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February 6, 2015
Report Based on False Assumption of Either-Or Land Use Approach
In the World Resources Institute (WRI) working paper, “Avoiding Bioenergy Competition for Food Crops and Land,” the authors work off the assumption that land-use decisions are used making an “either-or” approach, i.e., land can either be used to grow food -- or biofuels crops. Land can either store carbon --or grow food and fiber. Land can either be devoted to wildlife habitat -- or food and fiber production. The ‘either-or’ approach, while straight forward, lacks a basic understanding of the complexities of agricultural and working forest land use, emerging research on the carbon cycle in working lands, and the very real economic pressures on land owners to divert working lands to development.
The report, authored by Dr. Searchinger, a Senior Fellow at WRI and scholar at Princeton University, and WRI consultant Ralph Heimlich, leaves no sector of the biofuels economy untouched in their indictment of renewable fuels, as they have concerns about traditional starch based feedstocks (corn starch ethanol, beets, sugar cane), cellulosic feedstocks (such as purpose grown grasses and short-rotation woody trees), and wood wastes (such as waste from pulp, paper and timber industries). Last week, SBFF promised readers that we would devote more time to understanding the assumptions and conclusions in WRI paper, and we address some of the main conclusions and assumptions employed in our discussion below.
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RFS Roundup: Rep. Goodlatte Gives Helping Hand to Oil Industry, Again
On February 4, Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA), offered H.R.703, ‘To repeal the renewable fuel program of the Environmental Protection Agency’. The bill has 40 Republican co-sponsors. The same day, Rep. Goodlatte, along with Rep. Womack (R-AR), Welch (D-VT) and Costa (D-CA) also reintroduced H.R.704, an RFS repeal bill entitled ‘To amend the Clean Air Act to eliminate certain requirements under the renewable fuel program, to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from approving the introduction into commerce of gasoline that contains greater than 10-volume-percent ethanol, and for other purposes’. H.R. 704 has 35 co-sponsors, 31 Republicans and 4 Democrats. Previously introduced in 2013, the bill has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Rep. Upton (R-MI).
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