Bioethanol: time to stop comparing apples to oranges
Another conclusion can be drawn from this modeling: if we take account of impact categories other than GHG emissions and the exhaustion of fossil resources such as ecotoxicity, acidification of soils and eutrophication of water by waste pollution, it becomes clear that the fabrication of bioplastics leads to more damage to the environment than the traditional plastics sector. This applies regardless of the raw material in question. No need to call BioWanze into questionFinally, we come to the third main category of results: the payback time for climate change. This is the number of years necessary so that a crop that is “economic” in greenhouse gas emissions compensates for its negative effect in terms of land use change. Therefore, if we take account of GHG emissions caused by deforestation linked to the cultivation of Brazilian sugar cane intended for use as biofuel, the payback time varies between 39 and… 152 years (in the event of indirect changes in land use). For Belgian crops used as biofuel, indirect changes in land use concern the transformation of grassland into land for the cultivation of wheat or sugar beet in other countries of the European Union (on condition of obtaining a dispensation from the Common Agricultural Policy). Within this prospective framework, the payback times calculated are much shorter, that is to say, 14 years for wheat and 10 years for sugar beet. In the case of bioplastics, the payback times vary between 26 and… 101 years for sugar cane (indirect changes here too). The payback times are 31 years for sugar beet from Ukraine and 8 years for Belgian sugar beet. For Belgian wheat it is 14 years. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
© 2007 ULi�ge
|
||