US: November 12, 2007
NEW YORK - New plants the biofuels industry has touted as potential sources
of green domestic fuels pose risks as aggressive weeds that could damage
farms and other ecosystems.
Botanists like Richard Mack at Washington State University said the new
crops must be considered to help ease tightening oil supplies, but that they
should be studied carefully before the nascent industry develops the new
energy source.
Some could "jump the fence" and encroach on food crops or suffocate
irrigation ditches and water systems in the US West, where water supplies
are tight, he said.
Plants like miscanthus, switchgrass and giant reed grow rapidly in dense
formations and have few pests and diseases -- traits companies say would
make them ideal for biofuels.
As crude futures test US$100 a barrel and global concern grows about
emissions of climate-changing gases, companies are racing to develop new
biofuels using the plants like cellulosic ethanol for motors and biomass for
power generation.
They say new crops could become better sources than corn, the current
feedstock for US ethanol, because they can be grown on marginal areas rather
than rich farmland, and producing them emits less greenhouse gas.
The Bush administration is granting hundreds of millions of dollars to
companies to build cellulosic ethanol plants, which may use a range of
feedstocks. And the farm bill being considered in the US Congress includes
about US$1 billion in loans to encourage commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol
plants.
"Several of the features deemed ideal in a biofuel crop species are the
exact traits that raise red flags when we investigate risks of exotic plant
introductions," Raghu Sathyamurthy, a plant expert at the Queensland
University of Technology in Australia, said in an e-mail response to
questions.
Many plants that had been introduced as beneficial species have had
long-term costs due to their aggressiveness. A recent paper on biofuels in
"Science" magazine said Johnsongrass, a type of sorghum, has become an
invasive weed in 16 US states and costs cotton and soybean farmers in three
states a conservative estimate of US$30 million annually.
Switchgrass is native in the eastern United States, but it is unknown how it
would mingle with ecosystems in the rest of the country, said Jacob Barney,
a scientist at University of California at Davis and co-author of a report
this week on the risks of new biofuels by non-profit group, Council for
Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST).
John Ferrell, a US Department of Energy biofuels expert, said any risk of
new feedstocks to places where they are not native could be lessened by
government cooperation in regulating them.
FOCUS ON GIANT REED
The risk of any crop becoming invasive is 10 percent or less, WSU's Mack
said. But the amount of marginal land needed to be planted with new crops
will be huge, could make the economic costs of any problems worse, he added.
The plant scientists say poses the most risk, the giant reed, will be used
to generate electricity that will be bought by a utility in Florida. The
highly flammable plant is listed as a noxious weed species in Texas, and
California has spent millions trying to eradicate it.
Ferrell said giant reed worries him and that the DOE does not fund any
projects using it as a biofuel.
Private company Biomass Investment Group, however, will sell power generated
by burning giant reed, to Progress Energy Florida, a subsidiary of Progress
Energy Inc.
"Ignorance is a dangerous thing," Allen Sharpe, president of BIG, said in an
interview about the CAST report. He admitted that if giant reed, known
scientifically as Arundo donax, and being marketed by BIG as E-grass, is
grown near rivers it could migrate and become a problem.
He said when grown in an agricultural setting, it poses no risk. A spokesman
for Progress said its confident BIG can grow the plant safely, but added
that the utility is simply buying the power, not generating it.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Story by Timothy Gardner
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
