RESEARCH DIGEST: BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE April 2011

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1 RESEARCH DIGEST: BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE April 2011 Policies that incentivize biofuels in the United States and elsewhere have been promoted on environmental, energy security, and economic grounds. While recent research has undermined each of those arguments, the sampling of studies and materials cited below focus specifically on biofuels climate impacts. Assessing the lifecycle climate impact of biofuels requires an evaluation of direct (e.g., N2O emissions from fertilizer) and indirect (i.e., market- mediated) impacts. The most significant indirect impact is the displacement of food production by policy- mandated energy crop production, which contributes to reductions in food supply. Corn is a particularly egregious example: as a result of the US Renewable Fuels Standard, 40 percent of the corn now grown in the United States is used to make ethanol. As supply margins for corn and other crops tighten, the price of foodstuffs increases. The extent to which biofuels policies are contributing to the run- up in food prices is widely debated, but a well- regarded study by the International Food Policy Research Institute concluded that 30 percent of the rise in the price of cereals during was attributable to competition from biofuels producers. Reuters reported in March 2011 that the UN Food and Agricultural Organization has asked developed countries to re- examine their biofuels strategies - - which include large subsidies - - since these have diverted 120 million tonnes of cereals away from human consumption to convert them to fuels. In April 2011, an FAO analyst told The New York Times, We have to move away from the thinking that producing an energy crop doesn t compete with food. It almost inevitably does. Joachim von Braun, et al High Food Prices: The What, Who, and How of Proposed Policy Actions. IFPRI. Joshua Schneyer, World at Risk of Another Food Crisis: FAO. Reuters (March 14, 2011). food- global- fao- idustre72d3sp ?pagenumber=1 Elizabeth Rosenthal. Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears. The New York Times (April 6, 2011). The increase in food prices encourages farmers around the world to cultivate previously unfarmed land a process that results in substantial losses of soil- and plant- carbon to the atmosphere. In a departure from past practice, the lifecycle analyses developed in recent years count these carbon emissions as a downstream consequence of biofuels production. Accordingly, a biofuel must pay back this carbon debt (via CO2 sequestration by subsequent energy crop growth) before it can be credited with any net climate benefits as compared to petroleum- based fuels (which have relatively insignificant land use- related carbon impacts). Studies that examined this previously ignored impact of biofuels policies CATF BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE 1

2 found that the payback periods can range from several years to several hundred years, depending on the biofuels feedstock. European Union Directorate- General for Internal Policies, Indirect Land Use Change and Biofuels. IP/A/ENVI/ST/ ( Overall, the EC models give clear evidence that [indirect land use change (ILUC)] is a significant contributor to GHG emissions from biofuels and underline that there several options to reduce ILUC effects. ) Sonia Yeh & Julie Whitcover Indirect Land- Use Change from Biofuels: Recent Developments in Modeling and Policy Landscapes. International Food & Agricultural Policy Council. ( To mitigate iluc emissions, policy makers should aim to directly incentivize the development and use of low- GHG biofuels from less land- using sources, including organic waste, crop residues, and forest waste. ) Robert Edwards, et al Indirect Land Use Change from increased biofuels demand: Comparison of models and results for marginal biofuels production from different feedstocks. EC Joint Research Commission 59771, DOI: / (Analysis of six biofuels policy models finds that, All models show significant [land use change] in all biofuels scenarios. ) H.J. Croezen, et al Biofuels: indirect land use change and climate impact. CE Delft, ( According to the simulations considered in this study there is no 1st generation biofuel that unambiguously meets the [EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED)] GHG emission reduction standard. ) Timothy D. Searchinger, et al "Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error." Science, 326 (5952), DOI: /science (Rather than being treated as carbon neutral, biomass should receive credit to the extent that its use results in additional carbon from enhanced plant growth or from the use of residues or biowastes. ) Marshall Wise, et al "Implications of Limiting CO2 Concentrations for Land Use and Energy." Science, 324 (5931): 1183, DOI: /science (Contrasts the long- run effects on global forest cover from policy scenarios in which standing carbon (trees etc) is Holly K. Gibbs, et al "Carbon payback times for crop- based biofuel expansion in the tropics: the effects of changing yield and technology." Environ. Res. Lett. 3 (2008) , DOI: / /3/3/ (Concludes that the carbon released when biofuels displace tropical forest cannot be offset through any plausible advances in energy crop production yields.) L/gibbs/gibbsetalERL2008.pdf Joseph Fargione, et al "Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt." Science, 319 (5867): 1235, DOI: /science (Introduced the term "carbon debt" in the context of direct land use change (i.e. when bioenergy crops themselves supplant "natural" land.) Timothy Searchinger, et al "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land- Use Change." Science, 319 (5867): 1238, DOI: /science (Prompted the first mainstream discussion of ILUC, framed the debate over the US RFS, and attracted substantial criticism from the biofuel industry (although no one has succeeded in discrediting the basic analysis).) CATF BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE 2

3 The following graphic illustrates one of the processes by which US biofuels policies drive indirect land use changes (ILUC) that result in substantial greenhouse gas emissions: Clean Air Task Force, Biofuels and Indirect Land- Use Change. A similar map could be drawn to show how EU biofuel policies diverted rapeseed and other oilseeds from food markets to fuel markets, thereby encouraging palm oil producers in South Asia to increase production to satisfy unmet demand for cooking oil in Europe. Much CATF BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE 3

4 of the new palm oil capacity was created by clearing and draining peat bogs, at great cost to the climate. Clean Air Task Force Leaping Before They Looked: Lessons from Europe s Experience with the 2003 Biofuels Directive. Wetlands International and Delft Hydraulics Peatland degradation fuels climate change. nd- degradation- fuels- climate- change.aspx?id=51a80e5f be0-66f1aa9f9ca9 Indirect land use change is a product of the policy- driven interplay between the complex, globalized markets for agriculture and energy. While the models that are used to project the consequences of the interplay are imperfect, there is little doubt that ILUC is a significant factor. There are uncertainties inherent in estimating the magnitude of indirect land use emissions from biofuels, a collection of prominent experts told California regulators in a 2009, but assigning a value of zero is clearly not supported by the science. Moreover, wrote the experts, Failure to include a major source of pollution, like indirect land use emissions, will distort the carbon market, suppress investment in truly low carbon fuels, and ultimately result in higher emissions. Pam Matson, et al. Letter to Mary D. Nichols, Chairman, California Air Resources Board (April 21, 2009). In a paper that looks closely at the uncertainty associated with biofuels impact on climate, Plevin et al. (2010) find that, ILUC emissions from US corn ethanol expansion thus range from small, but not negligible, to several times greater than the life cycle emissions of gasoline, and given the range of estimates generated by the plausible parameters used in this study, a value much higher than the values estimated by [the California Air Resources Board] and USEPA appears more likely than a value below those estimates. Richard Plevin, et al Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Biofuels Indirect Land Use Change Are Uncertain but May Be Much Greater than Previously Estimated. Environ. Sci. Technol. 44 (8015); DOI: /es101946t. In its 2010 Renewable Fuel Standard Implementation Rule (RFS2), EPA analyzed a number of possible pathways for producing corn ethanol and concluded that the lifecycle GHG emissions (over 30 years) would be 21% lower than an energy equivalent volume of gasoline (thus just meeting the legislated requirement of a 20% reduction). EPA s analysis did not examine corn ethanol and other biofuels as they are being produced and consumed now, however, but rather measured the impact of the fuels as they might be produced in CATF applied EPA s 30- year lifecycle analysis to the corn ethanol that was produced in 2010 and found that its net GHG emissions from will be 28% higher than an energy- equivalent volume of gasoline. The following chart, which comes from a CATF BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE 4

5 forthcoming CATF white paper, was developed utilizing the same assumptions used by EPA in its RFS2 analysis; the only difference is that it examines the lifecycle GHG impact of corn ethanol from rather than : Cumulative CO2e emissions Ethanol vs gasoline tons CO2e 1,600,000,000 1,400,000,000 1,200,000,000 1,000,000, ,000, ,000, ,000, ,000,000 - Ethanol Gasoline CATF BIOFUELS AND CLIMATE 5