New Report Complicates Ag's Assault on Biofuel Rules

A new study in the journal Science is going to complicate a mission by dozens of farm-state lawmakers to eliminate part of the EPA's proposed biofuel rules.

In the study, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland compared the impact of two types of climate polices on land use: one that limits carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry only, and a second that limits emissions from fossil fuels, industry and changes in the land.

Their conclusion, vividly displayed in the graphs below: Policies that ignore terrestrial emissions while capping fossil fuel emissions will lead to widespread deforestation, increase global carbon emissions and will actually hurt farming in the future.

The EPA considered those potential impacts when it proposed a Renewable Fuel Standard last month that would measures biofuels' lifecycle emissions – including indirect land-use changes, such as the emissions generated by the clearing of Amazon rainforest for farms to make up for cropland lost to corn ethanol production in America.

At that depth of lifecycle accounting, corn ethanol's emissions are on par with gasoline, which is why the farm state congressmen are so upset.

Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson, chairman of the House Agriculture committee, has gone so far as to threaten to hold the Waxman-Markey climate bill hostage to force changes in the fuel standard. Peterson and 46 co-sponsors are pushing a bill, dubbed the Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act, that would eliminate land use changes from lifecycle emissions accounting.

The study's findings suggest that Peterson's bill would be a mistake. 

Instead, the authors recommend that governments put a comparable value on both types of carbon emissions – those related to fossil fuel use and those related to land use. 

Land use impacts emissions in two major ways: Forests are valuable carbon sinks, currently absorbing about one-fifth off the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation currently accounts for about 20 percent of the human contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

If the world caps its energy-related carbon emissions without considering emissions related to land use changes, bioenergy crops will balloon, creating land competition for food production, and coming close to wiping out unmanaged forests by the end of this century, the researchers write. They explain:

“Several research studies have shown that the outcome of imposing a mitigation regime that only values carbon from energy and industrial sources creates incentives to increase bioenergy."

"As the use of bioenergy increases, land uses shift from food and fiber crops, forests, and unmanaged ecosystems to dedicated biomass crops. This in turn increases terrestrial carbon emissions globally—a perverse result of curbing energy and industrial emissions."

That has “profound implications for forests, crop and livestock prices, diet, the global energy system, and the cost of meeting environmental goals.”

The researchers used computer models that drew in economics, energy, agriculture, land-use changes, and greenhouse gas emissions. They assumed the population would continue growing and that its standard of living, food and land needs, and technological skills would increase over time. They also assumed that energy technologies would include carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal power, and better energy efficiency in buildings and transportation.