Senators Warn Against “Premature” Decision on Indirect Land Use

A bipartisan group of 12 Senators last week called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to propose regulations assuming that greater U.S. biofuels use would increase carbon dioxide emissions. In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, the senators argued that because the data and methods for calculating “indirect land use changes” such as from forest or grassland to crops are not adequately developed they should not be used in ways making it harder for biofuels to meet requirements for reduced carbon emissions from advanced biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

On Monday, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) took the issue to the Senate floor, pointing out a number of reasons why measuring indirect emissions of greenhouse gas reductions is still far from a perfect science and should not be used to make decisions that could affect the move toward using less fossil fuels.

“There are a number of assumptions that can affect the conclusions about indirect land use changes. With any model, if you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out. I want to make sure that the EPA isn’t putting garbage in,” said Grassley. “I want to make sure they know yields per acre for corn have doubled between 1970 and today. I want the EPA to know that nitrogen fertilizer use per acre has been declining since 1985. The EPA also needs to know that the ethanol industry today is vastly more efficient that it was just a few years ago. Ethanol producers use one-fifth less energy today than they did in 2001. More fuel is being produced from the same amount or even less land.”

Grassley concluded that “agricultural practices and land use decisions in other countries are not driven by U.S. biofuels polices and even if they were, we have no accurate way to measure it scientifically.”

Corn Ethanol Land Use Impact is Almost ZERO

Expansion of corn ethanol production to 15 billion gallons per year in 2015 is unlikely to result in the conversion of non-agricultural lands anywhere, according to a new study released today at the National Ethanol Conference by Air Improvement Resource (AIR).

The study found that increasing crop yields and growing supplies of nutrient-dense feed co-products are likely to nullify the need to expand global cropland to meet the corn ethanol requirements of the Renewable Fuels Standard.

According to Thomas Darlington with AIR, indirect land-use affects of corn-based ethanol would be smaller than other studies have estimated. Darlington points out that the earlier studies neglect to factor in yield improvements and “land use credits” from the use of distillers grains. His research also lays out a “philosophical” assumption that if the U.S. exports are constant or increasing even with ethanol, no international land use effects should be assigned to corn ethanol.

Read Darlington’s report here.

Listen to his comments at the NEC here.