by BYRON MILLIGAN ENG + TECH
Reassessing
Bioenergy from
the Ground Up
The global potential of abandoned agricultural lands.
Imagine a future in which the
world’s dire need for renewable
energies is answered by
biofuels. Cars and homes are completely
powered by organic plant matter. Electricity
is provided from energy crops, and non-
renewable fossil fuels are no longer relied
upon.
Energy independence has moved from
being an idea of the future to a guarantee
of the present. A promising image such as
this seems to be the blessing that these
times so desperately need. Unfortunately,
the solution is never so easy. Unanticipated
carbon emissions from land use change
Credit: sxc.hu
Credit: sxc.hu
caused by bioenergy crop production are
perpetuating global warming and harming
out environment. Despite the world’s initial
drive for biofuels, it has become clear that
it is necessary to reconsider heading full-
speed towards a biofueled utopia.
Professor of Biology and Environmental
Earth Science Chris Field is doing exactly
that. With three other colleagues, he has
conducted research analyzing the global
potential for the production of bioenergy
on abandoned agricultural lands. Using
abandoned agricultural lands for bioenergy
crop production is a solution that would
potentially have a much smaller negative
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 ENG + TECH
Credit: sxc.hu
impact on the environment, by minimizing
land-use change, carbon emissions, and
biodiversity loss. Moreover, the use of these
lands could potentially end the ever present
fuel vs. food war that makes biofuels so
controversial. The key issue initiating this
research, however, is land-use change.
A Change of Scenery
With the inertia that has plagued the energy
sector of the environmental cause, it is easy
to want to invest in any renewable energy
source that seems immediately viable. This
tendency certainly surfaced with biofuels,
as ethanol now supplies 40% of Brazil’s
transportation fuel needs and American
croplands become devoted more and more
to supplying ethanol production.
The fundamental point we must remember,
however, is that the Earth only has a fixed
amount of land resources. Such intensive
production of biofuels inevitably taps into
this fixed resource one way or another. That
is, given current methods, production of
biofuels must directly or indirectly lead to
land-use change. Direct land-use change
occurs when untapped land is cleared and
converted to the croplands upon which
biofuels will be grown. Indirect land-
use change occurs when food crops are
converted to fuel crops. Such conversion
requires new land to be cleared in order to
maintain the world’s production of food.
And though this new land that is cleared
may be an end result of many intermediate
steps, the bottom line is that it will indeed
be cleared.
The problem with such land conversion is
that in this change, tremendous amounts of
carbon are released. As plant matter from
forests or grasslands decays or is burned,
the carbon that it has been storing for
decades, or even centuries, is released into
the atmosphere. Though biofuels crops do
sequester carbon in the same manner that
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forests or grasslands do, their capturing
capabilities are nowhere near as high. For
this reason, it will take a very long time
for the carbon-sequestering advantage
of biofuels to have a positive net effect
on the atmosphere. Specifically, carbon
sequestration from corn-based ethanol
could take over 167 years to recapture the
amount of carbon that has been emitted
from the land conversion required to
produce this ethanol. This means that
emissions will be increasing for a 167 year
period. That this setback is a product
of a renewable energy source is a scary
proposition indeed. Though biofuels may
seem like a welcome change, the actual
change in scenery that they cause may be
more harmful for the environment than it is
good.
Professor Field, however, says that we
should not give up on biofuels production
completely. We simply must find a way to
produce them sustainably. Only then can
we journey forward with a true solution—or
at least part of the solution—to the world’s
impending energy problem.
Finding the Space
Field and his colleagues J. Elliott Campbell,
David Lobell, and Robert Genova recognize
that in order to develop a viable solution,
it is critical to understand what one has
to work with. It is for this reason that they
conducted a study that was published
in Environmental Science & Technology
entitled “The Global Potential of Bioenergy
on Abandoned Agricultural Lands”. In this
study, they take a holistic approach in
starting to understand what kind of a role
biofuels can play in the future’s energy
solutions.
Says Field, “it is a way to get your arms
around what kind of quantities we are
talking about.” The study assesses how
much abandoned agricultural land

is available globally, what the energy
production from these lands would be, and
how this production compares to the energy
demands of the region. The idea of assessing
the potential of abandoned agricultural
lands arose out of their recognition that
biofuel production must be protective of
the climate, of biological diversity, and of the
world’s food supply. Abandoned agricultural
lands are lands that were once used for
agricultural purposes but now are not. Using
these lands for the production of biofuels,
therefore, would eliminate most of the
current problems associated with biofuels,
especially since many of these problems are
inextricably linked.
Producing biofuels on these abandoned
lands would not cut into food supply, as the
lands are clearly not currently being used for
the production of food. This, in turn, means
that the production of biofuels on these
lands would not impact available land area,
and therefore should not lead to carbon-
releasing land use change. Preventing
such land-use change also helps to protect
biodiversity. Finally, the use of these
lands could also improve their quality by
preventing erosion and restoring nutrients.
This could enable the lands to be used again
for food production at some point in the
distant future.
Quantifying the amount of this type of
marginal land that is available, however, is
much trickier than knowing the reasons why
it should be used. This study was conducted
on a global scale, and though Field jokes
that “the computer really takes care of most
of it,” there clearly was much to manage.
Field set about finding the amount of land
available globally by analyzing different
preexisting land-use databases, such as
HYDE, MODIS, and IGBP. Field remarks that
abandoned-land data “is not something
that people have tried to extract from these
ENG + TECH
“It is a way to get your
arms around what
kind of quantities we
are talking about.” -
historical land-use databases before, but it
Chris Field
is hidden in them, waiting to be brought
out.” The process of finding this information
involved analyzing gridded maps providing
“the fractional area of crop and the fractional
area of pasture within each grid cell for
each decade between 1700 and 2000.
Abandoned areas were determined from
each map grid cell that had decreasing
agriculture areas over time.” This alone,
however, was not enough to provide the
accurate results desired.
Field and his colleagues also looked at
other datasets to determine if land that was
once used for agriculture had truly become
abandoned, or if it had been converted
to some other purpose. They called upon
satellite maps to determine if land truly
is abandoned agricultural land, or if it
has become converted to forest or urban
environments. Using two different sets of
assumptions, one being lower and more
conservative, they estimated the global
area of abandoned agricultural land to be
between 385 and 472 mega hectares.
Knowing this is a terrific insight indeed. But
it is only one step in the research that Field
and his colleagues conducted. Field says
that what they really want to do is to frame
the issue of biofuels and their potential on a
global scale. To do this, they discovered not
only the amount of abandoned agricultural
land available, but also what it means for the
future of energy.
The Story in the Soil
It is hard to see what this quantity of land
represents in terms of energy production.
Field and his colleagues went on to assess
how much biomass these abandoned
lands are capable of producing, and how
much energy demand that biomass could
fulfill. Doing so, of course, required another
simulation model.
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“Every serious student of the future energy
environment has concluded that there is no
single technology that is going to solve the
problem.” - Chris Field
This second model uses satellite information
and data sets that form calculations of
biomass production based on sunlight,
water, soil nutrients, temperature, and
historical growth. By looking at this
information globally, Field and his colleagues
could determine that the 385 to 472 mega
hectares of abandoned agricultural land
could potentially produce between 1.6 and
2.1 billion tons of above ground biomass
per year. They then determined the energy
content of this much biomass, and found it
to be 32 to 41 exajoules. It is important to
note, however, that just as certain regions of
the world will contribute more to the total
biomass produced by abandoned lands
annually than others, this energy content will
vary geographically as well. Nevertheless,
from a global perspective, this tells us the
amount of energy that could be provided by
producing biofuels in a sustainable manner.
Perhaps most importantly, it means that
the amount of energy demand satisfied
by biofuels coming from abandoned
agricultural lands is 7-8%.
This may not seem the like the miraculous
number that we would hope for. It certainly
is not an all-encompassing solution that
will completely revolutionize the future
of energy. Field acknowledges this, and
even says that of this 8%, we will only be
able to actually employ a smaller part of
it. There will be challenges, due to many
variables, ranging from conservation values
to degraded land quality to efficiency issues.
But even if we could only satisfy 1% of the
Credit: sxc.hu
global energy demand with biofuels from
abandoned agricultural lands, Field still feels
it is still extremely significant. “I think almost
28 www.stanfordscientific.org
Credit: sxc.hu
every serious student of the future energy
environment has concluded that there is no
single technology that is going to solve the
problem.” When it comes down to it, we are
going to need everything we can get.
Do not let this information seem too
dreary though. Sitting in the office of
an eco-friendly building, Professor Field
seems wonderfully optimistic. And it isn’t
only about raw numbers. There are other
positive impacts of producing bioenergy
crops on abandoned lands. Field hopes
they will help to restore the quality of the
land and prevent erosion. But even from
the perspective of how much energy these
lands will supply, it may be more significant
than the overarching numbers indicate.
Though the potential of bioenergy from
abandoned agricultural lands may not be
tremendous on the global scale, regionally
it can be much more significant, especially
in areas with high biomass yields and low
energy demands. Finding exactly where
these areas are and how to utilize them,
however, is an entirely new aspect of this
study that Field hopes to pursue.
But for now, we have a starting point, or
perhaps even a re-starting point. We have
a new way to think of biofuels and their
sustainable production.
The need for change is pressing, and the
problems we face seem to be accelerating
toward us quickly. But it has been made
clear what will happen if we proceed too
hastily and without caution. To proceed
properly, we must be informed and
prepared. This research brings us one step
closer.
To Learn More
For more information, visit the website of
the Department of Global Ecology at dge.
stanford.edu