Article on hemp biofuel by Giolio Sica in The Guardian

Years ago I did an article with The Guardian, but somehow I missed this very telling piece by Guilio Sica, which detailed how the UK government ignored hemp as a biofuel and even downplayed biofuels - which is ridiculous, as biofuels can be sourced from existing farm waste; wheat straw etc. can be turned into alcohol at very low cost and in the process generate local employment. Too many politicians are on the take and it can be said are committing treason by working against national interests.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Guardian, 28 January 2008

The Royal Society, the European Commission and the UK government have all managed, in the last few days, to take the wind out of the sails of the biofuel industry, publishing reports that suggest biofuels could be causing more harm than good, the crops not being as environmentally friendly as first thought, with the Commons environmental audit committee calling for a moratorium on biofuel targets until more research can be done.
What struck me as astonishing about these reports is that they all managed to ignore the one crop which has been successfully used for many years to create bioethanol and biodiesel, is environmentally friendlier to produce than sugar beet, palm oil, corn or any of the crops mentioned in the report and can grow in practically any temperate to hot climate leaving the ground in better condition than when it was planted.
That plant is hemp.
Last year, the Conservative MP David Maclean tabled a question to the then environment secretary, Ian Pearson, asking what assessment had been made about the potential to grow hemp as a biofuel crop in England. Pearson responded:

Research into the potential of hemp as a biofuel crop suggests it is not currently competitive compared to other sources of biomass. However, hemp does have a number of high-value end uses. For example, as a fibre crop it is used in car panels, construction and as horse bedding. In addition, hempseed oil is used in food, cosmetics and various industrial applications. As a result, there is little interest in this country at present in growing it for biofuel production.

So the government cannot point to ignorance of hemp's uses, which makes hemp's omission from any of the recent reports even more perplexing.

Advertisement

The fact that hemp does not need to have land cleared to grow it, grows faster than any of the crops currently used and leaves the ground in a better state when it is harvested should surely be enough for it to be considered a perfect crop to offset the carbon currently produced by fossil fuels and by the less efficient biofuels currently being so roundly criticised by the various official research bodies.
The influential Biodiesel magazine reported last year on the cultivation of hemp as a biofuel and it too could only point to its lack of economic competitiveness (due to its minimal production) as a reason for not seeing it as a viable biofuel. But surely if it was mass-produced, this one drawback could be overcome and its many benefits as an efficient biofuel could be harnessed.
As far as research and implementation of hemp for biofuel, the US is way ahead of Europe and there are a range of websites dedicated to the use of hemp as a fuel for cars.
In the UK, companies such as Hemp Global Solutions have been set up very much with climate change and the reduction of carbon emissions in mind, but there is little, if any, research in this country that has looked into the viability of the hemp plant as a fuel for cars.
So why was there not a single mention of this miracle crop, that, in addition to being able to be used as fuel, can also be used as paper, cloth, converted into plastic and is a rich food source containing high levels of protein?

House Bill 154 passes, ready for Senate in Hawaii

An industrial hemp field in France.

HONOLULU, HI — A bill that would establish a two-year hemp pilot program in Hawaii will advanced to the floor of the Senate for a vote after passing two separate committees Thursday. The bill passed unanimously on the floor of the House earlier this month.

If passed, House Bill 154 HD2 would allow the Board of Agriculture to establish a two year industrial hemp research and biofuel crop pilot program.
A primary focus of the proposed research would be phytoremediation, a process by which the hemp plant draws toxins out of the soil and processes them safely through its roots, stalk, branches, and leaves.
The Senate Committee on Agriculture recommended the bill pass by a 7-0 vote Thursday, shortly before the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment recommended the bill’s passage 5-0.
The bill now advances to the floor of the Senate for a vote, but a vote has not yet been scheduled on the bill.
House lawmakers passed an amended version of the original bill, which expands the research to include hemp’s value as an alternative biofuel for Hawaii.
“People now understand how industrial hemp can benefit Hawaii,” said State Representative Cynthia Thielen (R-Kaneohe Bay), who cosponsored HB154. “The hemp plant itself uses phytoremediation to cleanse the soil of pesticides, heavy metals, oil, and other toxins.”
“Adding industrial hemp as a source of biofuel is another avenue worth pursuing,” Thielen said. “Reducing our dependence on foreign oil through the use of a renewable resource would be very good for Hawaii.”
The bill was introduced by Thielen, Speaker Joseph Souki, Representative Derek Kawakami, Representative Sylvia Luke, and Representative Angus McKelvey in January.
Cultivation of industrial hemp is currently prohibited by the federal government, but legislation has been introduced in Congress to allow the commercial production of hemp in the United States, the only industrialized nation in the world to prohibit the cultivation of hemp.
Hemp products can legally be sold in the United States, but the hemp must be imported from other countries.

AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT FOR BIOFUELS

Policy paper on Bio-based Economy in the EU: Level Playing Field for Bio-based Chemistry and Materials

by Michael Carus, Dirk Carrez, Harald Kaeb, Jan Ravenstijn and Joachim Venus

Over the last ten years numerous studies have demonstrated the impressive potential of bio-based products: The production of bio-based chemicals and materials can create ten thousands of new green jobs, increase resource efficiency and make a considerable contribution to climate protection and innovation. Despite these benefits the investment in industrial biotechnology and biorefineries in Europe remains low. The political and economic framework in the EU does not support the industrial material use of biomass - this is in contrast to bioenergy and especially biofuels, which has expanded rapidly in the EU over the last ten years. The European "Innovation Union" needs to establish a level playing field for bio-based chemistry and materials in order for the EU to realize the potential of greening its process industries. Already 30 Public Authorities, Associations & Agencies, Bio-Industries (Start-Ups, SME and Non-SME), Universities/Institutes and Consultants are supporting the policy paper. If you would like to support this policy paper too, please just send a support email by April 26th to: michael.carus@nova-institut.de

We will send the policy paper with a list of supporters end of April to Brussels, as the consultation on a new EU bio-based economy strategy will close on May 2nd. Best regards and many thanks in advance Michael Carus

P.S.: Please circulate this email in your bio-based networks

P.P.S.: More information on bio-based policy: www.bio-based.eu/policy/index_en.php

Dipl.-Phys. Michael Carus, Managing Director Bio-based economy nova-Institut GmbH - Chemiepark KnapsackIndustriestraße50354 HürthGermany Tel +49-(0)2233-48 14 40 (office)Fax +49-(0)2233-48 14 50email: michael.carus@nova-institut.de

Internet: http://www.nova-institut.euwww.bio-based.eu/ Geschäftsführer: Michael Carus, Dirk SchubertSitz der Gesellschaft: Hürth, Amtsgericht Köln - HRB Nr. 44144Umsatzsteuer-Nr. 224 / 5731 / 0281

BURNING OUR FOOD AS THE WORLD STARVES

The New York Times yesterday, in an article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, uncovered more about the use of food crops as biofuel. In each and every article there is conspicuous by its absence any discussion of using the cellulose based waste parts of the plants - which are of little use in returning to the soil - as ethanol; for some reason, industry is taking the food right out of our mouths and producing bioethanol from the edible parts of plants - which is backwards, and ought to be addressed. The perception is that by lack of any discussion of this, articles can be used to scare the public away from ethanol and other biofuels - and steer us towards two and only two alternatives: nuclear power and fossil fuels. A recent letter in the NYT recently argued for the former, worded as if these two were the only choices. What both have in common is very rich investors who would like to keep ethanol out of reach.

But why are journalists not working to educate their readers? Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

It can become more of a complex issue than one article can address, as Rosenthal does note by quoting Olivier Dubois, a bioenergy expert at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome; Dubois notes that is hard to quantify the extent to which the diversions to biofuels have driven up the food prices: "The problem is so complex, so it is hard to come up with sweeping statements like biofuels are good or bad," he informs; yet sweeping statements are what the press likes to make of this issue, along with hype. Biofuel use of grain for non-food uses has risen from 1% to 6% recently, so it hardly equates to the 20 to 40% rises in food prices; which may well be due more to a rise in transport prices and plain old greed, along with some major crop failures in the world recently.

One wonders if the production of bioethanol would not in fact decrease the price of food, as the waste parts of edible plants could be sold thus increasing the yield for the farmer, who could afford to sell the edible parts for less...but this simple fact is conveniently not raised.

And if biofuels were widely produced, the resultant decrease in transport costs would also help decrease food costs...so why are we using so much of the edible parts for this? Thailand recently exported 98% of its cassava crop to China for biofuel development. And the US uses 40% of its maize (corn) for fuel, occasioning a 73% rise in its price on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange from June t0 December 2010. As far away as Rwanda, the price of this food rose 19%.

The whole thing seems one mess; but why? Look at our leaders and ask: Are they stupid, do they not care, are they lazy, or are they bought off?

If they were at all serious about biofuels and feeding people, they would legalise hemp in the US - growing if first for the edible seed, and then using the stalks for ethanol.

HEMP REPORT IN VENTURA

Here I sit in London, thinking of Highway 101, Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Ventura, Santa Monica...when lo' and behold there is a story on hemp in the Ventura County Star. At first a ray of sunlight pierces my foggy mood, but then I am let down by yet another reporter who does not bother with facts...and I just spent an hour yesterday dealing with Johann Hari and George Monbiot...I'm beginning to think there ought to be government licencing on journalism, as there is on the medical profession.

Stephen Schrader starts off with one blunder by saying that ethanol is expensive. Oh? Does he realise that this is what we drink in beer, wine, etc., and that it is a natural product that results when we leave plant wastes lying around? How high a wage do we pay someone to stuff a vat with wheat stalks and hemp hurds? And how much would a refinery pay for such material, considered garabage to begin with? Let's look at the reality of cheap raw materials and a simple processing operation.

Schrader then goes on to extol hemp based bio-diesel. Fine, I would welcome bio-diesel, only I would not recommend hemp for it; not that hemp is not an excellent plant for this, but as hemp oil is high in Omega 3,6 & 9 essential oils, and commands a price of several pounds or dollars a half litre, it would be folly to burn it in a fuel tank. Added to which is the fact that diesel has a high viscosity and gels in low temperatures. But then again he is writing in southern California, where the word snow does not exist, and perhaps the thought of a tank full of high protein biofuel full of Omega oils appeals...

Another point to query in this article is the assertion that hemp oil is a byproduct of processing hemp into paper and cloth. Absolutely not. The oil comes from the seeds, and these are not involved in the fibre processing. The fibres come from the stems, and these are harvested usually before the seed is ripe, as allowing the stems to go on too long causes them to harden.

Some strong points exist in the article, however, and when he talks about hemp replacing tree pulp and cotton, he is right on. In California deforestation and cotton cultivation pose great problems, with the latter requiring about 50% of all pesticides used. It also depletes the water supply.

But then Schrader ends on a completely wrong note when he asserts: "The down side of legalizing [sic] industrial hemp is that it brings along its "kissin' cousin", marijuana. The two plants are virtually indistinguishable to the casual observer."

Oh boy, this guy needs to go back to school. It is journalism like this that ought to be outlawed under sheer stupidity laws. Since when does a 8-16 foot high thin stalk look like a multi-branched 3 foot high shrub? He makes George Bush look smart! This is scary. Stupid journlists and stupid politicians are taking us over the edge...

TOO MUCH SALT IN THE SOUP

Ten years ago, global warming experts were considered a bit crazy, worth mention in a small byline on p. 197 of your local rag. Now, global warming is front page day after day. To counter this, the pundits are out there calling the scientists a bunch of conspiracy theorists. One of them, Melanie Phillips, was caught out on the BBC when asked if she realised that her sources were industry funded. No, she was rather clueless on that one, but it made her sound important to put people down and quote some 'experts'.
However, it is not just those taking dosh from big business who muddy the waters. It seems now every anarachist and journalist is out there claiming to be an expert as well, and when they do a halfway job, they end up discrediting the work of others who have spent far more time and effort than themselves. It seems that from the ranks of anarchists, we have George Monbiot raging against the day without all the facts, and he gets put in his place by those who do. Weighing in to the Guardian on 30 January, he bashes that other idiot George, aka W, and thus starts off on a roll. However, he would be wise to cut it short, as after taking aim at so ridiculous a figure, he then descends into folly. Whilst he questions W's motives in calling for biofuel production, telling us, as if we did not already know, that W just might be funneling public funds to his buddies who have farms, he calls these moves "quixotic solutions." He then, as is common practice in the Guardian, alludes to maize and rapeseed as the crops which will provide the material for this. (Which, BTW, is cellulose, the most common compound in the vegetable kingdom). Their rival paper, the Independent, is prone to the same error. Rape seems to be what they believe would be used, then they realise it cannot supply such great amounts of cellulose as the stems are flacid, then someone writes in that this just won't work. The Independent science editor Steve Connor ought to know better, but he goes on about maize, ignoring other, better crops for biofuel. For one thing Steve, maize, or corn as it is known in North America, does not grow in Canada or in parts of the UK.
But getting back to that other would-be science editor, George of the Guardian, it is interesting to note that he repeats a very serious bit of misinformation that has been put forth repeatedly (including by one letter writer to the Independent), which is to say that using plants for biofuel would raise world food prices.
Assuming, perhaps, that the farmers are going to sell the edible parts of their maize, if that is what they are going to use, or the seeds from their rape, to the fuel producers. Of course not. Henry Ford, when he produced ethanol from hemp and other common crops, did not use the edible parts; rather, he created a secondary market for the waste parts, which for hemp, was the hurd, the inner core. Maize stalks and cobs can go into the pot for fuel after the kernels have gone into the pot for food, and the same example is mirrored in so many hundreds of other crops. George Monbiot shows himself a cut below that other George whom we all so loathe. Ironically it is GW, not GM, who is doing something, however selfishly, about producing biofuel.
But GM is not alone in this practice. Examine for a moment the usual eruption of irony spewed forth by Johann Hari in the Independent, who writes on so many subjects he might pass for an all-knowing genius if he could just get them right. His diatribe on 25 January bashes global warming deniers. Again, if he knew when to stop he might be a genius. Like Monbiot, he goes on to display a certain ignorance and weakness in debating style. He picks on a number of obviously wrong counter arguments, but does not mention at all the fact that Greenland was arable in the Middle Ages or, of more recent application, the facts put forth by Piers Corbyn (brother to MP Jeremy Corbyn). Much as I support the argument for global warming, I do not do so by suppressing the counter arguments, which can quite often be of great value to the whole picture. Picking and choosing your facts is how so many journalists work, but to present a holistic picture we must listen to all sides and form our opinions after we have listened.
Again, I might emphasise that I am well into the global warming camp and work to reduce pollution. However, if that warming is partly caused by the sun and other forces other than man-made pollution, we need to know that as well and act accordingly.
Another aspect to all this is that a rush to judgment on this complicated issue seems to be the style of those who stand to profit from or tax the carbon credit schemes. Much of this is newly foisted on the public and just because someone like George M or George W comes out and shoots their mouth off on a subject, does not mean we all ought to take their word as final. That is insanity.
Instead, I stand for sanity, demanding to hear all sides of the arguments, even those sides I do not like. There may be points in their thesis that have been overlooked, and the opposition can add to the campaign.
But getting back to hemp, what bothers me enough to write this much is that all these 'experts' and pseudo-scientists writing in these supposedly progressive papers ignore the hemp issue; years of giving them the information on hemp have, I think, been wasted, as the advertisers of these papers include car manufacturers (yes, the Guardian is in the business of advertising 4x4s after Monbiot rants against their use) and cotton growers.
If they were more intelligent, they would look at the plethora of information about hemp, which is one of, if not the, fastest biomass producers on the planet. You may just want to bring this to their attention, and you can do by emailing them at: editor@guardian.co.uk or s.connor@independent.co.uk Don't bother with Mr. Hari, his phone does not take incoming calls and he does not respond to facts put to him by email.

ETHANOL, HEMP & THE PRICE OF CORN

As the price of a barrel rises these days, and let's review, it has risen sharply since September, 2001, other commodities rise as well; how I wish I had bought gold when it was cheap, at a mere $350 an ounce! Having missed such a golden opportunity, there is comfort in knowing there are other markets. In Iowa this month, the price of a more mundane item, corn, was up for discussion. While it had no such stellar rise as petrol and precious metals , it is nonetheless going up a notch, from $2.00 a bushel to $2.10 a bushel. OK, that's only 5%, but enough to encourage farmers to pick corn this year rather than soy, wheat or cotton.

Part of the rise in the price of corn is due to its cellulose content; cellulose is a carbohydrate which converts easily to ethanol, and for many people tired of paying lots of money for petrol, this is an important bit of information. Truckers have been demanding biofuel for years now in the US, as their incomes are shrinking as inflation rises. So the corn farmers are now able to sell what was once farm waste, the inedible parts of the corn plant, and do the country a service as well. Patriotism, without shedding blood.

However simple some things may be in life, there are always those who can get things wrong, and in the reporting of this in no less a paper than the New York Times, there were worried voices expressing concern about using a food plant to supply energy. Do these people really imagine that they are going to use all the kernels to make fuel? Do they not realise that the kernels are a fraction of the plant's weight, they are the seeds, thus they contain the proteins that make them valuable as a food; the rest of the plant can be dehydrated and fermented for biofuel. We kill two birds here for the price of one.

Sloppy reporting over the years about energy plants is not limited to the Grey Lady in the Big Apple; no less a rag than the UK's Independent will write articles about biofuel without an understanding of the whole picture. Recently, they wrote that it was unfeasible for the UK to farm energy as the rape crop would not produce enough ethanol from its stems. Right they are, but why are they talking about rape when Henry Ford, who certainly did know a thing or two about cars and energy, talked about hemp and farm wastes?

At least the NYT article (Matthew Wald, 16 January, 2006) took notes from those in the business, such as Robert C. Brown, a professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State, who noted that the idea that using corn for energy was taking food from our mouths was incorrect. Benie Punt, also quoted in the NYT, is a manager of a plant in Siouxland, and he was also able to point out that the leftovers from the ethanol conversion are even used as animal feed.

The scare tactics, interestingly enough, come from the Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute, whose director, Joachim von Braun, warns that: "even a small shift could have big effects...the mouth of your car is a monster compared to your family's stomach needs." OK, one does not need to be a rocket scientist, or related to a former Nazi rocket scientist, to see that this argument is actually better suited towards two other goals - reducing driving and reducing dependence on foreign energy. For an idiot, it stands to reason that we better not use farm wastes to produce ethanol, unless we want a big raise in the price of food.

Actually, by harnessing the energy in farm wastes, the US would quite likely get back on its feet finacially, while providing jobs in the energy and agricultural sectors to its own citizens. If farm wastes were not enought to provide the country with its energy supplies, then certain crops could be grown to provide more, such as hemp, which is one of the fastest biomass producing plants in the world, ready to harvest in a season with little effort. Its stems are high in cellulose, and the seeds can be harvested for oil and cattle feed among other products.

The Founding Fathers grew hemp, so there ought to be little objection to growing this in the US, it can, by the way, be grown in all 50 states. With a little more education and the will to succeed we can. Recently, Sir Richard Branson put his money into ethanol production after listening to Al Gore hold forth on the subject in London. Sir Richard is using farm wastes, thus utilising what is already cheap and available. Little wonder that he became the billionaire that he did.