Impacts of Biofuels on Climate Change, Water Use, and Land Use
Biofuels have been promoted as a way to mitigate the climate change impacts of energy use because the carbon in a biofuel comes from the atmosphere, which means that the combustion of a biofuel returns to the atmosphere the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that was removed by the growth of the biomass feedstock. Because CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels, such as oil, is one of the largest sources of anthropogenic climate-active “greenhouse gases” (GHGs), it might seem, at first blush, that the elimination of net CO2 emissions from fuel combustion per se, as happens with biofuels, would help mitigate the potential for global climate change. It turns out, however, that this elimination of net CO2 emissions is a small part of a complete accounting of the climate impacts of biofuels.
