Updated on Friday, February 08, 2008, 00:00 IST

Silicon Valley, Feb 08: More harm than good is being done by the rush to grow biofuel crops, which actually increases the greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, scientific studies have said.

The claim was made in two studies which have been published in the journal 'science'.

One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air -- far more than that spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of gasoline, the Los Angeles times reported.

"We're rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful," Jason Hill, an economist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the study, said.

"It's a little frightening to think that something this well-intentioned might be very damaging."

Hill's analysis looked at the amount of carbon in forests and grasslands that is released into the air when soil is overturned and existing vegetation rots or is burned away.

The study found that clearing an Indonesian Peatland rain forest to make way for a biofuel plantation -- a conversion that is rapidly occurring to satisfy Europe's rising demand for biodiesel -- released so much carbon that it would take 423 years to start achieving a net reduction in emissions.

Even converting existing farmland for food to the one for biofuel crops increases greenhouse gas emissions, as food production is shifted to other parts of the world, leading to destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for farmland, the second study found.

"Any biofuel that uses productive land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it saves," said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the study's lead author.

"The simplest explanation is that when we divert our corn or soybeans to fuel (and) if people around the world are going to continue to eat the same amount that they're already eating, (then) you have to replace that food (from) somewhere else," Searchinger said.

Bureau Report