This potential era of food scarcity forces us to answer two questions: How did this happen and what can we do?

Production Falling Short

Farmers have long had to cope with the cumulative effects of soil erosion, the loss of cropland to non-farm uses and the encroachment of deserts on cropland. But now they also are facing two dangerous new trends: falling water tables and rising temperatures. These converging conditions have taken a toll on food production.

World grain production did not increase at all during the seven years following 1996. Instead it fell behind the growth in consumption, generating progressively larger shortfalls. The harvest shortfalls of 89 million tons in 2002 and 94 million tons in 2003 are the largest on record. Four consecutive shortfalls have dropped world grain reserves to their lowest level in 30 years.

In early 2004, wheat and corn prices climbed to seven-year highs.

Early estimates put the 2004 crop, boosted by near-ideal weather and stronger grain prices, at 1,962 million tons. If this estimate holds, the world won't have to draw on its grain stocks for the first time in five years. But even this exceptional harvest won't rebuild grain stocks. They'll remain at a dangerously low level in the event of a shortfall in 2005.

Historically, when world food supplies tightened, rising prices prompted farmers to apply more fertilizer, drill more irrigation wells and clear more land. But today many of these actions are no longer options. Applying more fertilizer to crops today in the United States, Western Europe, Japan or China has little effect on production. Similarly, drilling more irrigation wells may just accelerate aquifer depletion.

Elsewhere, once-vast frontiers of agricultural settlement have disappeared. The age-old approach of clearing more land to boost production is now limited to a few countries such as Brazil, and even there it carries a heavy price—the irreversible loss of biological diversity. Farmers no doubt will seek to increase production in response to the probability of much higher prices, but they're not likely to be as successful this time.

20. Pimentel, David, Food, Energy, And Society, University Press of Colorado, 1996

21. http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug01/corn-based ethanol.hrs.html, see also energyjustice.net and www.energyjustice.net/ethanol/pimentel2001.pdf

(pdf file not duplicated here, its very long)

Ethanol fuel from corn faulted as 'unsustainable subsidized food burning' in analysis by Cornell scientist

FOR RELEASE: Aug. 6, 2001

Contact: Roger Segelken

Office: 607-255-9736

E-Mail: hrs2@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what one Cornell University agricultural scientist calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces.

At a time when ethanol-gasoline mixtures (gasohol) are touted as the American answer to fossil fuel shortages by corn producers, food processors and some lawmakers, Cornell's David Pimentel takes a longer range view.

"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning," says the Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Pimentel, who chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, subsequently conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car fuel process. His findings will be published in September, 2001 in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology .

Among his findings are:

o An acre of U.S. corn yields about 7,110 pounds of corn for processing into 328 gallons of ethanol. But planting, growing and harvesting that much corn requires about 140 gallons of fossil fuels and costs $347 per acre, according to Pimentel's analysis. Thus, even before corn is converted to ethanol, the feedstock costs $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

o The energy economics get worse at the processing plants, where the grain is crushed and fermented. As many as three distillation steps are needed to separate the 8 percent ethanol from the 92 percent water. Additional treatment and energy are required to produce the 99.8 percent pure ethanol for mixing with gasoline. o Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU. "Put another way," Pimentel says, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."

o Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. "That helps explain why fossil fuels -- not ethanol -- are used to produce ethanol," Pimentel says. "The growers and processors can't afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn't afford it, either, if it weren't for government subsidies to artificially lower the price."

o Most economic analyses of corn-to-ethanol production overlook the costs of environmental damages, which Pimentel says should add another 23 cents per gallon. "Corn production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water. The environmental system in which corn is being produced is being rapidly degraded. Corn should not be considered a renewable resource for ethanol energy production, especially when human food is being converted into ethanol."

o The approximately $1 billion a year in current federal and state subsidies (mainly to large corporations) for ethanol production are not the only costs to consumers, the Cornell scientist observes. Subsidized corn results in higher prices for meat, milk and eggs because about 70 percent of corn grain is fed to livestock and poultry in the United States Increasing ethanol production would further inflate corn prices, Pimentel says, noting: "In addition to paying tax dollars for ethanol subsidies, consumers would be paying significantly higher food prices in the marketplace."

Nickels and dimes aside, some drivers still would rather see their cars fueled by farms in the Midwest than by oil wells in the Middle East, Pimentel acknowledges, so he calculated the amount of corn needed to power an automobile:

o The average U.S. automobile, traveling 10,000 miles a year on pure ethanol (not a gasoline-ethanol mix) would need about 852 gallons of the corn-based fuel. This would take 11 acres to grow, based on net ethanol production. This is the same amount of cropland required to feed seven Americans.

o If all the automobiles in the United States were fueled with 100 percent ethanol, a total of about 97 percent of U.S. land area would be needed to grow the corn feedstock. Corn would cover nearly the total land area of the United States.

22. http://www.biodiesel.org/news/taxincentive/

Tax Incentive

President George W. Bush signed into law a bill containing the first biodiesel tax incentive, a provision that is expected to increase domestic energy security, reduce pollution and stimulate the economy. The American Soybean Association (ASA), the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) and biodiesel enthusiasts commended Washington leaders for passing the biodiesel tax incentive and extending the ethanol tax incentive as part of H.R. 4520, also known as the American JOBS Creation Act of 2004.

"This tax incentive generated strong bi-partisan support because it truly is a win for all Americans," said NBB chairman and ASA first vice president Bob Metz of South Dakota. "Our nation has a direct interest in taking steps to promote renewable fuels, like ethanol and biodiesel, which lessen our dependence on foreign oil. Biodiesel has many benefits that are important to all citizens. It reduces emissions that are harmful to human health and the environment, it's nontoxic and biodegradable, and its increased production will create jobs."

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Congressman Kenny Hulshof (R-MO) and others championed the tax incentive.

23. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6826994/ see also http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66288,00.html

Willie Nelson's new gig: Biodiesel

Singer starts business that aims to get truckers on board

By Matt Curry

The Associated Press

Updated: 3:57 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2005

DALLAS - "On the Road Again" means something new for Willie Nelson these days — a chance for truckers to fill their tanks with clean-burning biodiesel fuel.

Nelson and three business partners recently formed a company called Willie Nelson's Biodiesel that is marketing the fuel to truck stops. The fuel, called BioWillie, is made from vegetable oils, mainly soybeans, and can be burned without modification to diesel engines.

It may be difficult to picture the 71-year-old hair-braided Texas rebel as an energy company executive, but the singer's new gig is in many ways about social responsibility — and that is classic Nelson.

"There is really no need going around starting wars over oil. We have it here at home. We have the necessary product, the farmers can grow it," said Nelson, who organized Farm Aid two decades ago to draw attention to the plight of American agriculture.

Nelson said he began learning about the product a few years ago after his wife purchased a biodiesel-burning car in Hawaii, where the star has a home.

"I got on the computer and punched in biodiesel and found out this could be the future," said Nelson, who now uses the fuel for his cars and tour buses.

Partnership at the pump

Peter Bell, a Texas biodiesel supplier, struck up a friendship with Nelson after filling up one of the tour buses, and the business partnership came together just before Christmas.

Donna Mcwilliam / AP

Peter Bell, seen here at a Fort Worth biodiesel station, is one of Willie Nelson's biodiesel business partners.

Bell said Nelson's name will help the largely unknown fuel — typically purchased by government agencies to promote environmental awareness — gain wider national acceptance. The fuel's average U.S. price per gallon is $1.79.

"What Willie brings to this is the ability to communicate directly with a truck driver. That kind of community is hard for people to get to," Bell said. "When he starts talking, these folks really listen to him. ... It's like having Tiger Woods talk about golf clubs."

Still, a driver can cover many miles without spotting a biodiesel pump. A map on the National Biodiesel Board's Web site shows a heavy concentration of distributors in the Midwest, but very few in other parts of the country.

Potential and obstacles

Nelson's group is currently negotiating with Oklahoma City-based Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores to carry the fuel at its 169 locations nationwide.

Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, expects commercial expansion for biodiesel, but says that supplies are still limited and that making the fuel available in northern states is a challenge.

"For terminals to store biodiesel, they have to store it in heated tanks to avoid gelling problems. That's a challenge for the industry to overcome," he said.

Background on Willie Nelson's Biodiesel is online at www.wnbiodiesel.com.

24. http://www.unu.edu/unupress/food/8F044e/8F044E05.htm

Food trade: the poor feed the rich

George Kent

Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii, and Environment and Policy Institute, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

THE BREADBASKET MYTH

The United Nations' Development Forum recently spoke of "how dependent other countries are on US output, which furnishes three-quarters of their imports" (1). Similarly, the Brandt Commission was concerned with the fact that developing countries have rapidly increased their imports of cereals (2, p. 91). The United States Presidential Commission on World Hunger pointed out, "Third World imports of food from the United States rose from $2 billion to almost $10 billion during the past decade," adding that "the United States is still the 'breadbasket of the world,' providing over half of all the grain imported by other nations . . . " (3, p. 7). The Global 2000 Report to the President describes the world food situation primarily in terms of grain production and trade (4). Key data of the report are shown in table 1. The industrialized countries are shown to be enormous producers of grain, while the less-developed countries are importers.

The impression conveyed is that the developed countries- and particularly the United States- feed the world, especially the hungry of the world. There is little examination of the pattern of distribution of grain exports. More seriously, there is no notice of the substantial imports of food into developed nations.

Most of the grain sold by developed countries is sold to other developed countries:

Over half of all US agricultural exports in 1978 went to the wealthy of the world's nations, those which, like the US, have an annual GNP per capita of over $7,000. If the line is drawn at the level of GNP per capita above $3,000, thus including such nations as Italy and the Soviet Union, over two-thirds of all US agricultural exports went to such well-fed nations. [5]

Only about one-fifth of the grain in international trade goes to less-developed countries. That proportion is projected to be even smaller by the year 2000.

The table in the Global 2000 study follows these data on grain with a column of data labelled "Food, per cent increase over the 1970-2000 period." This subtle shift, effectively equating grain with food in general, sustains the impression that the patterns of production and trade for grain correspond to those for food. Global 2000 and many other studies focus on grain as if it were representative of the entire picture of food trade. ls grain typical?

TABLE 1. Grain Production, Consumption, and Trade (kilograms per capita)

Actual

1969-1971 Projected

2000

Industrialized countries

Production 573.6 769.8

Consumption 534.4 692.4

Trade. +45.8 +77.4

United States

Production 1,018.6 1,640.3

Consumption 824.9 1,111.5

Trade* +194.7 +528.8

Less-developed countries

Production 176.7 197.1

Consumption 188.3 205.5

Trade. - 10.7 - 8.4

World

Production/consumption 311.5 343.2

Source: ref. 4, pp. 28-31.

*A plus sign indicates exports; a minus sign, imports.

PROTEIN FLOWS

As Georg Borgstrom has argued, the trade pattern for grain is really exceptional:

Outside the area of cereal grains most food and feed on the world market move between the well fed and, still more surprisingly, from the hungry to the rich countries. This is particularly conspicuous in regard to protein, with the well-fed countries on balance making a net gain exceeding one million tons. [6, p. 242]

There is some dispute about the relative importance of proteins versus calories in malnutrition (7, 8) There is a broad consensus, however, that where there are severe shortages, the most serious problem is in obtaining sufficient protein. While there may be a net flow of grains to the most needy countries, the flow of animal protein foods such as meat and fish is actually in the opposite direction. Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins make this point:

While we think of America as the world's beef capital, the United States is in reality the world's leading beef importer. In 1973 the United States imported almost two billion pounds of meat. Often it is stressed that this is but a small amount since it represents only about 7 per cent of our own production. The amount, however, is hardly small in relation to the needs of most other countries. In international trade more meat flows from underdeveloped to industrial countries than the other way around. [9, pp. 214215]

The United States regularly imports far more meat than it exports. As table 2 shows, in 1977 the United States exported US$608 million worth of meat, but imported US$1,289 million worth. Whether measured in terms of value or quantity, the amount imported greatly exceeds the amount exported. Much of that imported meat comes from poor countries.

The fact that the United States has consistently been a major net importer of meat may be surprising to those who see it as a major producer of meat and assume that other nations either produce or import their meat supplies. The situation is actually something like that for oil: the United States is both a major producer and a major importer. With the United States' extraordinarily high rates of consumption, it is not a matter of choosing between the two roles.

Vast quantities of Peruvian anchoveta have been shipped to developed countries for use as animal feed. Borgstrom assesses the phenomenon in this way:

No doubt everyone realizes how preposterous it is that the two most protein-needy continents, Africa and South America, are the main suppliers of the largest quantities of animal protein feed moving in the world trade- and they provide those who already have plenty.... The Peruvian catches alone would suffice to raise the nutritional standard with respect to protein for the undernourished on the entire South American continent to southern European level. The amount of protein extracted (1966-68) exceeds by one half the meat protein produced in South America and is three times the milk protein raise. The corresponding fish meal coming from Africa would be enough to reduce by at least 50 per cent the present protein shortage of that continent. [6, p. 237]

TABLE 2. US Meat Trade (Excluding Poultry), 1977

Quantity (weight

in millions

of pounds) Value

(millions

of US dollars)

Imports 1,725.0 1,289.1

Exports 921.4 608.5

Net imports 803.6 680.6

Source: ref. 10, pp. 2, 5,186, 267.

Similarly, a substantial part of the shrimp catch of India is not used to feed its own hungry, but is frozen by private enterprise for export to the United States and Western Europe.

It is sometimes suggested that, if anchoveta or shrimp or some other product were not exported, it would not be used at all and thus would be wasted. This argument fails to acknowledge that the raw resource is only one of many inputs. Export-oriented production often diverts labour, capital, and other resources away from production for local consumption. The point is certainly clear in the case of agricultural products. If, for example, coffee or banana exports were sharply reduced, the effort invested in their production would be reduced as well, and that effort could be reallocated to meeting local needs more directly.

Sometimes it is argued that certain products must be exported because local people have no taste for them. For example, it is said that Pacific islanders prefer imported canned mackerel to the tuna that is caught and canned on their own shores. There is some truth to this, but the argument is commonly overstated. The tuna sold in local markets in the Pacific islands is generally of the lowest grade- tuna flakes that would be sold as pet food in the United States- and it appears in the local markets at perhaps twice the price of mackerel. The higher grades of tuna are exported, not because there is no taste for them locally but because rich countries are able to pay more for them.

Producers' concentration on exports can help to raise incomes and can help to meet basic human needs. Much too frequently, however, the export orientation is harmful. The point is illustrated by a group of Indian fishers:

To add to our country's misery, the developed world is now making strident demands for our other varieties of fish, like sardines, tuna, mackerel and pomphrets which have also been promoted as delicacies in their countries. If this trend continues the Indian population will have to do without fish since the foreign buyers are ready to pay ten times the amount of money a poor Indian could hardly afford. Can we allow our fish which is our vital food resource to be exported at the cost of the protein-starved population of our country, even if the principle involved is the highly questionable foreign-exchange earnings? [11]

Let us examine the trade in fisheries products in detail. The dollar values of US fisheries imports and exports, including both edible and non-edible products, have increased greatly over the past 50 years (12). This is partly the result of inflation. These effects are eliminated if we examine trade in terms of quantities rather than values. The figures for imports and exports of fish by weight for edible fish alone, not non-edible fish products, show very clearly that imports have greatly exceeded exports, both by value and by weight, in every year since 1929 (12). The United States imports more fish than meat. Overall, "the United States alone imports about twice as much fish, primarily in the form of feed for livestock, as do all the poor countries combined" (13, p. 8).

As Lappé and Collins point out, meat imports account for a relatively small share of US meat supplies. Fish imports, however, constitute a large and steadily increasing share of US fish supplies. The increasing dependency of the United States on imported fish is demonstrated in table 3. As these data show, imports as share of catch rose from less than 20 per cent of the US catch in the 1950s to more than 40 per cent in the 1970s.

The shares accounted for by imports are even larger if the imports of non-edible fishery products are included as well. The determination of what is edible is not a simple technical question. Products regarded as non-edible when they reach developed countries, and thus relegated to use as feed and fertilizer, frequently are regarded as edible at the point of origin. A case from Africa illustrates the point:

In Senegal . . . there exists a factory for the production of fish meal.... This factory, Sopesine, owned by two French companies . . . treats 2800 tonnes of sardines each year (fish fit for human consumption) in order to produce 5000 tonnes of fish meal and oil.

Ninety-five percent of the fish meal is destined for consumption by French livestock.... One hundred kilometers from [the landing area], peasants don't eat fish because it is not available or it is too expensive. [[16]

Products that may be regarded as substantial food resources from the point of view of the poor may be used as livestock feed for the rich, or to feed their pets:

. . . a cheap Moroccan canned fish, developed for the Middle East markets, primarily Egypt, brought a higher price when sold to the United States as cat food. One-third of the canned fish of the United States is in effect pet food. An equally large portion of the British output of canned fish is devoted to the same purpose. In most instances this constitutes food which would be very much in demand if offered to the protein-needy and malnourished around the globe. [6, pp. 229-230]

TABLE 3. United States Fish Supply (weight in billions of pounds)

Catch Imports Imports as Share

of Catch (%)

1950 4.85 0.64 13.2

1951 4.41 0.65 14.7

1952 4.41 0.71 16.1

1953 4.41 0.73 16.6

1954 4.85 0.80 16.5

1955 4.48 0.78 17.4

1956 5.29 0.80 15.1

1957 4.85 0.90 18.6

1958 4.85 1.02 21.0

1959 5.07 1.14 22.5

1960 4.85 1.10 22.7

1961 5.29 1.10 20.8

1962 5.29 1.26 23.8

1963 4.85 1.20 24.7

1964 4.63 1.32 28.5

1965 4.85 1.40 28.9

1966 4.19 1.60 38.2

1967 3.97 1.47 37.0

1968 4.19 1.74 41.5

1969 4.19 1.71 40.8

1970 4.85 1.87 38.6

1971 5.07 1.79 35.3

1972 4.85 2.34 48.2

1973 4.85 2.42 49.9

1974 5.07 2.27 44.8

1975 4.85 1.91 39.4

1976 5.29 2.23 42.2

1977 5.29 2.18 41.2

1978 5.95 2.40 40.3

Source: ref. 14, p. 24, and ref.15, p.8

The argument that the product is not suitable for direct human consumption has been used to defend the export of anchoveta from Latin America to Western Europe and Japan to feed pigs and poultry. Actually, there are indications that, instead of being converted to fish meal for animal feed, the anchoveta technically could be converted to fish protein concentrate for human consumption. Even if livestock feed were the only possible use for these sardines or anchoveta, there would still remain the question of why the feed should be consumed by livestock used by Europeans rather than by Africans or Latin Americans.

Despite its oceanic position, Hawaii imports about two-thirds of the fish it uses, from the mainland and from other countries. The chairman of the state's Board of Agriculture believes that "while the United States has been a large exporter of food, the world need for protein is already straining American resources" (17). Just the opposite is true. Hawaii, the rest of the United States, and other developed parts of the world place very substantial demands on the world's food system. The dollar value of United States imports in 1978 exceeded the value of exports not only overall, but also for each separate region of the world (18, p. 39).

Fish in the international market tend to flow from less-developed to more highly developed countries because most countries purchase their fish imports from countries that are poorer (in terms of gross national product per capita) than those to which they export their fish (19, pp. 8792).

Another indication that the flow tends to be from the poor to the rich is that, among the market economies of the world, the developed countries export around 70 per cent of simply preserved fish (e.g., frozen) but import 90 per cent of the total value of fish traded. Thus, fish continue to migrate after they are caught. They tend to go from the more needy to the less needy. One very clear illustration is that 56 million pounds of fish were exported from the famine-stricken Sahel region of Africa in 1971 alone. For many of these countries, fish is the major source of animal protein.

There is a widespread and very commonsensical view that countries export food only when, and only because, their domestic needs are satisfied. Although this seems logical, it is not true. Many nations are, in fact, organized to meet the needs of others before they meet those of their own people. India's economy is heavily oriented toward meeting the needs of outsiders. Despite its suffering very extensive hunger and malnutrition, India is a major exporter of food. It is not simply a net exporter. For all practical purposes, India does not import food at all. Thus, India itself demonstrates that the poor feed the rich.

Many poor countries export food despite their suffering serious malnutrition at home. In Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, seafood exports have expanded sharply while at the same time local consumption of this major protein source has declined. In Malaysia, the quantity of fish available per person in 1975 was 30 per cent lower than the 1967 level, despite the fact that the total catch increased substantially. Most of the increase in production has been exported. The situation in Thailand is similar:

In 1972, the total fish catch in Thailand was 1.55 million tons. It fell slightly in the next few years and returned to 1.6 million tons by 1977. Yet seafood exports boomed, though the local catch had barely changed in five years and the population had grown. [20].

Thailand is certainly not exporting only the surplus that remains after domestic needs are fulfilled; local consumption is sacrificed for exports.

A related "sensible" perception is that a country that exports a food product does not import it, since exporting it is a sign of domestic sufficiency. Thus, one observer could say, "In Indonesia, the imports [of fish] play a minor role, since the country is a net exporter" (21). In fact, many countries both import and export substantial quantities of fish and other foods. This may seem paradoxical, but the practice is actually quite reasonable. The explanation is based on product differentiation. Certain types are imported while others are exported. The major single differentiating characteristic is not taste or cultural preference but market value per unit of weight. Just as Indonesia exports high-value (low-sulphur) oil, while at the same time it imports lower-value oil for its own domestic consumption, so do many less-developed countries export fish of high market value and import varieties with low market value. The Pacific islands and the countries of South-East Asia demonstrate this pattern very clearly.

Often there is some compensation for increasing exports by increasing imports of food. Typically, however, the foreign exchange earned from food exports is not devoted to purchasing low cost, nutritious foods for the needy but is diverted to buying luxury foods and other products in demand by the local elite.

The export of food can lead to the deterioration of local nutrition in many ways. The most direct cause is that local productive resources are no longer used to meet local needs. Consider the case of Papua New Guinea:

While exports of the agricultural and fisheries sectors were increasing at a phenomenal pace- rising in value from approximately $A19.6m [19.6 million Australian dollars]in 1954-55 to $A143.5m in 1974-75- the production of food for the rapidly increasing domestic market virtually stagnated. Food imports into the economy rose from $A9.4m to $A71.5m during the same period. (Exports of food products increased from about $A17m to $A90.2m during the twenty-year period). [22, p. 42]

The mechanisms leading to the rapid rise of food imports into Papua New Guinea is illustrated by the introduction of coffee production into the Chimbu region of the highlands:

Increasing dependency in the Highlands as a whole is terribly clear. The windfall of high coffee prices today means that villagers are less willing and able to cultivate food and obliged to spend more on goods imported from abroad: in the words of Barry Holloway, then Speaker of the House of Assembly, in October 1976: "The people in most Highland areas have more than doubled their purchase of such items as beer, tinned fish, rice and frozen meats in the past three months." Consequently, some 30 percent of Highlands' children are malnourished and, in national terms (again Holloway's words), ". .. the amount of money going out of PNG on luxury and replaceable food items is reaching a peak far more beyond the point of necessity than ever before." The country's expenditures on imported foodstuffs rose from $8m in 1954 to some $23m in 1966, in which year it represented about 50 per cent of total export income. In 1973, however, food to the value of some $48m was imported. All these weak" nesses stem from the increasing concentration upon cash-crop production for export. [Ibid.,p. 120]

The situation is similar in Southeast Asia:

The fact that ASEAN countries are exporting increasingly more of their high quality food products which are still badly needed locally is a clear indication that foreign exchange is more important than local nutritional development The fertile valleys of Mindanao in the Southern Philippines, for example, are entirely devoted to banana and pineapple cultivation, which foreign multinationals process, pack and ship in refrigerated ships to Japan. None of it lands on the tables of the local population, which is among the poorest in Southeast Asia. Rejected bananas become cattle feed.

TABLE 4. United States Food Trade, 1977 (in millions of US dollars)

Imports Exports Net

Imports

Total agricultural products 14,163 24,826 - 10,663

Food and animals 10,389 14,087 - 3,698

live animals 253 139 + 114

meat, meat products 1,272 802 + 470

dairy products, eggs 229 184 +45

cereals, grain products 147 8,755 - 8,608

fruits, vegetables 1,594 1,673 - 79

sugar, honey 1,221 77, + 1,144

coffee, tea, spices 5,540 584 + 4,956

feedstuffs 65 1,545 - 1,480

miscellaneous 67 328 - 261

Beverages and tobacco 1,660 1,872 - 212

beverages 1,287 124 + 1,163

tobacco 373 1,748 - 1,375

Animal and vegetable oils 536 1,363 - 827

Fishery products 2,086 508 + 1,578

Source: ref. 24, p. 327.

In Indonesia, the EEC is interested in schemes to grow soyabeans on a large scale, not for protein-deficient Indonesians but for fattening European pigs and poultry. High quality fish, prawns and lobsters have been priced out of local markets because they are frozen and airfreighted to Japan and Europe.

What this has done is to create a vicious cycle of poverty High food prices arising from agricultural resources being siphoned off into export agribusiness undermine the already weak purchasing power of rural Asia.

25. http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/85/LA.html#Brazil

- Brazil: The "hamburger connection" threatens forests today just as it did yesterday

Between 1950 and 1975, the area of human-established pasture lands in Central America doubled, almost entirely at the expense of primary rainforests. The numbers of cattle also doubled, although the average beef consumption by Central American citizens dropped. Beef production was exported to markets in the United States and in other Northern countries.

Between 1966 and 1978 in Brazil 80,000 km2 of Amazon forests were destroyed to give way to 336 cattle ranches carrying 6 million head of cattle under the auspices of the Superintendency for Amazon Development (SUDAM).

Similar initiatives have been implemented in the Amazon territories of Colombia and Peru, although not on such a vast scale, promoted in some cases by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In every case, many ranches became unproductive within less than ten years, because productivity of artificial grasslands declines. However, very often the ranchers obtained another plot of forest to clear.

During the eighties, two factors led to increased exports of beef from the tropical region of Latin America with the consequent aftermath of accelerated deforestation of the Amazon. On the one hand, increased consumption of beef in the countries of the North (particularly for fast food chains in the United States) and on the other, lower prices of land and labour in the tropical countries of Latin America, making the final product cheaper. As an example, in 1978 the price of a kilo of beef imported from Latin America averaged US$1.47, compared to US$3.3 a kilo of beef produced in the United States. This direct relationship between the advance of cattle ranching and deforestation was called the "Hamburger connection."

At that time, Brazil was not a part of that "connection" because of its low rate of beef exports insofar as its production was mainly aimed at domestic consumption. However the country increased its heads of cattle from 26 million in 1990 to 57 million in 2002. The production was mainly concentrated in the States of Mato Grosso, Para and Rondonia –and over the same period, these states showed the highest rate of deforestation in the country. The new expansion of cattle ranching is not based in small or medium-sized farms but in large scale enterprises.

For decades the cattle production sector was aimed at domestic consumption, but factors such as devaluation of the Brazilian currency, the successful efforts to free cattle from foot and mouth disease, the mad cow disease affecting beef production in the countries of the North, and the chicken disease in Asia leading to a swing towards the consumption of other meat products, enabled Brazil to have access to new markets in Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Between 1997 and 2003, the volume of Brazilian exports in this field increased over five-fold.

A report published recently by the Centre for International Forestry Research –CIFOR– has identified this process of expansion of cattle raising as one of the factors responsible for the recent increase in the destruction of the Brazilian Amazon forest.

According to this research, with respect to deforestation the accumulated area of the Brazilian Amazon increased from 41.5 million hectares in 1990 to 58.7 million hectares in 2000, of which most ended up as pasture lands. The authors of the report state that although in recent years the expansion of soybean crops in the Amazon has been a cause of deforestation, this is only a part of the process, which to a great degree is due to the growth of cattle raising.

The CIFOR report was made known at the same time as new figures for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, which have shown a second historical record of loss of tropical forest. The new data submitted by the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment show that the loss of forests over the period of August 2002 to August 2003 reached 23,750 km2. The historical record corresponds to 1995 with a little over 29 thousand km2. The new record represents an increase of 2 per cent vis-à-vis the previous year. Since deforestation started to be monitored in 1988, a total of over 270 thousand km2 of tropical forest have been lost, that is to say, approximately the size of Ecuador.

The importance of consumption should be noted in this process, as one of the pillars of the current model of commercial agriculture and cattle-raising, and therefore another factor responsible for deforestation processes. This is not the production of large volumes of food to solve the hunger of many impoverished and underprivileged sectors. These are cash crops, ranging from coffee to beef, mostly aimed at consumers in the North who in many cases have been induced to change their food habits.

Historically, the countries of the South, rich in biodiversity, have played the role of export producers. Very often, the inhabitants of these countries do not consume what they export. After being colonized by bloodshed and fire, they have later been colonized by dollars, debt and exclusion … in addition to bloodshed and fire.

Article based on information from: "Conexión entre ganadería y deforestación Amazónica", CLAES, http://www.agropecuaria.org/sustentabilidad/ConexionHamburgerAz.htm ; "Hamburger Connection Fuels Amazon Destruction", Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/media/Amazon.pdf ; "Role of Cattle Raising in Conversion of Tropical Moist Forests", CIESIN, http://www.ciesin.org/docs/002-106/002-106c.html

26. http://www.deq.state.va.us/p2/vise/biodiesel.html

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is a clean burning alternative to diesel fuel that is produced from animal fats and vegetable oils, typically soybeans. It is renewable, domestically produced and readily available in Virginia. Biodiesel can be used as a fuel itself or blended with petroleum to reduce emissions, raise cetane for less engine knock, enhance lubricity and keep engines clear of deposits.

In its pure form, biodiesel is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades in the environment at about the same rate as ordinary sugar. Biodiesel allows users to take immediate and seamless measures to help clean up the air while reducing our dependance on foreign oil, all the while helping to improve our domestic economy. Click here for Biodiesel suppliers in Virginia.

Virginia Biodiesel proposal moves forward: A proposal to generate legislative recommendations on how to stimulate 20 million gallons of B100 demand in Virginia obtaining wide base of support.

Biodiesel Rebate

The Virginia Soybean Association is offering a rebate up to $500.00 towards the next purchase of biodiesel (soy) for first time customers - call or write for more information.

Dick Atkinson

Executive Director

Virginia Soybean Association

151 Kristiansand Drive

Suite 115 E & F

Williamsburg, Va 23188

Phone: 757.564.0153

soybean@visi.net

27. Personal Communication, Esther Burns, Dietician

28. http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,1357463,00.html

Fuel for nought

The adoption of biofuels would be a humanitarian and environmental disaster

George Monbiot

Tuesday November 23, 2004

The Guardian

If human beings were without sin, we would still live in an imperfect world. Adam Smith's notion that by pursuing his own interest, a man "frequently promotes that of ... society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it", and Karl Marx's picture of a society in which "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all" are both mocked by one obvious constraint. The world is finite. This means that when one group of people pursues its own interests, it damages the interests of others.

It is hard to think of a better example than the current enthusiasm for biofuels. These are made from plant oils or crop wastes or wood, and can be used to run cars and buses and lorries. Burning them simply returns to the atmosphere the carbon that the plants extracted while they were growing. So switching from fossil fuels to biodiesel and bioalcohol is now being promoted as the solution to climate change.

Next month, the British government will have to set a target for the amount of transport fuel that will come from crops. The European Union wants 2% of the oil we use to be biodiesel by the end of next year, rising to 6% by 2010 and 20% by 2020. To try to meet these targets, the government has reduced the tax on biofuels by 20p a litre, while the EU is paying farmers an extra €45 a hectare to grow them.

Everyone seems happy about this. The farmers and the chemicals industry can develop new markets, the government can meet its commitments to cut carbon emissions, and environmentalists can celebrate the fact that plant fuels reduce local pollution as well as global warming. Unlike hydrogen fuel cells, biofuels can be deployed straightaway. This, in fact, was how Rudolf Diesel expected his invention to be used. When he demonstrated his engine at the World Exhibition in 1900, he ran it on peanut oil. "The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today," he predicted. "But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum." Some enthusiasts are predicting that if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, he will soon be proved right.

I hope not. Those who have been promoting these fuels are well-intentioned, but wrong. They are wrong because the world is finite. If biofuels take off, they will cause a global humanitarian disaster.

Used as they are today, on a very small scale, they do no harm. A few thousand greens in the United Kingdom are running their cars on used chip fat. But recycled cooking oils could supply only 100,000 tonnes of diesel a year in this country, equivalent to one 380th of our road transport fuel.

It might also be possible to turn crop wastes such as wheat stubble into alcohol for use in cars - the Observer ran an article about this on Sunday. I'd like to see the figures, but I find it hard to believe that we will be able to extract more energy than we use in transporting and processing straw. But the EU's plans, like those of all the enthusiasts for biolocomotion, depend on growing crops specifically for fuel. As soon as you examine the implications, you discover that the cure is as bad as the disease.

Road transport in the UK consumes 37.6m tonnes of petroleum products a year. The most productive oil crop that can be grown in this country is rape. The average yield is 3-3.5 tonnes per hectare. One tonne of rapeseed produces 415kg of biodiesel. So every hectare of arable land could provide 1.45 tonnes of transport fuel.

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m hectares. There are 5.7m in the UK. Even the EU's more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there were unmet demand for food, the market would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and poor people's demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on earth has quintupled since 1950. The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Green fuel is not just a humanitarian disaster; it is also an environmental disaster. Those who worry about the scale and intensity of today's agriculture should consider what farming will look like when it is run by the oil industry. Moreover, if we try to develop a market for rapeseed biodiesel in Europe, it will immediately develop into a market for palm oil and soya oil. Oilpalm can produce four times as much biodiesel per hectare as rape, and it is grown in places where labour is cheap. Planting it is already one of the world's major causes of tropical forest destruction. Soya has a lower oil yield than rape, but the oil is a by-product of the manufacture of animal feed. A new market for it will stimulate an industry that has already destroyed most of Brazil's cerrado (one of the world's most biodiverse environments) and much of its rainforest.

It is shocking to see how narrow the focus of some environmentalists can be. At a meeting in Paris last month, a group of scientists and greens studying abrupt climate change decided that Tony Blair's two big ideas - tackling global warming and helping Africa - could both be met by turning Africa into a biofuel production zone. This strategy, according to its convenor, "provides a sustainable development path for the many African countries that can produce biofuels cheaply". I know the definition of sustainable development has been changing, but I wasn't aware that it now encompasses mass starvation and the eradication of tropical forests. Last year, the British parliamentary committee on environment, food and rural affairs, which is supposed to specialise in joined-up thinking, examined every possible consequence of biofuel production - from rural incomes to skylark numbers - except the impact on food supply.

We need a solution to the global warming caused by cars, but this isn't it. If the production of biofuels is big enough to affect climate change, it will be big enough to cause global starvation.

www.monbiot.com

29. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/biomass

Biomass for Electricity Generation

by Zia Haq

This paper examines issues affecting the uses of biomass for electricity generation. The methodology used in the National Energy Modeling System to account for various types of biomass is discussed, and the underlying assumptions are explained. The Energy Information Administration's estimation of biomass resources shows that there are 590 million wet tons of biomass available in the United States on an annual basis; 20 million wet tons (enough to supply about 3 gigawatts of capacity) are available today at prices of $1.25 per million Btu or less. The average price of coal to electric utilities in 2001 was $1.23 per million Btu.

Introduction

The U.S. economy uses biomass-based materials as a source of energy in many ways. Wood and agricultural residues are burned as a fuel for cogeneration of steam and electricity in the industrial sector. Biomass is used for power generation in the electricity sector and for space heating in residential and commercial buildings. Biomass can be converted to a liquid form for use as a transportation fuel, and research is being conducted on the production of fuels and chemicals from biomass. Biomass materials can also be used directly in the manufacture of a variety of products.

In the electricity sector, biomass is used for power generation. The Energy Information Administration (EIA), in its Annual Energy Outlook 2002 (AEO2002) reference case,1 projects that biomass will generate 15.3 billion kilowatthours of electricity, or 0.3 percent of the projected 5,476 billion kilowatthours of total generation, in 2020. In scenarios that reflect the impact of a 20-percent renewable portfolio standard (RPS)2 and in scenarios that assume carbon dioxide emission reduction require- ments based on the Kyoto Protocol,3 electricity generation from biomass is projected to increase substantially. Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the practical limits and challenges faced by the U.S. biomass industry. This paper examines the range of costs, resource availability, regional variations, and other issues pertaining to biomass use for electricity generation. The methodology by which the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) accounts for various types of biomass is discussed, and the underlying assumptions are explained.

A major challenge in forecasting biomass energy growth is estimating resource potential. EIA has compiled available biomass resource estimates from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL),4 Antares Group, Inc.,5 and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).6 This paper discusses how these data are used for forecasting purposes and the implications of the resulting forecasts, focusing on biomass used in grid-connected electricity generation applications.

Background

Biomass has played a relatively small role in terms of the overall U.S. energy picture, supplying 3.2 quadrillion Btu of energy out of a total of 98.5 quadrillion Btu in 2000.7 The vast majority of it is used in the pulp and paper industries, where residues from production processes are combusted to produce steam and electricity. The industrial cogeneration sector consumed almost 2.0 quadrillion Btu of biomass in 2000. Outside the pulp and paper industries, only a small amount of biomass is used to produce electricity. There are power plants that combust biomass exclusively to generate electricity and facilities that mix biomass with coal (biomass co-firing plants). The electricity generation sector (excluding cogenerators) consumed about 0.7 quadrillion Btu of biomass in 2000. The remaining 0.5 quadrillion Btu of biomass was consumed in the residential and commercial sectors in the form of wood consumption for heating buildings. To put these numbers in perspective, the electricity generation sector consumed 20.5 quadrillion Btu of coal and 6.5 quadrillion Btu of natural gas in 2000.8

Biomass played a significant role among renewables in 2000, however, providing 48 percent of the energy coming from all renewable sources. In EIA's AEO2002 reference case projection, growth in demand for biomass is expected to be modest. In the AEO2002 high renewables case projection, the demand for biomass is higher than in the reference case due to assumptions of reduced initial capital cost9 and increased supply. In aggressive RPS cases,10 the demand for biomass is much higher than projected even in the high renewables case.

Among many reasons for increased biomass utilization in those cases, environmental benefits are the most important. Compared with coal, biomass feedstocks have lower levels of sulfur or sulfur compounds.11 Therefore, substitution of biomass for coal in power plants has the effect of reducing sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions. Demonstration tests have shown that biomass co-firing with coal12 can also lead to lower nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. Perhaps the most significant environmental benefit of biomass, however, is a potential reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

A closed-loop process is defined as a process in which power is generated using feedstocks that are grown specifically for the purpose of energy production. Many varieties of energy crops are being considered, including hybrid willow, switchgrass, and hybrid poplar. If biomass is utilized in a closed-loop process, the entire process (planting, harvesting, transportation, and conversion to electricity) can be considered to be a small but positive net emitter of CO2. It is not precisely a net zero emission process in a life-cycle sense, because there are CO2 emissions associated with the harvesting, transportation, and feed preparation operations (such as moisture reduction, size reduction, and removal of impurities). However, those emissions are not the result of combustion of biomass but result instead from fuel consumption (mostly petroleum and natural gas) for harvesting, transportation, and feed preparation operations.

Although biomass-based generation is assumed to yield no net emissions of CO2 because of the sequestration of biomass during the planting cycle, there are environmental impacts. Wood contains sulfur and nitrogen, which yield SO2 and NOx in the combustion process. However, the rate of emissions is significantly lower than that of coal-based generation. For example, per kilowatthour generated, biomass integrated gasification combined-cycle (BIGCC) generating plants can significantly reduce particulate emissions (by a factor of 4.5) in comparison with coal-based electricity generation processes.13 NOx emissions can be reduced by a factor of about 6 for dedicated BIGCC plants compared with average pulverized coal-fired plants.14

Biomass Technologies for Electricity Generation

Both dedicated biomass and biomass co-firing are used in the electricity generation sector. New dedicated biomass capacity is represented in NEMS as BIGCC technology. It is assumed that hot gas filtration will be used for gas cleanup purposes in this technology. Hot gas cleanup technology is relatively new, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and many industrial partners are conducting tests to demonstrate the technology. The alternative to hot gas cleaning is low-temperature gas cleaning. In low-temperature cleaning the gas is quenched with water, and particulates are removed in a series of cyclone vessels. There are advantages and disadvantages associated with both processes.

The advantages of cold gas cleaning are that it is commercially available, the capital cost is relatively low, and the systems are easier to operate than hot gas cleanup systems. The disadvantages of cold gas cleanup are that the cooling process, the cold gas cleanup system, and fuel gas recompression systems reduce the overall process efficiency by up to 10 percent. The gas turbines downstream of the gasifier require the gas at high temperatures and pressure, and therefore the gas that has just undergone cooling for cleanup purposes must be repressurized and reheated in order to conform to gas turbine inlet specifications. The advantages of the newer hot gas cleanup technology are that it allows the process to be operated at higher efficiencies and it generates less waste water than the cold gas cleanup processes. The disadvantages of the hot gas cleanup technology are that operational experience is limited, it has higher costs, and it adds complexity to the process; however, it is considered to be the technologically more advanced choice for new dedicated biomass plants.

The McNeil Generating Station demonstration project in Burlington, Vermont, is an example of a biomass gasification plant. It has a capacity of 50 megawatts and supplies electricity to the residents of the City of Burlington. This is an existing wood combustion facility whose feedstock is waste wood from nearby forestry operations, including forest thinnings and discarded wood pallets. To this existing wood combustion facility a low-pressure wood gasifier has been added that is capable of converting 200 tons per day of wood chips into fuel gas. The fuel gas, fed directly into the existing boiler (Figure 1) augments the McNeil Station's capacity by an additional 12 megawatts. The system was designed and constructed in 1998 and attained fully operational status in August 2000.

In addition to the Vermont project, DOE has funded five new advanced biomass gasification research and development projects beginning in 2001. Emery Recycling in Salt Lake City, Utah, will test new IGCC and integrated gasification and fuel cell (IGFC) concepts based on a new gasifier that uses segregated municipal solid waste, animal waste, and agricultural residues. Sebesta Blomberg in Roseville, Minnesota, has begun a project on an atmospheric gasifier with gas turbine at a malting facility, using barley residues and corn stover. Alliant Energy in Lansing, Iowa, is developing a new combined-cycle concept that involves a fluidized-bed pyrolyzer and uses corn stover as a feedstock. United Technologies Research Center in East Hartford, Connecticut, has begun a project that will test a biomass gasifier coupled with an aero-derivative turbine with fuel cell and steam turbine options, using clean wood residues and natural gas as feedstocks. Carolina Power and Light in Raleigh, North Carolina, will develop a biomass gasification process that will produce a reburning fuel stream for utility boilers, using clean wood residues. After completion of research and development tests, these projects are candidates for commercialization over the next few years.15

Biomass co-firing involves combining biomass material with coal in existing coal-fired boilers. Coal-fired boilers can handle a pre-mixed combination of coal and biomass in which the biomass is combined with the coal in the feed lot and fed through an existing coal feed system. Alternatively, boilers can be retrofitted with a separate feed system for the biomass such that the biomass and coal actually mix inside the boiler.

Table 1 shows the power plants that currently are co-firing with biomass on a commercial basis. The portion of biomass consumed varies from less than 1 percent to about 8 percent of total heat input, with two exceptions: Excel Energy's Bay Front plant in Ashland, Wisconsin, and Tacoma Steam Plant Number 2, owned by Tacoma Public Utilities.

The Bay Front Station can generate electricity using coal, wood, shredded rubber, and natural gas. Experience has shown that it is better to operate units 1 and 2 on 100 percent coal during periods of high load and on 100 percent biomass during off-peak periods. A blending of coal and biomass can cause ash fouling and slagging problems. Therefore, the heat input from biomass averages about 40 percent in this plant.16

Tacoma Public Utilities is a municipal utility that provides water, electricity, and rail services. Tacoma Steam Plant uses a fluidized-bed combustor that can co-fire wood, refuse-derived fuel, and coal. The plant runs for only as many hours as necessary to burn the refuse-derived fuel it receives. The City of Tacoma Refuse Utility has modified its resource recovery facility to produce refuse-derived fuel. The generating plant is paid $5.50 per ton to accept the refuse-derived fuel from the Refuse Utility. A memorandum of understanding between the Refuse Utility and Tacoma Public Utilities commits the latter to burn the refuse-derived fuel for electricity generation. Coal is the most expensive fuel for the plant, making it desirable to burn as much biomass as possible.17 The fuel mix varies from season to season, depending on the availability of biomass feedstocks. The cost of renovating the steam plant to co-fire the biomass fuel was about $45 million. Washington State's Department of Ecology provided a grant of $15 million to partially offset the renovation costs.

Biomass for electricity generation is treated in four ways in NEMS: (1) new dedicated biomass or biomass gasification, (2) existing and new plants that co-fire biomass with coal, (3) existing plants that combust biomass directly in an open-loop process,18 and (4) biomass use in industrial cogeneration applications. Existing biomass plants are accounted for using information such as on-line years, efficiencies, heat rates, and retirement dates, obtained through EIA surveys of the electricity generation sector.

Description of Biomass Supply Curves

The biomass fuel price is calculated from regional supply curves, which are an input to the model. The raw data for the supply schedules are available at the State or county level. These are aggregated to form the regional supply schedule by North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) region. Supply schedules are aggregated for four fuel types: agricultural residues, energy crops, forestry residues, and urban wood waste/mill residues. Table 2 shows the biomass supply available in the United States. The data in Table 2 are based on survey and modeling work by ORNL, the USDA, and Antares Group, Inc. Table 2 represents the maximum supply available in the various regions at a price of $5 per million Btu.19 A brief description of each type of biomass is provided below:

Agricultural residues are generated after each harvesting cycle of commodity crops. A portion of the remaining stalks and biomass material left on the ground can be collected and used for energy generation purposes. Residues of wheat straw and corn stover20 are included in the biomass supply schedule used in NEMS. Wheat straw and corn stover make up the majority of crop residues.

Energy crops are produced solely or primarily for use as feedstocks in energy generation processes. Energy crops includes hybrid poplar,21 hybrid willow,22 and switchgrass,23 grown on cropland acres currently cropped, idled, or in pasture, and in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).24

Forestry residues are the biomass material remaining in forests that have been harvested for timber. Timber harvesting operations do not extract all biomass material, because only timber of certain quality is usable in processing facilities. Therefore, the residual material after a timber harvest is potentially available for energy generation purposes. Forestry residues are composed of logging residues, rough rotten salvageable dead wood, and excess small pole trees.

Urban wood waste/mill residues are waste woods from manufacturing operations that would otherwise be landfilled. The urban wood waste/mill residue category includes primary mill residues and urban wood such as pallets, construction waste, and demolition debris, which are not otherwise used.

By 2020, the United States is estimated to have a maximum of 7.1 quadrillion Btu of biomass available at prices of $5 per million Btu or lower. Agricultural residues, forestry residues, and urban wood waste/mill residues are currently available. EIA also assumes that energy crops can become available on a commercial basis beginning in 2010. By 2020, the four biomass types are projected to be fairly evenly divided, with agricultural residues providing most of the supply and urban wood waste/mill residues providing the least amount at the high end of the supply curves.

Figure 2 shows the variation in the resource as a function of price. A relatively small portion of the supply is available at $1 per million Btu or less. Feedstock cost is a contributing factor that keeps the growth of biomass-based electricity generation at low levels under AEO2002 reference case conditions. The available low-cost feedstock (<$1 per million Btu) is almost exclusively urban wood waste and mill residues. This category of biomass continues to be the only significant resource available at prices up to about $2 per million Btu. At that price level, agricultural residues become viable as a second source of biomass. Energy crops and forestry residues begin to make significant contributions at prices around $2.30 per million Btu or higher. A brief description of the methodology by which the supply curves are derived is provided below. Table 3 shows the biomass quantities, expressed in various units, that are projected to be available at different price levels.

Agricultural Residue Supply Curve

The underlying assumption behind the agricultural residue supply curve is that after each harvesting cycle of agricultural crops, a portion of the stalks can be collected and used for energy production. Agricultural residues cannot be completely extracted, because some of them have to remain in the soil to maintain soil quality (i.e., for erosion control, carbon content, and long-term productivity). It is assumed that 30 to 40 percent of the residues could be removed from the soil, depending on the State. In terms of acreage, the most important agricultural commodity crops being planted in the United States are listed in Table 4. Corn, wheat, and soybeans represent about 70 percent of total cropland harvested.

The agricultural residue supply curve used in NEMS incorporates only the residues available from corn stover and wheat straws. While this may appear to understate the agricultural residues that are potentially available for energy production, there are compelling reasons for excluding other types of commodity crops. In the case of hay, the whole crop is harvested and fed to livestock; therefore, it is assumed that there would be no useful amount of residue available. An attempt has been made to produce alfalfa, pellet the leaves using adhesive materials, and use the stems as biomass. The processing costs were too high, however, and there was no market for alfalfa pellets in the United States. In the case of tobacco the whole plant is used, leaving little or no residue. Residue from soybeans is relatively small and tends to deteriorate rapidly in the field, making it unsuitable for collection and energy extraction. Barley, oats, rice, and rye are produced in relatively small geographical areas and thus are not likely to have an impact on the national biomass supply curve.

The procedure for estimating the agricultural residue supply curve is as follows. Data on the quantities of corn and wheat produced in each State are available from the USDA.25 From the harvested quantities of corn and wheat grain, a certain amount must be subtracted, representing the amount that the farmer needs to leave on the soil in order to maintain organic matter and prevent erosion. The quantity of residue that must remain depends on the crop type and rotation, soil type, weather conditions, and the tillage system. ORNL is currently preparing detailed estimates of how much residue needs to remain on the soil, taking into consideration these factors. For NEMS, only State-wide average yields and soil carbon needs using a reduced till practice (somewhat similar to mulch till and continuous crop rotations) are being considered.

The price of corn stover and wheat straw includes three components: the cost of collecting the residues, a transportation cost for transporting the material from the farm gate to the energy conversion facility, and a premium paid to farmers to encourage participation. For each harvest operation, a list of needed equipment is determined. Using standard engineering estimates consistent with those used by the USDA, the time per acre required to complete each operation and the cost per hour of using each piece of equipment are calculated.

Both the premiums to farmers and the transportation costs are based on current market practices. Several companies purchase corn stover or wheat straw to produce bedding, insulating materials, particle board, paper, and chemicals. These firms typically pay $10 to $15 per dry ton ($0.58 to $0.87 per million Btu) to farmers to compensate for any lost nutrient or environmental penalties (such as land erosion) that result from harvesting the residues. Studies have shown that transporting giant round bales of switchgrass costs $5 to $15 per dry ton ($0.29 to $0.87 per million Btu) for distances of less than 50 miles. Because agricultural residue bales would be of similar size, weight, and density as switchgrass bales, it is assumed that the cost of transporting bales from the farm gate to the energy conversion facility would be $10 per dry ton ($0.58 per million Btu). It is assumed by ORNL that the premium that would have to be paid to farmers would amount to $10 per dry ton ($0.58 per million Btu), for a total premium and transportation cost of $20 per dry ton ($1.16 per million Btu).

Energy Crop Supply Curve

Energy crops are not currently being commercially grown in the United States. Demonstration programs are underway with DOE funding in Iowa and New York, including IES Utilities Inc.'s biomass co-firing project at its Ottumwa Station plant in Iowa, for which there are plans to produce 200,000 tons of switchgrass harvested from 40,000 to 50,000 acres of land; and NRG's Dunkirk Station at Dunkirk, New York, where willow from 400 acres of farmland is being co-fired with coal. Therefore, the energy crop supply curve in NEMS represents future resources that could be more profitable at different market prices for farmers to plant in place of existing uses of cropland. An important assumption is that energy crops will not become commercially available until 2010.

The energy crop supply curve prepared by ORNL for EIA has three components: hybrid poplar, hybrid willow, and switchgrass. ORNL uses a model called the Policy Analysis System (POLYSYS) to estimate the quantities of energy crops that could be produced at various prices. POLYSYS is an agricultural sector model that forecasts the production of major agricultural crops. In addition, it has a livestock sector and food, feed, industrial, and export demand functions. POLYSYS was developed and is maintained by the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee and is also used by the USDA Economic Research Service to conduct economic and policy analysis. The underlying assumption in the POLYSYS model is that a farmer will plant and harvest energy crops only if the crop can be sold at a price that assures a profit higher than the profit made by producing conventional agricultural crops on the same piece of land. POLYSYS captures the interaction between energy crops and conventional crops when land is switched from conventional crops to energy crop production. As a joint project between USDA and DOE, POLYSYS has been modified to include dedicated energy crops. POLYSYS uses the 1999 USDA crop and livestock projection as a baseline and can be used to estimate deviations from that baseline.

POLYSYS considers the availability of four types of cropland in the United States: acreage that is currently being planted with traditional crops, idled acreage, acreage in pasture, and acreage in the CRP. The model assumes that energy crop production will be limited to areas that are climatically suited for their production, thus excluding all States in the Rocky Mountain and Western Plains regions. The rationale for these exclusions is that there is a natural rain gradient in the United States, as a result of which land to the west of the gradient generally requires irrigation for crop production, which may have significant environmental penalties. Irrigation has been excluded as a viable management practice for energy crop production. All land east of the rain gradient has been included in POLYSYS, but land to the west has been excluded. Future genetic improvements in energy crops could, however, extend this range.

A POLYSYS model run using assumptions that optimize the yield of biomass was used for NEMS.26 These assumptions apply only to the acreage under CRP programs and not to acreage currently planted, in pasture, or idle. Different management practices are assumed for CRP and non-CRP acres, because the CRP acres are among the most environmentally sensitive cropland and because CRP is explicitly an environmental program.

Energy crop yields in the supply curve vary within and between States and are based on field trial data and expert opinion. Table 5 shows the energy crop yield assumptions that have been used for POLYSYS. The variation in yields is due to differences in weather and soil conditions across the country. The lowest yields are assumed to be in the Northern Plains and the highest in the heart of the corn belt, as is the pattern observed with traditional crops. In addition, POLYSYS assumes that different varieties of switchgrass, hybrid poplar, and willow are produced in different parts of the country, with different yield assumptions. Energy crop production costs are estimated using the same full-cost accounting approach that is used by USDA to estimate the cost of producing conventional crops.27 The approach includes both fixed costs (such as equipment) and variable costs (such as labor, fuel, seed, and fertilizers).

Switchgrass stands are assumed to remain in production for 10 years before replanting, to be harvested annually, and to be delivered as large round bales. The plants can regenerate, and the same plant can continue to produce switchgrass for up to 10 years. It is assumed that new switchgrass varieties will have been developed after 10 years, and that it will be financially beneficial to plow under the existing switchgrass stand and replant with a new variety. Once established, a switchgrass field could be maintained in perpetuity, but the advantages of new, higher yield varieties would warrant periodic replanting.

Hybrid poplars are assumed to be planted at spacings of 8 feet by 10 feet (545 trees per acre) and to be harvested after 6, 8, and 10 years of growth in the Pacific Northwest, southern United States, and northern United States, respectively. Harvesting is assumed to be by custom operation, and the product is assumed to be delivered as whole tree chips.

Willow production is assumed only in the northern United States. Willows can technically be grown throughout the entire eastern United States, but limited research has been done for areas outside the Northeast and North Central regions. Willows are produced in a coppice system with a replant every 22 years. They are planted in 2 x 3 double rows (6,200 trees per acre) with first harvest in year 4 and subsequent harvests every 3 years for a total of 7 harvests. Willow is delivered as whole tree chips.

In terms of product quality, hybrid poplar and willow contain about 45 to 50 percent moisture when harvested. The trees would typically be fed into a wood chipper, which generally would provide chips between 0.5 and 1 inch square and less than 0.25 inch thick. Switchgrass is harvested at about 15 percent moisture, baled, and generally ground in a tub grinder before use.

It is assumed in POLYSYS that energy crops are produced if they generate a profit equal to or greater than those earned for existing agricultural uses of cropland. Energy crops compete for land not only with existing uses but also with each other. Under the assumed yields and management practices, switchgrass dominates the biomass supply curve due to higher average yields and lower average production costs than hybrid poplar or willow. POLYSYS provides an estimate of the farm-gate price. To that price, an average transportation cost of $10 per dry ton (1997 dollars) is added to determine the plant-gate price.

Forestry Residue Supply Curve

The forestry residue supply curve was derived on the basis of work done by the USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS) and ORNL. The ORNL estimate of the availability of forestry residues is based on a 1984 USDA-FS study by McQuillan et al.,28 which analyzed several types of data, including forestry inventory, logging and chipping costs, hauling distances and costs, stocking densities, wood types, slope, and equipment operability constraints. The McQuillan study is the only such analysis with national coverage. More recent studies exist, but they are local or regional in scope. The fundamental approach used in the McQuillan study still remains valid.

The input data were used to estimate regional supply schedules for softwood and hardwood chips for 1983 and to provide projections for 1990, 2010, and 2030. The USDA-FS study used estimates of "recoverability factors" that reduced the size of the inventory. Recoverability is used to account for the accessibility of the resource (i.e., existence of roads), whether the resource occurs in stands that are available, and how much of the resource can be retrieved (taking into account gathering problems with small pieces, breakage, etc.). The original data for the study came from a national inventory of "waste wood," which was defined as logging residues, rough rotten salvable wood, excess sapling, and small pole trees.

The forestry residue supply curve used in NEMS is based on the 1984 USDA-FS analysis and a 1994 ORNL study by Turhollow and Cohn,29 which was revised in 1995 by Decision Analysis Corporation under contract to EIA.30 The amount of waste wood available has been updated using the most recent USDA-FS inventory data. Other adjustments to reflect the availability of waste wood include (1) the exclusion of sapling and small pole trees, (2) changes to the recoverability factors, (3) the addition of a nominal stumpage fee, and (4) conversion from 1980 dollars to 1998 dollars based on an index of agricultural prices paid. The modifications were implemented by ORNL, based on the following rationale:

1. Saplings as a source of waste wood generally do not become available below costs of $6 per million Btu (1998 dollars). Because of the relatively high cost of recovering sapling waste wood, it was excluded from the updated supply curves. The USDA-FS defines polewood as trees with greater than 5 inch dbh (diameter breast high) but smaller than saw timber trees. Although large quantities of pole trees become available at costs of about $3.60 per million Btu (1998 dollars) or higher, the polewood has potential to grow into future pulpwood or future saw timber inventory and, therefore, is not likely to be harvested by the forest products industry.

2. The recoverability factor is a resource reduction factor that takes into account three site-specific considerations: retrieval efficiency due to technology or equipment, site accessibility or existence of roads, and steepness of slopes. In modifying the recoverability factors, ORNL did not change the retrieval efficiency assumptions from those in the USDA-FS study (i.e., 50 percent of inventory is assumed to be recoverable); however, ORNL's changes to the site access and steep slope factors reduced the inventory of softwood and hardwood that could potentially be recovered to 54 percent and 43 percent of the existing inventory, respectively. ORNL assumed that cable or helicopter logging would be necessary on steep slopes, and that in either situation it would not be economical to haul out much of the low-value wood, such as cull or branches.

3. For live cull, sound dead wood, and logging residues a stumpage fee of $2 per dry ton was assumed. The stumpage fee represents a cost to acquire the materials, based on data that was provided to ORNL by USDA's Southern Research Station.

4. ORNL subtracted the cost of transporting forestry residues from collection sites to power plants. Therefore, the ORNL data for forestry residues represent the supply schedule at the collection point (i.e., at the edge of the forest). EIA assumes a transportation cost from the collection point to the power plant of $10 per dry ton, which is added to the forestry residue supply curve from ORNL. This constant transportation cost is applied to all regions in all years for agricultural residues, forestry residues, and energy crops.

The spatial distribution of agricultural residues, energy crops, and forestry residues varies considerably. Transportation costs are dependent on spatial distribution and on the quantity needed by a facility.31 Therefore, the estimation of transportation costs is highly problematic for these resources. For example, the estimated transportation cost for supplying switchgrass to hypothetical facilities in Tennessee varies by 50 percent among facilities of the same size and increases on average by 30 percent when the facility demand changes from 100,000 dry tons per year to 630,000 dry tons per year. Similar or even larger variations can be expected with agricultural residues, because less is removed per acre at harvest, and thus the hauling distances would have to be greater to supply a given quantity of feedstock. There are also regional differences that result from differences in road regulations and labor costs.

Estimating transportation costs for forestry residues is especially difficult, because they vary significantly depending on whether the chips are hauled on primary or secondary roads. There are no national studies that have examined the variations in transportation costs for different feedstocks, different regions, and different facility demands. For this reason, a uniform transportation cost of $10 per dry ton was assumed. The transportation cost for urban wood waste/mill residues, which are point sources of biomass, is calculated somewhat differently, as described below.

Urban Wood Waste and Mill Residue Supply Curve

Most of the residues in this category are waste wood from manufacturing operations and wood that would otherwise be landfilled. Antares Group, Inc., performed this analysis for EIA. Antares estimated the State-by-State available supplies of urban wood waste and mill residues. Urban wood waste is further broken down into wood yard trimmings, construction residues, demolition residues, and other waste wood, including discarded consumer wood products. The mill residues are further broken down into bark residues and wood residues, both from primary mills. When available, State-level data from existing reports were used to construct supply curves of urban wood waste and mill residues. When published State-level data were not available, quantities were estimated by disaggregating reported national quantities. The disaggregation from national to State-level data was done by using accepted "indicators" (such as housing start data) that are correlated with residue generation.

The cost at which these residues can be obtained was estimated using processing costs, State-specific landfill tipping fees, and transportation costs. If a residue is typically landfilled, it was assumed that a 50-percent reduction in tipping fees would be offered at a waste collection facility as an incentive for people to take their wood waste to the collection facility instead of a landfill. The maximum distance beyond which transporting the residues would become prohibitive was assumed to be 100 miles from a potential biopower site. Costs were estimated for each residue type for hauling distances of 25, 50, 75, and 100 miles.

An important assumption in this analysis, made by Antares, was that urban wood waste and mill residues would be considered to be available only if they are not currently being used for other productive purposes. In other words, it was assumed that if urban wood waste and mill residues are currently being used for any purpose, it would not be economically attractive to divert them to electricity generation at any price.

Table 6 shows representative characteristics for different subcategories of urban wood waste and mill residues. The collection and processing costs are obtained from the available literature. While these are average collection and processing costs, the actual costs are expected to range from $0 to $8 per wet ton for mill residues and from $10 to $14 per wet ton for urban residues. A transportation cost is added to the collection and processing costs. The total expenditure in local transportation costs in 1996 was reported to be $122 billion (in 1996 dollars).32 Local trucking accounted for 506 billion ton-miles in 1996.33 This implies a national average local freight charge of about $0.24 per ton-mile (1996 dollars). For distances of 50, 75, and 100 miles around a co-firing facility, this would translate to transportation costs of $12, $18, and $24 per dry ton ($0.70, $1.05, and $1.40 per million Btu), respectively.

The national average was converted to State averages using transportation price indexes for different geographical areas. For pallets, construction debris, and demolition debris, a particular State's major urban-based transportation indexes were used. For primary mill residues, the State's lowest transportation index was used to reflect the more rural nature of the location of wood processing centers. A supply curve for urban wood waste and mill residues was constructed using this methodology.

Supply Curve Uncertainties

Although a significant amount of effort has gone into estimating the available quantities of biomass supply, the following uncertainties still are associated with the numbers:

Perhaps the most significant uncertainty is the value of competing uses of biomass materials. For example, the mulch market consumes large amounts of waste biomass material. Different qualities of mulch are available at different prices. How much mulch and other biomass-derived materials can be diverted from their current markets into electricity generation and the prices at which such reallocations might take place are not well understood.

In agricultural waste, the significant uncertainty is in the impact of biomass removal on soil quality. A general consensus in the farming community that more agricultural residues need to be left on the soil to maintain soil quality could result in significant losses of biomass for electric power generation purposes.

In forestry residues, the unknown factor is the impact of changes in forest fire prevention policies on biomass availability. A policy whereby the vegetation in forests is reduced to minimize the potential for forest fires could significantly increase the quantity of forestry residues available.

Similarly, while the amount of material that is recycled from municipal solid waste streams has steadily grown, it is generally recognized that a significant portion of the municipal solid waste stream is still landfilled. An aggressive attempt to recycle more of the municipal solid waste stream might translate into less available biomass for electricity generation.

Given these uncertainties, the current supply curves represent our best understanding of the availability of biomass at this point in time. Responses of the biomass, solid waste, agricultural waste, and forestry communities to market changes will determine the ultimate availability of biomass materials in the United States.

Implementation in NEMS

NEMS represents both dedicated biomass (BIGCC) and biomass co-firing plants for new capacity. BIGCC is treated in the same way as any other generation option in NEMS. In addition to the supply curves, which provide feedstock costs, NEMS needs the following BIGCC-specific inputs in order to generate the biomass forecast: capital cost, operating and maintenance cost (fixed and variable), project life, production tax credits, and heat rate. Table 7 shows the overnight capital costs assumed for BIGCC projects in the AEO2002 reference case. BIGCC plants are assumed to have a 4-year construction lead time. Therefore, for projects initiated in 2001, the earliest time that a plant could come on line would be 2005. The BIGCC capital cost assumption in the reference case is derived from a 1997 estimate published by DOE and the Electric Power Research Institute.34 The DOE/EPRI costs are adjusted upward to take into account greater uncertainties concerning the costs for the gasification portion of the plant as opposed to the gas conditioning/power generation portion of the plant. EIA assumptions are used in place of the published values for interest during construction and contingency costs. Figure 3 shows the capital costs used in NEMS for biomass, compared with the costs used for several other technologies. BIGCC, at $1,536 per kilowatt, has a relatively high capital cost in comparison with coal- and natural-gas-based generation technologies. BIGCC capital costs are higher than coal IGCC capital costs mainly as a result of the need for additional feed preparation equipment. Capital costs are assumed to decline over time as more units are built.

Biomass co-firing is represented in NEMS by assuming that coal-fired capacity can be retrofitted for biomass co-firing at levels up to 5 percent on a heat input basis. It is assumed that, for such low levels of co-firing, no additional capital or operating and maintenance costs would be incurred. The biomass would be commingled with coal, and the mixture would be fed into the boiler through the existing coal feed system. Therefore, no new capital expenditure would be required. The existing coal feedlot operators would be able to manage the tasks of mixing biomass and coal without the need for additional labor.

It is also assumed that the biomass co-firing limits will vary by region (Table 8). The regional limits are based on the availability of biomass and of coal-fired capacity. These are the maximum upper bounds on biomass co-firing. NEMS chooses lower levels of co-firing, depending on the other generation options available in each region. It has been suggested, based on demonstration-scale tests, that biomass co-firing could be carried out at higher levels by incurring an incremental capital cost.35 Incorporation of this capability into NEMS is currently being investigated.

NEMS Projections

AEO2002 Reference Case

Figure 4 shows the AEO2002 reference case projection for biomass use in electricity generation. Biomass continues to be the largest nonhydroelectric renewable technology throughout the forecast horizon, growing from a capacity of about 6.7 gigawatts in 2000 to about 10.4 gigawatts by 2020, including dedicated biomass and industrial cogeneration (Table 9).36 In comparison, wind capacity, which has a much lower utilization rate than biomass, is projected to grow from about 2.4 gigawatts in 2000 to 9.1 gigawatts in 2020. Similarly, generation from biomass grows from 38.0 billion kilowatthours in 2000 to 64.3 billion kilowatthours by 2020 (Table 10).

AEO2002 High Renewables Case

AEO2002 also includes a high renewables case that assumes more favorable cost and performance characteristics for nonhydroelectric renewable energy technologies, including biomass, than are assumed in the reference case. The assumptions in the high renewables case include lower capital costs, lower operating and maintenance costs, and increased availability of biomass fuel supplies. Capital costs are assumed to be similar to those in the publication Renewable Energy Technology Characterizations.37 The costs are about 3 percent lower than those assumed in the reference case in the early years of the forecast period due to more optimistic assumptions about the costs for the gasification portion of the plant. In addition, it is assumed that operation and maintenance costs would be 14 percent lower than in the reference case, also based on the same document. The biomass supplies are increased by 10 percent at each step of the supply curve. Fossil and nuclear technology assumptions remain unchanged from those in the reference case.

The basic trends in the high renewables case are similar to those in the reference case, but biomass capacity increases to 12.3 gigawatts by 2020 instead of 10.4 gigawatts in the reference case (Table 9). Generation from biomass plants increases to 76.0 billion kilowatthours by 2020, as compared with 64.3 billion kilowatthours in the reference case (Table 10).

10% and 20% RPS Cases

EIA has analyzed the impact of imposing 10-percent and 20-percent renewable portfolio standards by 2020.38 The 10% RPS case assumed that a legislatively mandated nationwide RPS would require 10 percent of the Nation's electricity to be generated from nonhydroelectric renewable energy sources in 2020 and beyond. Similarly, the 20% RPS case assumed that a legislatively mandated nationwide RPS would require 20 percent of the Nation's electricity to be generated from nonhydroelectric renewable energy sources in 2020 and beyond. The RPS cases assumed the same NOx and SO2 caps as mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which is the assumption made in the AEO2002 reference case.

The biomass supply curves used for the RPS cases are the same as those used for the AEO2002 reference case. The emissions caps are applied only to the electricity generation sector (excluding cogenerators) and are assumed to cover emissions from both utility-owned and independently owned electric power plants. In the 20% RPS case, as a result of the assumed nationwide legislative mandate, renewables are projected to enter the market much more rapidly than in the reference case (Tables 9 and 10). Figure 5 shows projected biomass consumption in the different cases. In the 20% RPS case, dedicated biomass is projected to provide 3.8 quadrillion Btu of energy for electricity generation by 2020. An additional 0.7 quadrillion Btu of biomass energy is projected to be consumed for co-firing and as ethanol derived from cellulose. Ethanol from cellulose utilizes biomass from the same supply curve as dedicated biomass and biomass co-firing, and thus the three biomass applications compete with each other for their respective feedstocks.

The growth of biomass generation depends on the level of renewables required by the RPS. A low RPS requirement (such as 10 percent or less by 2020) would first be met by wind, which is more economical than biomass. In addition, biomass co-firing with coal is sensitive to the growth of other electricity generation technologies. In general, biomass co-firing with coal is more economical than biomass gasification; however, it is less economical than biomass gasification in scenarios where large amounts of coal-fired capacity are projected to be retired, such as cases which assume that U.S. emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol will be met exclusively through reductions in domestic carbon dioxide emissions. In the 20% RPS case, biomass gasification grows substantially by 2020, and this translates into a large demand for biomass feedstocks, which increases the feedstock cost for co-firing, making the use of biomass for co-firing uneconomical relative to biomass gasification.

The projected growth of biomass consumption in the 20% RPS case raises the question of whether or not there would be sufficient land to sustain the required level of biomass production. An analysis of the results of the 20% RPS case shows that there would be a requirement for approximately 9.6 to 14.4 million acres of land devoted to energy crops by 2020, depending on the yield obtained.39 There were 932 million acres of land in U.S. farms and ranches in 1997. The acreage devoted to farms and ranches has been declining steadily since the 1950s, at a rate of about 4.9 million acres per year.40 It is possible to grow biomass energy crops on CRP lands. Under the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, signed into law on May 13, 2002, the acreage that can be enrolled in the CRP has been increased to 39.2 million acres. Therefore, in the 20% RPS case, if all the energy crops were planted on CRP land, approximately 24 percent to 37 percent of the CRP land would have to be devoted to energy crop production by 2020. Land use for biomass-based energy consumption is not expected to conflict with land requirements for crop production, because the land requirements for energy crops are far smaller and less than the land that has been removed from agricultural production as a result of improvements in farm productivity.

Conclusion

EIA's estimation of biomass resources shows that there are 590 million wet tons (equivalent to 413 million dry tons) of biomass available in the United States on an annual basis. Historically, biomass consumption for energy use has remained at low levels, although it is the largest nonhydroelectric renewable source of electricity in the United States (considering both industrial cogeneration from biomass and electricity sector generation). The main impediment has been the cost of obtaining the feedstock. Of the estimated total resource of 590 million wet tons, only 20 million wet tons (equivalent to 14 million dry tons, or enough to supply about 3 gigawatts of capacity) is available today at prices up to $1.25 per million Btu.

Biomass use for power generation is not projected to increase substantially by 2020 in the AEO2002 reference case because of the cost of biomass relative to the costs of other fuels and the higher capital costs relative to those for coal- or natural-gas-fired capacity. Slightly more growth is projected in the high renewables case, but the difference from the reference case projection is relatively small. In the 20% RPS case, significantly more use of biomass for electricity generation is projected than in the reference case, because electric utilities would be required to generate a portion of their power from renewable resources, including biomass.

30. Photovoltaic electricity costs a minimum of $4.00 per watt for the panels alone, often closer to $10.00 per watt for a fully installed system. That means an installed cost approaching $1,000 to simply light a 100 watt light bulb. Hence the savings of installing a smaller or more efficient bulb instead of trying to meet existing demand.

31. http://www.ilea.org/lcas/macleanlave1998.html

Automobiles: Manufacture vs. Use

Carnegie Mellon University, 1998

This life-cycle inventory of impacts due to the manufacturing and use stages of an automobile was published by Heather L. MacLean and Lester B. Lave of Carnegie Mellon University, in 1998.1 Maclean and Lave used a method of life-cycle assessment (LCA) known as economic input-output (IO) analysis. This method of LCA has the benefit that it allows the researcher to easily trace the environmental impacts of a car purchase not just through the automobile manufacturing industry, but in turn through its various suppliers (of raw materials, parts, chemicals, etc.) The drawback of the method is that it relies on national-average data for most impacts, and cannot provide detail about the reasons for specific impacts. MacLean and Lave analyzed a number of different environmental impacts over the life-cycle of the car. In all cases, they chose not to analyze environmental impacts from the recycling and disposal stage, because they agreed with earlier studies indicating that the environmental impacts of manufacture and use greatly outweighed those of disposal. They based their analysis on a 1990 Ford Taurus, assuming a vehicle lifetime of approximately 14 years and a fuel efficiency of 21.8 mpg.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of energy use over the manufacturing and use stages. The entire manufacturing stage is represented by the slice "Manufacture," which accounts for 10% of the car's total energy impact. The remaining four slices comprise the use stage, 90% of the total energy impact. "Fuel" indicates the energy in the gasoline or diesel fuel used to drive the car. "Fuel cycle" indicates the energy required to extract, refine, and distribute the fuel. "Service" represents the parts and labor required to keep the car working for fourteen years. "Insurance" represents the energy consumed by the offices and services of insurance companies that support car owners.

Figure 1 - Energy consumed over the lifetime of a typical car. The total amount of energy represented by the pie is 1.2 million MJ.

Figure 2 - Toxic releases over the lifetime of a typical car. The total releases represented by the pie are 66.3 kg.

Though energy consumption is a fair approximation of overall environmental impact, the emissions of substances that are toxic to humans don't correlate very well to energy.2 Emissions of toxics tend to correlate more closely to direct human health impacts, rather than environmental impacts. MacLean and Lave report the toxic releases related to car manufacture and use, and these appear in Figure 2. Interestingly, any environmental or health impacts related to toxic releases will be split fairly evenly between manufacture and use, in contrast to energy, which is dominated by the use stage.

This LCA, as well as many others like it, clearly indicate that the bulk of environmental impacts from automobiles occur during the use stage. The implicit message is that if you can replace your car with one that is more energy efficient, chances are high that you truly will be reducing your overall environmental impact. However, if you are a person who considers toxic releases more important than energy use, then it is wiser to hold on to your existing car, in order to avoid promoting the manufacture of a new one.

1 ILEA regularly prints reviews of LCA research published elsewhere. These reviews often leave out many details of the summarized work, and opinions expressed by ILEA may not be the same as those of the original author(s). Please consult the author's original work for a full treatment of their analysis and perspective. The full citation for the work described here is:

Maclean, Heather L. & Lester B. Lave, "A Life-Cycle Model of an Automobile." Environmental Policy Analysis v.3 n.7 (1988), pp. 322A-330A.

2 This is not a conclusion of MacLean & Lave, but rather a rule of thumb used at ILEA based on our experience with life-cycle inventories. The main reason for the lack of correlation is that very small quantities of toxics can have large impacts; an isolated source in one particular sector or stage can strongly influence the overall result.

This summary first printed in the ILEA Leaf, Summer 2002 issue.

32. Meadows, Donella, The limist to Growth, A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind, 1974, Meadows, Donella, Beyond The Limits, Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future, Chelsea Green Publishing Co., Post Hills, VT 1992

33. Meadows, 1992, ibid, p. 84

34. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

President Delivers "State of the Union"

The U.S. Capitol

9:01 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished citizens and fellow citizens: Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.

You and I serve our country in a time of great consequence. During this session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital to our country; we have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared, and we will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people. (Applause.)

In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change and hope and peril, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong. (Applause.)

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations. (Applause.) We will confront them with focus and clarity and courage.

During the last two years, we have seen what can be accomplished when we work together. To lift the standards of our public schools, we achieved historic education reform -- which must now be carried out in every school and in every classroom, so that every child in America can read and learn and succeed in life. (Applause.) To protect our country, we reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland Security, which is mobilizing against the threats of a new era. To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation. (Applause.) To insist on integrity in American business we passed tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account. (Applause.)

Some might call this a good record; I call it a good start. Tonight I ask the House and Senate to join me in the next bold steps to serve our fellow citizens.

Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. (Applause.) After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and stock market declines, our economy is recovering -- yet it's not growing fast enough, or strongly enough. With unemployment rising, our nation needs more small businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, "Help Wanted." (Applause.)

Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place. (Applause.)

I am proposing that all the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006 be made permanent and effective this year. (Applause.) And under my plan, as soon as I sign the bill, this extra money will start showing up in workers' paychecks. Instead of gradually reducing the marriage penalty, we should do it now. (Applause.) Instead of slowly raising the child credit to $1,000, we should send the checks to American families now. (Applause.)

The tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes -- and it will help our economy immediately: 92 million Americans will keep, this year, an average of almost $1,000 more of their own money. A family of four with an income of $40,000 would see their federal income taxes fall from $1,178 to $45 per year. (Applause.) Our plan will improve the bottom line for more than 23 million small businesses.

You, the Congress, have already passed all these reductions, and promised them for future years. If this tax relief is good for Americans three, or five, or seven years from now, it is even better for Americans today. (Applause.)

We should also strengthen the economy by treating investors equally in our tax laws. It's fair to tax a company's profits. It is not fair to again tax the shareholder on the same profits. (Applause.) To boost investor confidence, and to help the nearly 10 million senior who receive dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of dividends. (Applause.)

Lower taxes and greater investment will help this economy expand. More jobs mean more taxpayers, and higher revenues to our government. The best way to address the deficit and move toward a balanced budget is to encourage economic growth, and to show some spending discipline in Washington, D.C. (Applause.)

We must work together to fund only our most important priorities. I will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by 4 percent next year -- about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow. And that is a good benchmark for us. Federal spending should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families. (Applause.)

A growing economy and a focus on essential priorities will also be crucial to the future of Social Security. As we continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable, we must offer younger workers a chance to invest in retirement accounts that they will control and they will own. (Applause.)

Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans. (Applause.) The American system of medicine is a model of skill and innovation, with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much -- and many have no coverage at all. These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care. (Applause.)

Instead, we must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy, choose their own doctors, and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need. (Applause.) Instead of bureaucrats and trial lawyers and HMOs, we must put doctors and nurses and patients back in charge of American medicine. (Applause.)

Health care reform must begin with Medicare; Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society. (Applause.) We must renew that commitment by giving seniors access to preventive medicine and new drugs that are transforming health care in America.

Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is. (Applause.) And just like you -- the members of Congress, and your staffs, and other federal employees -- all seniors should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription drugs. (Applause.)

My budget will commit an additional $400 billion over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties have talked for years about strengthening Medicare. I urge the members of this new Congress to act this year. (Applause.)

To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher cost, the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued. (Applause.) Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care, and many parts of America are losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit. I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform. (Applause.)

Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment. (Applause.) I have sent you a comprehensive energy plan to promote energy efficiency and conservation, to develop cleaner technology, and to produce more energy at home. (Applause.) I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. (Applause.) I have sent you a Healthy Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest. (Applause.)

I urge you to pass these measures, for the good of both our environment and our economy. (Applause.) Even more, I ask you to take a crucial step and protect our environment in ways that generations before us could not have imagined.

In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about not through endless lawsuits or command-and-control regulations, but through technology and innovation. Tonight I'm proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles. (Applause.)

A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car -- producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free. (Applause.)

Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy. (Applause.)

Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country -- the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted -- the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.

Americans are doing the work of compassion every day -- visiting prisoners, providing shelter for battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise; they deserve our personal support; and when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of the federal government. (Applause.)

I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act, to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time. (Applause.)

Last year, I called on my fellow citizens to participate in the USA Freedom Corps, which is enlisting tens of thousands of new volunteers across America. Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens -- boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention, and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad.

I propose a $450-million initiative to bring mentors to more than a million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners. Government will support the training and recruiting of mentors; yet it is the men and women of America who will fill the need. One mentor, one person can change a life forever. And I urge you to be that one person. (Applause.)

Another cause of hopelessness is addiction to drugs. Addiction crowds out friendship, ambition, moral conviction, and reduces all the richness of life to a single destructive desire. As a government, we are fighting illegal drugs by cutting off supplies and reducing demand through anti-drug education programs. Yet for those already addicted, the fight against drugs is a fight for their own lives. Too many Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new $600-million program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years. (Applause.)

Our nation is blessed with recovery programs that do amazing work. One of them is found at the Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A man in the program said, "God does miracles in people's lives, and you never think it could be you." Tonight, let us bring to all Americans who struggle with drug addiction this message of hope: The miracle of recovery is possible, and it could be you. (Applause.)

By caring for children who need mentors, and for addicted men and women who need treatment, we are building a more welcoming society -- a culture that values every life. And in this work we must not overlook the weakest among us. I ask you to protect infants at the very hour of their birth and end the practice of partial-birth abortion. (Applause.) And because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity, and pass a law against all human cloning. (Applause.)

The qualities of courage and compassion that we strive for in America also determine our conduct abroad. The American flag stands for more than our power and our interests. Our founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity, the rights of every person, and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men.

In Afghanistan, we helped liberate an oppressed people. And we will continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children -- boys and girls. (Applause.) In the Middle East, we will continue to seek peace between a secure Israel and a democratic Palestine. (Applause.) Across the Earth, America is feeding the hungry -- more than 60 percent of international food aid comes as a gift from the people of the United States. As our nation moves troops and builds alliances to make our world safer, we must also remember our calling as a blessed country is to make this world better.

Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus -- including 3 million children under the age 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims -- only 50,000 -- are receiving the medicine they need.

Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away. A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines. Many hospitals tell people, you've got AIDS, we can't help you. Go home and die." In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words. (Applause.)

AIDS can be prevented. Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many years. And the cost of those drugs has dropped from $12,000 a year to under $300 a year -- which places a tremendous possibility within our grasp. Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many.

We have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own country. And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief -- a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs, and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS, and for children orphaned by AIDS. (Applause.)

I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean. (Applause.)

This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism. (Applause.)

There are days when our fellow citizens do not hear news about the war on terror. There's never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress, or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers. The war goes on, and we are winning. (Applause.)

To date, we've arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies. (Applause.)

We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We've broken al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.

We have the terrorists on the run. We're keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice. (Applause.)

As we fight this war, we will remember where it began -- here, in our own country. This government is taking unprecedented measures to protect our people and defend our homeland. We've intensified security at the borders and ports of entry, posted more than 50,000 newly-trained federal screeners in airports, begun inoculating troops and first responders against smallpox, and are deploying the nation's first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack. And this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles. (Applause.)

I thank the Congress for supporting these measures. I ask you tonight to add to our future security with a major research and production effort to guard our people against bioterrorism, called Project Bioshield. The budget I send you will propose almost $6 billion to quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments against agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague. We must assume that our enemies would use these diseases as weapons, and we must act before the dangers are upon us. (Applause.)

Since September the 11th, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have worked more closely than ever to track and disrupt the terrorists. The FBI is improving its ability to analyze intelligence, and is transforming itself to meet new threats. Tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, the CIA, the Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze all threat information in a single location. Our government must have the very best information possible, and we will use it to make sure the right people are in the right places to protect all our citizens. (Applause.)

Our war against terror is a contest of will in which perseverance is power. In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon, on a field in Pennsylvania, this nation made a pledge, and we renew that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle, and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men -- free people will set the course of history. (Applause.)

Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world, is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.

This threat is new; America's duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America. (Applause.)

Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again, this nation and all our friends are all that stand between a world at peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility. (Applause.)

America is making a broad and determined effort to confront these dangers. We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm. We're strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world. We're working with other governments to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and to strengthen global treaties banning the production and shipment of missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction.

In all these efforts, however, America's purpose is more than to follow a process -- it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world. All free nations have a stake in preventing sudden and catastrophic attacks. And we're asking them to join us, and many are doing so. Yet the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others. (Applause.) Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people. (Applause.)

Different threats require different strategies. In Iran, we continue to see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction, and supports terror. We also see Iranian citizens risking intimidation and death as they speak out for liberty and human rights and democracy. Iranians, like all people, have a right to choose their own government and determine their own destiny -- and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom. (Applause.)

On the Korean Peninsula, an oppressive regime rules a people living in fear and starvation. Throughout the 1990s, the United States relied on a negotiated framework to keep North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons. We now know that that regime was deceiving the world, and developing those weapons all along. And today the North Korean regime is using its nuclear program to incite fear and seek concessions. America and the world will not be blackmailed. (Applause.)

America is working with the countries of the region -- South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia -- to find a peaceful solution, and to show the North Korean government that nuclear weapons will bring only isolation, economic stagnation, and continued hardship. (Applause.) The North Korean regime will find respect in the world and revival for its people only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions. (Applause.)

Our nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean Peninsula and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal dictator, with a history of reckless aggression, with ties to terrorism, with great potential wealth, will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States. (Applause.)

Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons -- not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities.

Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world. The 108 U.N. inspectors were sent to conduct -- were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that Iraq's regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons, lay those weapons out for the world to see, and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax -- enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin -- enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them -- despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.

Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. Intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with U.N. inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families.

Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks to build and keep weapons of mass destruction. But why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack.

With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region. And this Congress and the America people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes. (Applause.)

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (Applause.)

The dictator who is assembling the world's most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages -- leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained -- by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape. If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. (Applause.)

And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country -- your enemy is ruling your country. (Applause.) And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation. (Applause.)

The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, and our friends and our allies. The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council to convene on February the 5th to consider the facts of Iraq's ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi's legal -- Iraq's illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.

We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. (Applause.)

Tonight I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in or near the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lay ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you. (Applause.)

Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a President can make. The technologies of war have changed; the risks and suffering of war have not. For the brave Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from sorrow. This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we dread the days of mourning that always come.

We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all. If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means -- sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military -- and we will prevail. (Applause.)

And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom. (Applause.)

Many challenges, abroad and at home, have arrived in a single season. In two years, America has gone from a sense of invulnerability to an awareness of peril; from bitter division in small matters to calm unity in great causes. And we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country.

Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity. (Applause.)

We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know -- we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

END 10:08 P.M. EST

35. Zeigler, Alexis, Conscious Cultural Evolution, Understanding Our Past, Choosing Our Future, Ecodem Press, Charlottesville, 1996, aslo at www.tradelocal.org uee