Making sense of indirect land use change

The production of ethanol continues to get more and more efficient, decreasing the carbon footprint of an already low-carbon fuel. Modern dry-grind ethanol plants now produce a fuel with less than half the carbon intensity of gasoline, according to the latest research (pdf) published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology. Some of our ethanol plants, that use alternative energy or cogeneration, fair a little better. Cellulosic ethanol, made from waste such as corn cobs, even better.

So you would think that ethanol would do well in a low carbon fuel standard, right? Well, like anything, the devil is in the details. In this case, it's in the accounting.

The carbon score of fuels is determined through a process called life-cycle analysis (LCA), which is sometimes referred to as "well-to-wheels" because you account for all of carbon released from producing or extracting the feedstock, refining it into transportation fuel, transporting it to market and burning it in vehicles.

Some now want to expand the boundaries of what is accounted for in LCA to include indirect effects. A select few researchers say that the production and use of fuels also cause carbon release indirectly. That much is true and the ethanol industry is supportive of exploring indirect effects.

However, most researchers have only focused on one indirect effect - indirect land use change (ILUC) - and the research is very new with widely varying results. If you want to learn more, I wrote a piece on it for the latest issue of Vital. There's nothing wrong with research, but now many opponents of ethanol want to insert this one indirect effect into regulatory rules in an attempt to disadvantage ethanol in the marketplace. There are at least three big problems with adding ILUC to the existing LCA of biofuels:

1. Because the research is very new, different researchers have come up with widely varying results. Some researchers have found that the land use change can be carbon negative if managed appropriately. Others, like Tim Searchinger who came up with the most dramatic ILUC impacts, have seen their research completely discredited. This give and take and the wide variations in carbon intensity attributed to ILUC has led many to conclude that the theory is not ready for regulatory use. This poin was made most recently by Professors John Matthews and Hao Tan in their appropriately titled paper Biofuels and indirect land use change effects: the debate continues (pdf).
2. The theory of ILUC is directly contradicted by real-world data. The main theory goes something like this: using corn for ethanol takes land out of the food supply and extra land will need to come into production somewhere to meet the need. The data debunking this theory was well presented in a policy paper (pdf) by Growth Energy. Suffice it to say that corn acres this year will be virtually the same as 1976, exports are within their ten-year average and deforestation drastically declined as ethanol production drastically increased.
3. But the biggest problem is that ILUC is being selectively applied by regulatory agencies like EPA and CARB. These agencies appear to be preparing carbon intensity rulings that include ILUC as the only indirect effect and then apply it only to biofuels. Unbelievably, they ignore the indirect effects for all other fuels, including petroleum, despite the fact that researchers have identified those indirect effects (pdf) as well. Other indirect effects include enhanced oil recovery projects like the Canadian Tar Sands. What's especially amazing about the lack of fairness stems from the way they calculate ILUC. It isn't done on the basis of monitoring land (since that conflicts with real-world data; see point #2 above) but rather through economic modeling. It goes somewhat like this: using more corn for ethanol makes corn more valuable, causing more farmers to switch from beans to corn, which makes beans more valuable, which causes soy producers to tear down the Amazon to plant soybeans (again, never mind the data which shows that cattle, not soy, drives Amazon deforestation). But with that model, one could fairly easily see the indirect impacts of other low-carbon means of transportation. Take natural gas. Using more natural gas in our vehicles would make natural gas more expensive, which would cause natural gas to be a less likely source for power production, which would push more power production to coal. In order to be consistent with ILUC, those emissions from the coal plant should be counted as an indirect effect of natural gas-powered vehicles.

Despite these severe problems with the theory of ILUC, many in the news media have largely taken it as gospel. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer recently ran a piece produced by Climate Central discussing the merits of ethanol as a solution to climate change and it mentioned ILUC. You can watch the piece here:

CARB is expected to rule on the inclusion of ILUC in their low carbon fuel standard this week and EPA could soon address ILUC in their LCA of biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The right thing to do is to hold off on ILUC until science has had a chance to look at all indirect effects of all fuels. To do otherwise is unfair and could increase our country's dependence on foreign oil.

Comments

[Ken Van Doren]

As an enemy of bad economic policies, like subsidizing any business, I do not look to disadvantage ehtanol in the market place. However, I do not look to "advantage it either.' Probably the BEST way to balance ethanol against other fuels is to use economics. Eliminate all subsidies to all fuels, let them compete in the marketplace. Without subsidies, the true cost of production can be reflected in the price to consumers. Anthing else is economic idiocy, and probably environmental idiocy as well. It still remains that ethanol uses as much fuel as it produces. Let it compete on an equal footing. End the subsidies now. We are going broke as a nation because we have increasingly taken to using the force of government to pick each others' pockets.