High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
© 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Perspective
Biofuels and indirect land usechange effects: the debatecontinues
John A. Mathews and Hao Tan,
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Received February 17, 2009; revised version received March 16, 2009; accepted March 16, 2009Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI: 10.1002/bbb.147;
Biofuels, Bioprod. Bioref.
(2009)
Abstract: While debate on biofuels and bioenergy generally has sparked controversy over claimed greenhouse gasemissions benefits available with a switch to biomass, these claims have generally not taken into account indirectland use changes. Carbon emissions from land that is newly planted with biocrops, after land use changes such asdeforestation, are certainly real – but efforts to measure them have been presented subject to severe qualifications.No such qualifications accompanied the paper by Searchinger
et al.
published in
Science
in February 2008, wherethe claim was made that a spike of ethanol consumption in the USA up to the year 2016 would divert corn grownin the USA and lead to new plantings of grain crops around the world to make up the shortfall, resulting in land usechanges covering 10.8 million hectares and leading to the release of 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions interms of CO
2
equivalent. These emissions, the paper argued, would more than offset any savings in emissions bygrowing biofuels in the first place; in fact they would create a ‘carbon debt’ that would take 160 years to repay. Suchcriticism would be devastating, if it were valid. The aim of this perspective is to probe the assumptions and modelsused in the Searchinger
et al.
paper, to evaluate their validity and plausibility, and contrast them with other ap-proaches taken or available to be taken. It is argued that indirect land use change effects are too diffuse and subjectto too many arbitrary assumptions to be useful for rule-making, and that the use of direct and controllable measures,such as building statements of origin of biofuels into the contracts that regulate the sale of such commodities, wouldsecure better results. © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, LtdKeywords: biofuels; indirect land use changes (ILUC); carbon emissions; Searchinger
et al
.; biopact; proof of origincertification
Correspondence to: John Mathews, Professor of Management, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, 2109. E-mail: john.mathews@mgsm.edu.au
Introduction
T
he rise o biouels has sparked intense interest, bothpublic and scientifc, concerning energy issues, agri-cultural issues and o course environmental issues,particularly global warming.
∗
Te debate over biouels has largely turned on the validity o claims made or their saving o greenhouse gas (GHG)emissions. Biouels would be carbon-neutral (in principle)
∗
The literature on biofuels is now immense. For a recent authoritative survey ofthe issues by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, see Ref. 1.
BBB147.indd 1
BBB147.indd 1
4/13/09 11:22:32 AM
4/13/09 11:22:32 AM
© 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |
Biofuels, Bioprod. Bioref.
(2009); DOI: 10.1002/bbb
JA Mathews, H Tan Perspective: Biofuels and indirect land use change effects
Security Act (EISA) where the reductions in GHG emissionsproduced over lie cycle calculations are required to includeindirect as well as direct emissions. So the issue is where todraw the system boundary or lie cycle analysis and howto address ILUC eects within the new system boundary.Apart rom industry voices opposing such moves, many are concerned that this is taking regulatory action too ar,and that the science underpinning such actions, includingthe ILUC calculations o authors such as Searchinger
et al.,
cannot stand the weight being placed upon them.
†
In this paper we subject the Searchinger
et al.
calculationsto critique, not rom the perspective o the methodology adopted (the source o most critiques to date) but rom theperspective o the assumptions used and the impact thesehave on the fndings. Our aim is to evaluate the assump-tions utilized and their plausibility, both to test whether thespecifc calculations engaged in by Searchinger
et al.
warrantthe attention they have received, and in a wider sense to ask whether ILUC calculations are su ciently robust and scien-tifcally grounded at this stage to undergird regulatory action.
Outline of the Searchinger
et al.
approach
Te Searchinger
et al
. paper has a very particular approachto calculating ILUC due to growing biouels. Basically ittakes an anticipated ‘spike’ in US ethanol consumption o 56 billion liters (corresponding to the Congressional alterna-tive uel mandate o 30 billion gallons), achieved by 2016,and assumes that all this extra ethanol will be generated by growing corn in the USA.
‡
It then posits indirect land use eects in terms o extrahectarage that will have to be planted in other countries tomake up or the diversion o corn to ethanol in the USA,using a set o partial equilibrium, non-spatial econometricmodels developed at the Center or Agricultural and RuralDevelopment (CARD) and the Food and Agricultural Policy
†See for example letter from Bruce Dale and others to the Administrator of theEPA.
3
‡
Actually Searchinger
et al.
use a spike of 56 billion liters above projected levels,which are also projected to reach 56 billion liters by 2016 – so the spike is actually112 billion liters. It is of course highly improbable that US corn-based ethanol pro-duction will ever reach that level, since alternative sources (such as lignocellulose)and imports are likely to substitute for domestic corn-based production.
i all the carbon released through combustion as uel weredrawn rom carbon absorbed by the plants during photo-synthesis. But in practice, o course, ossil uels are usedat various stages in the lie cycle o biouels, with dierentresults depending on where the boundary o the system to beanalyzed is drawn.One way o drawing such boundaries takes into accountnot just the lie cycle eects o growing the biouel crops andharvesting and processing the product, but deorestation orconversion o grazing land to crop cultivation, induced by theexpansion o biouels demand. Tese are known as indirectland use change (ILUC) eects, and they have come underparticular scrutiny in the past year. No-one denies that ILUCeects are real. Te issue is rather whether they can be meas-ured, and, i so, whether they can be quantifed in a orm thatcould underpin regulatory measures designed to saeguardsustainability.A paper published in
Science
in February 2008 standsout in this regard, or the bold and unqualifed orm o its pronouncement.
2
In a paper co-authored by many o the participants in US debates and coordinated by imSearchinger, o the Woodrow Wilson School at PrincetonUniversity, the claim is made quite unambiguously that i ILUC eects are quantifed in relation to a hypothesizedspike in US corn ethanol consumption o 56 billion litersabove projected levels up to the year 2016 (the goal orbiouels set by the US Congress) then the impact o the ILUCtriggered around the rest o the world would be the releaseo a urther 3.8 billion tonnes o carbon dioxide equivalent(CO
2
equivalent) into the atmosphere. Tese GHG emis-sions would be over and above direct eects caused by thecombustion o the ethanol.Clearly i the Searchinger
et al.
calculations are valid, thenthey would constitute an indictment o biouels policy in theUSA and by implication, around the world. Te criticism wouldbe devastating. But are the claims valid – or even plausible?Tis is an important question, because already theSearchinger
et al.
results have set in motion deliberations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the USA andby the EU in Europe over inclusion o requirements to reducelie cycle GHG emission standards in environmental regula-tions governing biouels. For example, the EPA is debatingrule-making pursuant to the 2007 Energy Independence and
BBB147.indd 2
BBB147.indd 2
4/13/09 11:22:33 AM
4/13/09 11:22:33 AM
© 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd |
Biofuels, Bioprod. Bioref.
(2009); DOI: 10.1002/bbb
Perspective: Biofuels and indirect land use change effects JA Mathews, H Tan
Research Institute (FAPRI) o the Iowa State University todo so. Te calculation using the CARD/FAPRI models thatresults is reported as showing that ‘an ethanol increase o 56 billion liters, diverting corn rom 12.8 million ha o UScropland, would in turn bring 10.8 million ha o additionalland into cultivation. Locations would include 2.8 million hain Brazil, 2.3 million ha in China and India, and 2.2 millionha in the United States’.
2
Based on these new posited plantings, the Searchinger
et al.
paper assumes that land use changes (deorestation)would be triggered, based on the changes observed in the1990s in countries such as China and India – as reported by Houghton,
4
also a co-author o the paper, and maintained in adatabase held at Woods Hole Research Center. Tese land usechanges induced by the planting o extra grain crops wouldthen trigger release o carbon sequestered both in vegeta-tion and in the soil, with a conversion actor o 351 milliontonnes o CO
2
equivalent released per converted hectare. Onthe basis that 10.8 million ha are newly planted, this resultsin calculated emissions o 3.8 billion tons o CO
2
equivalentGHG emissions attributable as the indirect eect o meeting aspike in ethanol consumption in the USA o 56 billion liters.No margins o error are reported in the Searchinger
et al.
paper, and there is no discussion o the assumptions utilizedand the degree o their validity. It is a at result: i there is tobe a spike in consumption in the USA o 56 billion liters overand above projected consumption up to the year 2016, thenit will lead through ILUC around the rest o the world to thedumping o 3.8 billion tonnes o extra CO
2
equivalent GHGemissions into the atmosphere. Such a ‘carbon debt’ would only be discharged by the carbon-utilizing eects o biouels (thecarbon absorbed by the plants as they grow) aer 160 years.Te real target o the Searchinger
et al.
paper wouldappear to be the model o US ethanol production devel-oped by the Argonne National Laboratory in the USA.Researchers at Argonne have developed a model or biouelsproduction and consumption in the USA that takes ull liecycle analysis (LCA) issues into consideration, as well assome (small) attention to land use changes. Tis is knownas the GREE (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions andEnergy use in ransportation) model. Results generated by GREE have been consistently in avor o ethanol as a uelsource, when contrasted with other alternative uels – asshown in Fig. 1.
§
Figure 1. Well-to-wheels GHG emissions of different transportation fuel options.
Source: adapted from Wang.
5§
Based on GREET, ethanol is the only fuel sources which has a negative GHGsemission (see also the sample results shown in GREET’s webpage http://www.transportation.anl.gov/modeling_simulation/GREET/sample_results.html ).
BBB147.indd 3
BBB147.indd 3
4/13/09 11:22:34 AM
4/13/09 11:22:34 AM
Add a Comment