The food vs. fuel question

Climate Solutions entered the Sustainable Aviation Fuels project fully of the issues surrounding biofuels. We have always advocated for truly sustainable feedstocks that limit competition with food, do not destroy forests and wildlife, and do not erode the soil or use unsustainable amounts of water,  These considerations were at the center of our project.

The feedstock pathways we explore in the SAFN report are from non-food biomass.  Four specifically. 

• Solid wastes from cities and industry, the organic portion that remains after  higher uses in recycling and composting, and these are significant and going in landfills now. 

• Algae grown with sunlight, organic wastes and carbon dioxide now emitted from industry, on non-crop lands.
• Forest residues, logging slash, that is now piled up at logging operation landings and either decomposing or being burned into the atmosphere, making sure that appropriate forest practices rules are followed.
• And non-food-oil oilseeds – camelina in particular - grown in rotation with dryland wheat on ground that is now left fallow.  This is the only place where food and fuel potentially interact.  Growing an oilseed actually can improve agricultural sustainability by breaking up pest and disease cycles in what is now a wheat monoculture, and by reducing wind erosion by growing a cover crop on land that is currently left bare.  Much is still being learned about oilseeds, so we honestly still don’t know the full interactions between them and the wheat crop.  That is why our report calls from significant field research.   We think that any reduction of wheat growing will be made up by an increase in animal feed protein from the meal portion of the oilseed.  In any event, because farmers make their prime revenue off wheat, they will grow the food crop before the fuel crop.  And we are talking about increasing the sustainability of food production.  We cite the global food price crisis in our report.

Commercial and military aircraft have already flown on a range of mixtures of biojet fuel up to 100%.  This is not ethanol or biodiesel, but a chemical mimic of petroleum that works in the jet engine the same as petroleum.  We perhaps can supply 1% of global aviation demand in five years, 5% in 10 years, and move to 50% or greater by 2030 and after.