Lab Reports No Indirect Land Use Change from Ethanol
Evidence does not support significant effects on U.S. commodity exports and other crops or cropland expansion in the U.S.
Compiled by staff
Published: Oct 21, 2010
Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory will soon publish a paper which concludes that indirect land use change, resulting from expanded corn ethanol production over the past decade, has likely been "minimal to zero. The Oak Ridge analysis looked at real world data on land use from 2001 to 2008. The researchers found that empirical evidence does not support significant effects on U.S. commodity exports and other crops or cropland expansion in the U.S.
Renewable Fuels Association Vice President for Research and Analysis Geoff Cooper says that if substantial indirect land use changes were truly occurring as the result of U.S. ethanol growth, there would have been clear evidence of that during the past decade, as 2001 to 2008 was the period in which U.S. ethanol production rose dramatically. Cooper noted that as the data clearly indicates, the types of land use effects hypothesized by some crude, early analyses didn't happen.
An additional paper, authored by Bruce Dale and other researchers at Michigan State University, found that significantly larger volumes of biofuels can be produced without incurring ILUC. According to the report, using less than 30% of total U.S. cropland, pasture, and range, 400 billion liters of ethanol can be produced annually without decreasing domestic food production or agricultural exports. This approach also reduces U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, or over 10% of total U.S. annual emissions.
The Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory report was actually prepared for the California Air Resources Board. CARB has appointed several teams of expert working groups to assess the methodology and data that went into California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. That standard used a controversial ILUC formula which heavily penalized American grain farmers for carbon emissions theoretically produced by farmers overseas.
"This should put the stake into the heart of the bizarre ILUC scheme," said Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy. "Here are some of the best scientists in the country - scientists who have no stake in the game - who found that ethanol had little to no impact from ILUC. We must ask why California insists on going forward with a regulation that is based not just on controversial theory, but a theory that has been disproved."
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