PNAS: Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard

[NNadir]

Last edited Thu Feb 17, 2022, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)

We'll just chalk this one up to another big, big, big, big win for wishful thinking, lazy thinking, that destroys the future.

The paper is here: Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard Tyler J. Lark, Nathan P. Hendricks, Aaron Smith, Nicholas Pates, Seth A. Spawn-Lee, Matthew Bougie, Eric G. Booth, Christopher J. Kucharik, Holly K. Gibbs Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2022, 119 (9) e2101084119; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2101084119

Interestingly the authors all work at institutions in the American Midwest where they grow a lot of corn, as shown in this graphic detailing the damage inflicted by so called "renewable energy."



The caption:

Changes due to the RFS. (A) Corn planted area. (B) Cropland area. (C) Carbon emissions. (D) Nitrogen applications. (E) Nitrous oxide emissions. (F) Nitrate leaching. (G) Phosphorus applications. (H) Soil erosion. (I) Phosphorus runoff. Positive numbers indicate an increase due to the RFS. Field-level results were aggregated to the county level for enumeration and visualization.

The paper is open sourced; anyone can read it, but the abstract says pretty much everything one needs to know, and cuts to the chase.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) specifies the use of biofuels in the United States and thereby guides nearly half of all global biofuel production, yet outcomes of this keystone climate and environmental regulation remain unclear. Here we combine econometric analyses, land use observations, and biophysical models to estimate the realized effects of the RFS in aggregate and down to the scale of individual agricultural fields across the United States. We find that the RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 2.8 Mha (8.7%) and total cropland by 2.1 Mha (2.4%) in the years following policy enactment (2008 to 2016). These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher. These tradeoffs must be weighed alongside the benefits of biofuels as decision-makers consider the future of renewable energy policies and the potential for fuels like corn ethanol to meet climate mitigation goals.

I have added the bold.

We couldn't care less. If by the way, you're harboring the notion that all this can be alleviated by electric cars, well, there was, in another context, a paper (not open sourced) that covers a similar notion:

Alternative Plasticizers As Emerging Global Environmental and Health Threat: Another Regrettable Substitution?, Abdul Qadeer, Kelly L Kirsten, Zeeshan Ajmal, Xia Jiang, and Xingru Zhao Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (3), 1482-1488

It contains this text:

Regrettable substitution has an extensive historical narrative and is still a common occurrence (Table 1), resulting in negative repercussions on public health and environment. For instance, Bisphenol A (BPA) (first made in 1891 by Alexander Dianin), which was commonly applied during the production of polycarbonate plastic, was replaced with various bisphenols (BPS, BPP, BPZ, and BPF, to name a few) (9) due to many reports of its toxicities (e.g., neurocognitive disabilities. reproductive, and developmental defects). (9,10) Subsequently, substitute bisphenols (BPS, BPP, BPZ) have been found to have similar toxicities (endocrine disruptor) or, in some cases, worse. (11,12) The well-known toxic chemical DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane)─defects includes developmental issues, endocrine disruption and cancer to name a few─was replaced with other harmful chemicals, such as organophosphates and synthetic pyrethroids. (13,14) Diacetyl’s (cell damage) replacement with alpha-diketone (epithelial damage) as butter flavoring is another example of a regrettable substitution. (15) The continuous practice of replacing one harmful chemical with another is a long lasting problem, as represented by many prominent examples of the past in Table 1.

I added the bold.

All of this extends far beyond plasticizers or "renewable" biofuels, to, in my mind, include the battery/wind/solar fantasy which has the same problem as biofuels discussed in the PNAS paper, land use changes, in the case of the wind industry, the conversion of virgin ecosystems into industrial parks. The electric car scheme is similarly unsustainable as well as morally and environmentally objectionable.

Different is not necessarily better, and the grotesque failure, in particular, of the solar and wind industry to address climate change - something that it was not so much envisioned to do by its early proponents who promoted this awful fantasy so much as to attack nuclear energy - is written in the planetary atmosphere. It was, as nuclear energy saves lives and is the only technology with even a faint hope of addressing climate change, not merely a "regrettable" substitution, but rather a tragic one.

History will not forgive us, nor should it.

Have a nice evening.