Can transportation become sustainable with biofuels?

by Birgitte and Ellen

From 1990 to 2015 Norway has seen a 25% increase in emission from the transportation sector (Miljødirektoratet, 2017). This is mainly due to a combination of both economic and population growth, which has resulted in an increase in transportation of both goods and people, as well as a population that has the financial means to travel often. This trend also reflects in which means of transportation that emit the most, with the four main Norwegian emitters being small passenger cars (5.6M ton), heavy transportation (4.6M ton), ship transport and fishing (2.8M ton) and domestic aviation (1.4M ton). Norway and all other EU-countries has established a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) with 40% from 1990-level to 2030 in July 2016 and many Norwegian politicians want large parts of this reduction done by biofuels (Helgesen, 2016). But, is biofuel really that sustainable?

First of all, some facts. Biofuel is produced through a biological process and can come from plants, industrial waste and indirectly from agriculture (BusinessDictionary, 2015). It can be used as a complete substitute to fossil fuels, but is more often used as a diesel additive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles powered by diesel. The reason why we look at biofuel as a greener solution is that the plants that go into making biofuel absorb CO2 from the atmosphere as they grow. However, biofuel also emit CO2 from those plants when it is burned for fuel. So, it all boils down to if biofuels are carbon neutral or not.

The transportation industry argues that emissions from plants should not count, since the CO2 from those plants already was in the atmosphere and will be “eaten up” by new plants (Stefanini & Saeed, 2016). Critics, on the other hand, argue that we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions sooner rather than later, in order to mitigate climate change and global warming. Furthermore, indirect land-use-emissions, that come from developing new land for biofuel plants, further blunts any potential benefits from plant-based fuels. Biofuel crops are very similar to ordinary crops and are therefore more fit to grow in some areas than others. This means that not only would we have to allocate valuable soil to biofuel, but we would also have to ship it, truck it or pipe it to consumers living in low-producing areas, which would increase both emissions from production and total costs.

Another dispute over biofuels, is the dilemma “climate over food”. The demand for food is expected to rise by 70% within 2050 (Steinmetz, 2016), which raises a question if we should continue to use productive land to create biofuel when we have other, much more efficient alternatives, like fossil fuels. Furthermore, is the need for water. Any first-grader you ask can answer the simple question of what a plant needs to grow: water and sunlight. Freshwater is scarce, and the water demands would put unsustainable pressure on water resources in some areas.

There are many more issues with biodiesel, so we suggest that we try to make transportation more sustainable in other areas first. To reduce our general need for transportation there are many measures that could be implemented. Firstly, increasing the travellers in each vehicle. In and around the larger cities we already have some measures implemented, but these could be greatly magnified. Tax reliefs when passing tollbooths and cheaper central government regulated parking for cars, that travel with two or more passengers during rush hour, could lead to fewer cars on the road. Another measure is a cheaper and larger public transportation network, in combination with more bike-paths, achieved thru substitutions and regulations. An efficient and grand public transportation network could also decrease the usage of commercial vehicles and domestic aviation. In commercial transportation of goods, better planning could result in one truck delivering to more than one company each trip. Furthermore, could heavier taxation of commercial road usage lead to more companies choosing trains and ships instead of trucks and road trains.

Hopefully we will see a sustainable transportation, whether with or without biofuels, in the future.
Bibliografi
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Helgesen, V., 2016. Norge skal kutte utslipp av klimagasser. Oslo: Klima- og miljødepartementet.
Miljødirektoratet, 2017. Klimagassutslipp fra transport. [Internett]
Available at: http://www.miljostatus.no/tema/klima/norske-klimagassutslipp/utslipp-av-klimagasser-fra-transport/
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Stefanini, S. & Saeed, S., 2016. The good and the bad of biofuels. [Internett]
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