Topic: biofuels

Biofuel Investments Threaten Local Land Rights in Tanzania

Peter Veit — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:15:23 -0500

This piece originally appeared on the International Land Coalition Land Portal. This full text is available here.

Just a couple weeks ago, Iowa State University (ISU) withdrew from advising the Iowa-based firm AgriSol Energy on its planned land deal in Tanzania. AgriSol Energy is seeking to acquire 320,000 hectares in Rukwa Region for large-scale food and biofuel production.¹ ISU’s role had been to ensure that the for-profit venture be socially responsible and benefit local communities. However, the development of AgriSol’s large-scale farm requires the eviction of 162,000 local farmers – hardly a benefit to the local communities.

In October 2011, work at the jatropha² plantation in Kisarawe District, Tanzania came to a halt when managers of Sun Biofuels, a British company, told more than 300 workers to collect their final paychecks and leave until further notice. The company established the 8000-plus hectare estate in 2008, but is now facing serious financial problems.

These layoffs came on the heels of BioShape, a Dutch company, ceasing operations in November 2009 on its 34,000 hectare jatropha plantation in Kilwa District. BioShape had employed more than 100 permanent staff, and about 700 casual laborers. In February 2010, the company suspended its last field operations and stopped paying salaries to its local employees and, in June 2010, BioShape was officially declared bankrupt

Other biofuel projects in Tanzania are also struggling to sustain their operations, including Swedish Sekab AB, Europe’s largest ethanol company. Despite these experiences, however, the government of Tanzania is considering allocating even more land to biofuel companies such as AgriSol Energy.

Most rural people in Tanzania make a living off their land, including subsistence farming and animal husbandry. When their land is taken—even if properly compensated for their losses—many fall into deeper poverty. New policies and government practices are urgently needed to protect local property rights to land and natural resources.

Read the full text here >>>

Iowa-based Summit Group and Global Agriculture Fund of the Pharos Financial Group, in partnership with AgriSol Energy LLC and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Iowa State University, are developing a large agriculture enterprise in Tanzania. The site encompasses three “abandoned refugee camps”– Lugufu in Kigoma province (25,000 ha), Katumba (80,317 ha), and Mishamo (219,800 ha), both in Rukwa province. ↩
Jatropha seeds contain oil that can be processed into biodiesel. ↩

MEDIA ADVISORY: 4th Annual Ecosystem Markets Conference - Making Ecosystems Work

Lauren Zelin — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 14:18:28 -0400

Experts and innovators meet to chart the future of ecosystem conservation

The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the American Forest Foundation (AFF) co-host the 4th annual Ecosystem Markets Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, June 29 – July 1, 2011. Hundreds of experts, innovators, land owners, government officials, investors and academics will discuss how to make ecosystem markets work to conserve natural resources; followed by a field trip through Aldo Leopold’s backyard to see ecosystem services in action.

At a time when state and federal budgets for conservation are dwindling, ecosystems are being degraded and threats to natural resources are increasing, more market-driven solutions are necessary to open the next chapter in conservation. Through ecosystem markets, the many benefits that well-managed lands provide, such as clean water and wildlife habitat, are assigned a value that results in payments to landowners for providing these services. This win-win for the public and landowners is necessary to protect the planet’s natural resources.

The 2011 conference theme “Ecosystem Markets: Making Them Work” underscores the need for innovative thinking to bridge the gap between ecosystem market potential and reality. Participants will gather for two days of open-format meetings on topics including payments to landowners, policy and ethics, private investment, water quality, bioenergy, and more.

The conference will open with a video address by Harris Sherman, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Senior representatives from the host organizations along with ecosystem services experts from around the world will participate in the conference and will be available for interviews.

What:
4th Annual Ecosystem Markets Conference. Website: http://ecomarketconference.com/

When:
June 29-30, 2011, conference sessions
July 1, 2011, field trip to working ecosystems and Aldo Leopold’s shack

Where:
The Madison Concourse Hotel and Governor’s Club
1 W. Dayton Street, Madison, WI
(Free parking is provided for our conference group)

Media Highlights:

Wednesday, June 29, 2011
* 8:15 a.m. – Welcome and video address by Harris Sherman, Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment, U.S. Department of Agriculture
* 8:35 a.m. – Plenary Session 1: The Current State of Ecosystem Markets
* 10:20 a.m. – Plenary Session 2: Policies to Support Ecosystem Services and Markets
* 12:40 p.m. – Lunch and preview of Green Fire documentary, hosted by the Aldo Leopold Foundation and followed by a Q&A session

Friday, July 1, 2011
* 8:00 a.m. – Field trip; See below for details. * Experts available for interviews during the tour

For the full conference agenda, visit http://ecomarketconference.com/agenda/.

RSVP and Media Requests:

Amanda Cooke | AFF | ACooke@forestfoundation.org | 202-463-2731
Lauren Cole | WRI | LCole@wri.org | 202-729-7736

Follow the Twitter conversation - #ecomarkets2011

Field Trip Information - PHOTO OPPORTUNITY

What:
Tour the Leopold family shack and farm, and see sites conserved for ecosystem services through public/private partnerships, including the Leopold Waterfowl Production Area, Baraboo Oak Street dam removal site, and the Leopold Memorial Reserve constructed wetland. Detailed agenda: http://ecomarketconference.com/field-trip/.

When:
July 1, 2011 from 8:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m.

Where:
Meet at the Madison Concourse Hotel for bus departure.

Who:
Experts from WRI, AFF and other conference attendees will be available for interviews and photo opportunities during the Field Trip. Please contact Amanda Cooke or Lauren Cole to RSVP.

Thanks to the Aldo Leopold Foundation and the Sand County Foundation for their generous assistance in hosting and organizing the field trip.

Climate Science Research Review Answers Climate Change Questions

Kevin Lustig — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:32:44 -0400

Update [10/17/2011]: WRI has released the latest edition of Climate Science. After you check out the resources below, take a look at our Q&A with the authors on WRI Insights or read the full report.

With wildfires, floods, tornadoes, and other dramatic weather events making front page news around the world, many people are asking questions about the signs and impacts of a changing climate. Climate Science is the World Resources Institute’s periodic review of the state of play of the science of climate change. With summaries and explanations of recent peer-reviewed research from a host of scientific journals, Climate Science is a window into what scientists are discovering about how climate change affects the living things and complex systems of our planet.

The latest edition, Climate Science 2009-2010 will be released later this year. In the meantime, we have assembled a preview of some of the research covered in the report. Take a look at our slideshow detailing the huge variety of impacts we are already seeing from warming global temperatures, including insights into sea-level rise, human migration, weather extremes, and the shrinking habitats of wildlife. Then, use our interactive map to learn more about the regional consequences of climate change around the United States.

Slideshow:

Climate change impacts around the world

» Explore all of WRI’s work on solutions to the climate challenge.

The Global Impacts of Climate Change

Use the arrows above to explore a preview of the research from WRI’s upcoming release of Climate Science 2009-2010 and a small selection of the changes facing our warming world.

WRI is working on solutions to the challenges illustrated in this slideshow. Click here to learn more about our work on climate and energy.

Photo Credit: flickr/NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Uneven global sea level rise

Researchers estimate a global sea level rise of approximately 3.26m resulting from the instantaneous melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Notably, they find that the impacts of the sea level rise would not be uniform around the globe. Because of perturbations in Earth’s rotation and shoreline migration, the impacts are predicted to be most pronounced on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the United States, where sea level rise could be 25% higher than the global mean.

Source(s): Bamber, J.L.; Riva, R.E.M.; Vermeersen, B.L.A.; and A.M. LeBrocq. (2009). Reassessment of the potential sea-level rise from a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Science. 324 (901), doi: 10.1126/science.1169335

Photo Credit: flickr/NOAA Photo Library

Changing patterns for wildfires

Increases in both the frequency and extent of wildfire are salient examples of the effects of climate change that can have immediate and significant impacts on human communities. However, there is variation in this trend. Different regions of the world can expect increases or decreases in wildfire distribution from climate change, largely mediated by regionally-specific vegetation and precipitation changes. Notably, the increases in wildfire extent are projected to be in the United States and Canada, Europe and western China. Decreases in wildfire extent are predicted for parts of East Asia, Africa and Australia.

Source(s): Krawchuk MA; Moritz MA; Parisien M-A; Van Dorn J; and K. Hayhoe. (2009) Global Pyrogeography: the Current and Future Distribution of Wildfire. PLoS ONE 4(4): e5102. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0005102.

Balshi, M.S.; McGuire, A.D.; Duffy, P.; Flannigan,M; Kicklighter, D.W.; and J. Melillo. (2009). Vulnerability of carbon storage in North American boreal forests to wildfires during the 21st century. Global Change Biology. 15: 1491-1510.

Flannigan, M.; Stocks, B.; Turetsky, M.; and M. Wotton. (2009). Impacts of climate change on fire activity and fire management in the circumboreal forest. Global Change Biology. 15: 549-560.

Photo Credit: flickr/slworking2

Growing unpredictability in India’s monsoons

A century’s worth of weather data show that summer monsoon rains are becoming less predictable. Agriculture and flood control in India have relied on the predictability of the monsoon over centuries to millennia. A reduction of the predictability of these events has profound implications for the region’s agriculture and communities’ ability to prepare for oncoming extreme events.

Source(s): Mani, N. J.; Suhas,E; and B. N. Goswami (2009), Can global warming make Indian monsoon weather less predictable? Geophysical Research Letters. 36, L08811, doi:10.1029/2009GL037989.

Photo Credit: flickr/Carlo_it

Extreme heat and the loss of land suitable for human habitation

Human metabolism cannot handle extremely high temperatures well, and a global temperature increase of 7°C, which is the upper limit of current projections, would make ~~large~~ some portions of the world uninhabitable. A global temperature increase of 12°C, which could occur solely from the combustion of all fossil fuel reserves, would render much of the globe uninhabitable by humans. In exploring this possibility, researchers point out that current economic models treat a 10°C rise in temperature as having an equivalent economic effect to a major recession, when it might actually render half the planet uninhabitable.

Source(s): Sherwood, SC and M Huber. (2010). An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (21): 9552-9555.

Photo Credit: flickr/coda

Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching

As atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations rise, the concentration of dissolved CO₂ in the oceans has increased as a result, increasing the acidity of ocean water. Acidification can cause great harm to calcifying organisms, such as corals, as their calcium carbonate shells cannot form and, in some cases, dissolve. Research shows that the predicted impacts of ocean acidification are already occurring on the Great Barrier Reef, impacting the health of the reef ecosystem and the livelihoods that depend on such ecosystems.

Source(s): De’ath, G.;, Lough, J.M.; and K.E. Fabricius. (2009). Declining coral calcification on the Great Barrier Reef. Science. 323: 116-119.

Photo Credit: flickr/babasteve

Billions in losses for U.S. fishing industry

Researchers set out to assess the economic effects of ocean acidification using a simple model which links projected declines in mollusk populations from ocean acidification to projected declines in the U.S. commercial mollusk harvest. Using the 2007 harvest as a baseline, the authors calculated potential future losses under different emissions scenarios. Even a modest estimate of 10-25% aggregate decrease in U.S. mollusk harvests could cause anywhere from $1.7 billion to $10 billion in losses to the U.S. fishing industry by 2060.

Source(s): Cooley, S. and S. Doney. (2009). Anticipating ocean acidification’s economic consequences for commercial fisheries. Environmental Research Letters. 4: 024007.

Photo Credit: flickr/marbla123

A later start to a shorter rainy season in the dry Sahel

In the Sahel region of North Africa, climate-induced alterations of rainfall will have profound impacts on agriculture and the resilience and adaptability of human communities. Recent research demonstrates that, by the end of this century, under a mid-range warming scenario, the rainy season will start later by 3-4 days and have a shorter duration by 5 days in the Sahel. These delays and shortenings, while seemingly small, are likely to reduce anticipated crop yields with profound consequences for agricultural production in the region.

Source(s): Biasutti, M.; and A. H. Sobel (2009), Delayed Sahel rainfall and global seasonal cycle in a warmer climate, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L23707, doi:10.1029/2009GL041303.

Photo Credit: flickr/SOS Sahel UK

Reduced water supply from the Colorado River

The combined effects of warming temperatures on snowmelt, evaporation, and precipitation will likely have profound influences on river flows, which are critical for human consumption and irrigation of farmland. Researchers estimated the impacts that climate-change induced reductions in runoff from the Colorado River will have for humans’ future use of the river’s water. Their study predicts a 10-30% reduction in Colorado River run-off by 2050 because of anthropogenic climate change. This will result in significant and regular failure to meet scheduled water deliveries in the American Southwest.

Source(s): Barnett, Tim and David W. Pierce. (2009). Sustainable water deliveries from the Colorado River in a changing climate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (18): 7334-38.

Photo Credit: flickr/victorfe places

Hotter growing seasons and widespread crop loss

Researchers have assessed the impacts of increasing temperature on global food supply and found that in the tropics and sub-tropics, it is highly likely (greater than 90% probability) that the average growing season temperature during the last decades of the 21st century will exceed the most extreme temperatures experienced during the 20th century. In temperate regions, temperature extremes like those experienced during the 2003 heat wave in Europe will become the norm. Higher temperature alone will have significant negative effects on crop yields, even without the predicted impacts of associated drought.

Source(s): Battisti, D.; and R. Naylor. (2009). Historical warnings of future food insecurity with unprecedented seasonal heat. Science. 323:240-244.

Photo Credit: flickr/CIMMYT

More destructive hurricanes

Projecting hurricane activity over the rest of the 21st century, researchers found that the frequency of intense hurricanes (category 4 or 5) is likely to increase significantly. Their model projects an increase in the number of intense storms by 80% by the end of the 21st century. They attribute this change to warmer sea surface temperatures. While the overall frequency of hurricanes is likely to decrease, the model suggests that there is a pronounced increase in the frequency of powerful storms after 2070.

Source(s): Bender, MA, Knutson, TR, Tuleya, RE, Sirutis, JJ, Vecchi, GA, Garner, ST, and IM Held. (2010). Modeled impact of anthropogenic warming on the frequency of intense Atlantic hurricanes. Science. 327: 454.

Photo Credit: flickr/NOAA Photo Library

Widespread loss of lizard species around the world

While many reports about climate change focus on projected future impacts, one study set out to assess the impacts of warming temperatures that have already affected populations of lizards around the globe. Analyzing studies of 30 species of Mexican lizards from 1975-2009, they find that 12% of local populations of lizards have gone extinct. Based on the Mexican observations, they estimate that globally, 4% of lizard populations have become extinct since 1975 as a result of climate change. On the basis of the observed trends, the authors find that by 2080, 20% of global lizard species will be extinct.

Source(s): Sinervo, B, Mendez-de-la-Cruz, F, Miles, DB, et al. (2010). Erosion of lizard diversity by climate change and altered thermal niches. Science. 328: 894-899.

Photo Credit: flickr/NOAA Photo Library

Extreme temperature highs in the United States

Researchers project that over the next three decades extreme warm temperatures will increase significantly in the United States. Even when global average temperatures do not rise more than 2°C, one study predicts that by 2030-2039, 38 days of the year will be in the top 5% of current temperature extremes, and that there may be at least seven record setting temperature days per year. Extremes in temperatures can have significant impacts on human health and lives, and reductions in soil moisture and precipitation will have implications for the viability of crops and ecosystems.

Source(s): Diffenbaugh, NS and M Ashfaq. (2010). Intensification of hot extremes in the United States. Geophysical Research Letters. Vol. 37: L15701.

Photo Credit: flickr/yeppiyeebo

Cold winter extremes in Europe and other northern regions

Winter sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas, portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Russia, has been greatly decreasing due to warming temperatures. This reduction in sea ice cover causes the lower troposphere, (the portion of the atmosphere close to the earth surface) to warm slightly because of the heat trapping ability of the open ocean. On study suggests that this warmer air may create a pressure and temperature gradient that sucks heat out of Europe, resulting in an anomalous continental cooling of -1.5°C (averaged across the continent) in the winter.

Source(s): Petoukhov, V and VA Semenov. (2010). A link between reduced Barents-Kara sea ice and cold winter extremes over northern continents. Journal of Geophysical Research. VOL. 115 doi:10.1029/2009JD013568.

Photo Credit: flickr/neiljs

Major increases in human migration

Changes in land-use patterns and agricultural policies in Mexico and other Central American countries have already been leading to large numbers of migrants into the United States. Climate change is likely to augment this trend as it impacts crop yields in some of the hardest hit and poorest areas of southern Mexico. One study predicts an average of an additional 20,000-100,000 “climate-immigrants” per year over the next decades (assuming a linear rate of increase - Ed, 12/9/11).

Source(s): Feng, S, Krueger, AB, and M Oppenheimer. (2010). Linkages among climate change, crop yields, and Mexico-US cross-border migration. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Photo Credit: flickr/Ben Amstutz

Reduction and loss of major Asian sources of drinking water

One of the greatest concerns about the pace and magnitude of human-induced climate change impacts is the water security of the over one billion people in Asia, mostly in India and China, who live in river basins that are fed by Himalayan glaciers and snow. The flows from these water resources are essential to agricultural production and maintaining drinking water supplies. As temperature rises, there are concerns about the long-term stability of these flows. Research has determined that the Indus and the Brahmaputra are most susceptible to climate-induced changes in snow-melt water flow.

Source(s): Immerzeel, WW, van Beek, LPH, and MFP Bierkens. (2010). Climate change will affect the Asian water towers. Science. 328: 1382-1385.

Photo Credit: flickr/reurinkjan

Short-term loss of cloud cover

The sensitivity of the Earth’s climate system to changes in cloud coverage is one of the key uncertainties of the impacts of a changing climate. With a warmer climate, will there be more clouds that reflect more sunlight and thus induce a negative feedback, cooling the earth’s surface, or will there be fewer clouds, and thus a warmer world as more solar radiation hits the earth’s surface? A recent study analyzes data from 2000-2010. Over this time frame, it finds that there appears to be a positive feedback, meaning that warming-induced decreases in cloud coverage has led to more incoming solar radiation, which in turn increases warming.

Source(s): Dessler, AE. (2010). A determination of the cloud feedback from climate variations over the past decade. Science. 330: 1523-1527.

Photo Credit: flickr/Kevin Dooley

Threat of near extinction for Emperor penguin population

Using climate models and observations of Emperor penguin populations over forty three years, researchers found that populations are projected to decline, with the probability of ‘quasi extinction’ (greater than 95% decline) by 2100 at 36%. The impact of early sea ice break up on breeding could have direct effects on penguins’ population growth. Reduced sea ice will likely have indirect impacts on the food web by reducing krill, the primary food source for the fish that penguins eat.

Source(s): Jenouvrier, S.; Caswell, H.; Barbaud, C.; Holland, M.; Stroeve, J.; and H. Weimerskirch. (2009). Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (6): 1844-47.

Photo Credit: flickr/Martha de Jong-Lantink

Faster glacial melting due to black carbon

Black carbon, or soot produced from biomass and fossil fuel burning, can alter surface reflectivity, making surfaces darker and warmer, much like a dark shirt on a summer day. Researchers have found that levels of black carbon on Tibetan glaciers are high enough to decrease their surface reflectivity by 10 to 100%. Tibetan glaciers represent the largest stores of freshwater on the planet outside of the polar ice caps. As these glaciers melt rapidly and meltwater seasonality is altered, heavier spring floods and longer dry periods are anticipated throughout East and South Asia.

Source(s): Xu, B.; Cao, J.; Hansen, J.; Yao, T.; Joswia, D.; Wang, N.; Wu, G.; Wang, M.; Zhao, H.; Yang, W.; Liu, X.; and J. He. (2009). Black soot and the survival of Tibetan glaciers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (52): 22114-18.

Photo Credit: NASA

Additional sea level rise in the northeast U.S.

There is a difference in the elevation of the sea level near the U.S. coast, with sea levels lower near the coast than further off shore. This “slope” of sea level is a result of a system of robust ocean currents. According to one study, ice melt and precipitation in the Arctic, combined with increased temperatures, are predicted to slow down these currents and eliminate the difference in sea level height. This will increase coastal sea levels an estimated 0.2-0.3m for Boston, New York and Washington, DC by the end of the century in addition to sea level rise from other causes.

Source(s): Yin, J.; Schlesinger, M.E.; and R.J. Stouffer. (2009). Model projections of rapid sea-level rise on the northeast coast of the United States. Nature Geoscience. Doi: 10.1038/NGEO46.

Photo Credit: flickr/InAweofGod’sCreation

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Related Information

The Time Value of Carbon and Carbon Storage: Clarifying the terms and the policy implications of the debate

Maggie Barron — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 14:22:07 -0400

Executive Summary

The question of whether there is any value to the temporary storage of carbon is fundamental to climate policy design across a number of arenas, including physical carbon discounting in greenhouse gas accounting, the relative value of temporary carbon offsets, and the value of other carbon mitigation efforts that are known to be impermanent, including deferred deforestation. Quantifying the value of temporary carbon storage depends on a number of assumptions about how the incremental impact (or social cost) of a given ton of carbon emissions is expected to change over time. In 2009, a U.S. government interagency working group was established and assigned the responsibility of calculating social cost of carbon estimates to be used in benefit/cost analysis of regulations impacting carbon dioxide emissions. Those estimates were released in March 2010.

This working paper explores what those estimates imply about the value of temporary carbon storage, as well as the implications of those temporary storage values for several critical policy design questions relating to greenhouse gas accounting and biological offsets. This analysis suggests, for instance, that appropriate physical carbon discount rates for carbon accounting may be even lower than the social discount rates often used in intergenerational analyses. In the context of agricultural offsets, the social cost of carbon estimates are used to establish a definition of equivalence between permanent and temporary offsets; equivalence ratios are derived that vary between ~2 and 30, depending on the discount rate used and the length of the temporary offset contract period.

Fields of Fuel: Market and Environmental Implications of Switching to Grass for U.S. Transport

Tim Herzog — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Commercial-scale switchgrass production is projected to involve substantial increases in agricultural land acreage, with new acres coming from a combination of conservation reserve program (CRP) acreage, other cropland currently used as pasture, a reduction of winter fallow in production rotations, and displacement of existing crop production. The displacement of existing crop production reduces domestic crop supply and generates market impacts in the form of increased prices and reduced exports for existing crops, which creates the potential for significant indirect land use impacts associated with changing commodity production patterns beyond the borders of the United States and outside the scope of this study. Domestic environmental implications are also simulated; commercial-scale switchgrass production may be associated with reduced erosion and improved nutrient pollution performance on U.S. working croplands, but projected increases in nitrogen application and the associated nitrous oxide emissions could offset soil carbon sequestration benefits and result in substantial increases in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector. Furthermore, the loss of substantial amounts of conservation reserve program acreage and pasture land could have significant impacts on dimensions of environmental quality not covered by this analysis, including habitat quality and biodiversity.

Policy Recommendations

Federal biomass research programs should prioritize research on the long-term environmental impacts of scaling up production of switchgrass and other biomass crops. All projects that receive federal funds to explore crop yield improvements should be required to explicitly address the soil, water, and GHG implications of the new production methods.
Federal biomass research programs should also perform system-wide studies to identify potential impacts of scaled up biomass production, including switchgrass, on landscape-level ecosystem services like provisioning of habitat, maintenance of surface water quality, and support of biodiversity.
Reducing the uncertainty associated with carbon impact estimates of biofuels under current regulatory programs such as the federal Renewable Fuel Standard and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard will require increased investment in research on agricultural land-use dynamics in the United States, including regional availability of idle cropland and the returns to land in alternative uses such as pasture and forestry.
Payments rewarding GHG performance in agricultural production, through offsets or cost-share programs, for instance, should, wherever feasible, be awarded based on actual performance rather than assumed performance of a class of production practices. Actual performance for any given practice can be highly variable across soils and climatic regions.
Performance-based payments for carbon mitigation should be based on a comprehensive quantification of the impact on emissions across all changes in production practice. While no-till is generally believed to have soil carbon sequestration benefits, for instance, if a switch to no-till is accompanied by increased levels of nitrogen application, the resulting nitrous oxide emissions could offset the soil carbon benefits associated with switching to a no-till, perennial farming system. The no-till practice alone should not be rewarded without a consideration of the GHG impacts of all accompanying changes in production practice.
Existing and proposed policies in support of biofuel production, including the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard and the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax, should be revised to include a broad array of safeguards to protect air, soil, and water quality in addition to climate.

When President Bush mentioned switchgrass in the 2006 State of the Union address, listeners across the country responded with a collective “huh?” But in part due to that highly visible endorsement, and in part due to the explosive growth of the ethanol industry and the rapid advancement of ethanol conversion technologies, this modest prairie grass species has now become a household word. As large sections of the U.S. ethanol industry push hard to move beyond the current generation of corn-based ethanol and introduce technologies that will allow use of a much broader range of feedstocks for ethanol production, increased attention is being paid to new feedstocks that have the potential to be produced at large commercial scale. In this Policy Note we explore the potential for the use of switchgrass as a domestic energy source, as well as some of the environmental issues associated with producing it at a large scale.

Rules for Fuels: Biofuels and Climate Change Impacts

Liz Marshall — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:35:29 -0400

As biofuel production ramps up, counting all the associated greenhouse gas impacts is critical to good energy and climate policy.

Below is an interview with WRI economist and biofuels expert Liz Marshall.

Download as PDF (PDF, 129 Kb)

Q: Why has the greenhouse gas impact of biofuels become a hot button issue?

A: The rapid spread of biofuel production in the United States has been driven by generous federal support, including tax breaks and tariffs. The Renewable Fuel Standard in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 also mandates that the volume of renewable fuels in the U.S. transportation fuel supply increases from 9 billion gallons in 2008 to 36 billion gallons by 2022. This support is often justified on the grounds that biofuel use reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transport. As increasing amounts of land are used for biofuel crops such as corn and soybeans, however, concern is growing over whether the total net effect is to produce more, not fewer, greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Definitions

Direct land-use change in the context of biofuel production refers to the conversion of land directly into biofuel feedstock production. Measuring the greenhouse gas impacts of such conversion requires measuring the net changes in carbon storage capacity that result. For example, if Conservation Reserve Program acres are converted back into corn production, large quantities of carbon stored in the grassland may be released.

Indirect land-use change refers to the cascade of off-site conversions that can be triggered by moving acreage into biofuel feedstock production. For example, if increased corn production displaces soybean production, and soybean production then moves into carbon-rich forested areas or grasslands, such secondary conversions can result in significant “indirect” GHG emissions.

Feedstock refers to the raw materials used to generate biofuels to power vehicles. Feedstocks generally are crops rich in sugar, starch or oil. They include sugar cane and corn (for ethanol), and soybean, jatropha and oil palm (for biodiesel).

Answering this question requires measuring the total carbon impact of producing and consuming biofuels. Two separate regulatory processes are currently developing biofuel greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting protocols to do this. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is developing a carbon accounting protocol for the federal Renewable Fuel Standard and California’s Air Resources Board is doing the same for the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. These imminent, groundbreaking standards have fueled a contentious debate about how to measure the greenhouse gas emissions associated with biofuel production, with disagreement centered on whether the impacts of “indirect” land-use changes (defined at right) should be included. The question has also arisen in the context of provisions included in climate legislation soon to be debated in Congress.

Q: Why should indirect impacts be included in GHG accounting for biofuels?

A: Fully accounting for the GHG impacts of biofuel use requires measuring emissions both from the land where biofuel crops are grown (direct impacts) and those that result from related land use changes triggered elsewhere (indirect impacts). If we only account for direct impacts, policy makers will only get part of the picture. Given that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing biofuel production, it is critical that we understand whether using ethanol and biodiesel as transport fuels delivers global greenhouse gas benefits. While there are other reasons for supporting biofuel development, including domestic energy security and rural revitalization, these may not alone justify the current scale of public support.

The need for measuring indirect emissions and using the results to make sound policy judgments is urgent. As biofuel production spreads around the world, so do its cascading indirect impacts. Many feedstocks require a lot of land for growth. So an increased reliance on biofuels will increase global demand for land to meet both our existing food and fiber (e.g., timber, wood pulp) needs and the new demand for fuel. Such large-scale redistribution of land uses to accommodate biofuel production may result in substantial carbon emissions, particularly if uses such as agriculture or ranching are pushed into high-carbon forests and grasslands. Land-use changes such as these already contribute significantly to climate change, with deforestation and forest degradation accounting for approximately 12-17% of global GHG emissions, depending on calculation methodology used. Accelerating rates of deforestation could negate any greenhouse gas benefits associated with using biofuel rather than petroleum in our gas tanks.

Q: Can we measure indirect impacts precisely enough to include them in a GHG accounting framework?

A: The Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board have invested significant resources in modeling and estimation tools that will allow them to quantify indirect impacts both within the United States and internationally. While the tools are new, and the current estimates vary according to assumptions made, our capacity to estimate these impacts is advancing rapidly.

We know that biofuels create indirect impacts, so we cannot refuse to try to measure them just because some constituencies have raised questions about current measurement techniques. We must design a system of measurement that incorporates existing estimates while allowing them to be updated frequently as measurement capacity improves.

Q: Is including indirect impacts in policy analysis unprecedented?

A: No. The resistance to expanding traditional environmental impact accounting methods to include indirect impacts is surprising, given that this same approach is commonly used in economic impact analysis. When decisions are made on promoting new industries in an area, for example, tools called multipliers are used to calculate expected economic impacts – on jobs, income and other parameters – not just in the relevant sector but throughout the local economy.

Including indirect impacts in environmental impact analysis is a similar process. Land and labor are both shared inputs that create interdependencies across sectors. If the increased use of labor in one sector means that other sectors have to adjust their labor use and management to accommodate the increased competition for labor, the impacts of that effect are accounted for in economic impact analysis. Similarly, if the increased use of land in one sector means that other sectors have to adjust their land-use practices to accommodate the original sector’s growth, and in doing so incur additional environmental costs, those costs must be included in an analysis of the net environmental impacts of that growth or of policies promoting that growth.

Q: Is including indirect impacts in policy analysis “unfair” to the biofuel industry?

A: No. The purpose of accounting for indirect impacts is not to blame farmers producing biofuel crops for ripple effects that they cannot control. The purpose is to measure the full environmental impacts of scaling up production. Applying this comprehensive measurement methodology ensures that only those fuels that generate environmental benefits enter the sustainable biofuel markets that are created by environmental policies such as the federal Renewable Fuel Standard. Excluding products that fail to satisfy environmental performance criteria from receiving public support is fair to taxpayers, not “unfair” to producers. They can continue to compete in the marketplace as producers of all other goods do; they simply cannot qualify for the preferential treatment awarded to products that demonstrate environmental benefits.

Q: What are the wider implications of this policy debate?

A: The resolution of this debate will decide whether or not the climate impacts of producing and consuming biofuels are fully accounted for in the federal Renewable Fuel Standard. Including indirect impacts is critical for a U.S. biofuel policy based on sound GHG criteria that account for full production impacts.

The outcome will also have significant long-term implications both within and beyond the biofuels sector. Federal policy cannot effectively address global issues such as climate change if it fails to acknowledge that actions taken within our borders have global repercussions. Including measurement of indirect impacts of biofuels in federal policy will send a strong signal that the United States is committed to fully accounting for the global environmental impacts of its domestic policies.

Biofuels and the Time Value of Carbon: Recommendations for GHG Accounting Protocols

admin — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The quantification of the carbon dioxide emissions impact associated with land-use change for biofuels production is complicated by the fact that the carbon costs from land-use change and the avoided emissions from substituting biofuels for fossil fuel in transport occur over an extended period of time. Estimating the net carbon impact therefore requires a method for aggregating the increased and avoided emissions that play out over time into a single figure. The choice of accounting method can have a significant impact on the resulting net emissions measure for specific land-use options such as biofuels production. This in turn will influence the relative desirability of different land management scenarios for a given piece of land. Traditional cost-benefit analysis regularly uses discounting to compare and aggregate monetary units over time. However, extrapolation of this approach to assess physical units of carbon dioxide emissions released or avoided in the future is not straightforward. Selection of an appropriate discount rate for physical carbon units requires a consideration of multiple additional variables. These include rates of carbon accumulation and decay in the atmosphere and estimates of the marginal damages arising or avoided from changes in atmospheric carbon stocks.

Accounting recommendations for quantifying the emissions impact of land-use change for biofeedstock production

Ideally, a GHG accounting method for land use change associated with biofeedstock production should explicitly analyze the expected damages associated with those fl ows over time. The corresponding monetary units associated with this damage can then be discounted to determine how the impacts of future flows compare to those of the present.
There is little theoretical justification for discounting physical carbon flows. Discount rates used for physical carbon units are not analogous to monetary discount rates such as interest rates or the social rate of time preference. They therefore should not be selected based solely on an extrapolation of how those financial discount rates are usually applied.
The “project horizon” should be considered independently of the longer atmospheric “impact horizon” when selecting appropriate discounting horizons. In the context of biofuels production, the “project horizon” refers to the period of time over which feedstock cultivation will occur (and benefits from displaced transport fossil fuel realized). The “impact horizon” refers to the period of time over which impacts of increased or decreased emissions are felt in the atmosphere.
The impact horizon should be applied as a rolling target that is measured relative to the year of emissions, which can occur at any point over the project horizon, rather than as a fixed target that is measured relative to year 0 of the project. Atmospheric impacts are therefore fully accounted for, whether the emissions or emissions savings occur at the end of the project or at the beginning.
When it is necessary to bypass the full-cost accounting suggested in #1, selection of a next-best discount procedure for carbon units may need to consider: a range of possible discount rate values beyond those normally used for financial discounting (including zero or negative numbers); different discount figures for the two distinct time horizons; and non-constant numbers such as declining discount rates for the longer impact horizon.
Salvaged carbon from acreage reversion or revegetation should not be considered as part of the GHG accounting protocol for land-use conversion for feedstock production. Carbon benefi ts associated with revegetation are not guaranteed when acreage is initially converted to biofuels production, and should more appropriately be considered a benefit associated with a future form of land-use change should such conversion occur.

Corn Stover For Ethanol Production: Potential and Pitfalls

Liz Marshall — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:49:18 -0500

Prompted by volatility in oil markets, growing concerns about global warming, and an interest in supporting farms and rural communities through stronger agricultural markets, several groups in the United States have turned their attention to the potential for ethanol to alleviate our dependence on oil. The domestic ethanol industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, but in the United States, as in other countries, that development has relied heavily on government support. Until 2005, direct support was primarily in the form of tax incentives; the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) provides blenders with a tax refund for blending ethanol with gasoline that has ranged between $.54 per gallon and $.45 per gallon. To further catalyze expansion of the renewable fuels market, Congress passed in the 2005 and 2007 energy bills a federal Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) that mandates increased blending of renewable fuels into our fuel supply.

The sugars found in corn kernels are currently the predominant feedstock for the burgeoning ethanol industry in the United States. However, as increasing world food prices heat up the food versus fuel debate, and scaling up corn production for ethanol use raises environmental concerns (Marshall and Greenhalgh, 2006; Marshall, 2007), increased attention has turned to the potential for second-generation ethanol technologies to free the domestic ethanol industry from its dependence on corn grain. Advanced technologies such as cellulosic conversion, which would allow the production of ethanol from the complex sugars in leaves and stalks, promise to radically broaden the range of possible ethanol feedstocks. Potential future feedstocks include woody biomass such as forest residues, post-consumer municipal solid waste, and agricultural residues such as wheat straw and corn stover— the leaves and stalks that remain behind when corn grain has been harvested.

It is widely believed that cellulosic technologies will allow us to produce ethanol with a smaller environmental footprint than corn-based ethanol. In the expanded RFS passed with the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, the amount of corn-grain ethanol that can qualify for the RFS was capped to provide an incentive for the development of second-generation technologies such as cellulosic ethanol. Furthermore, the 2008 Farm Bill includes a cellulosic biofuels production tax credit of up to $1.01/gallon, on top of the VEETC described above, and a “Biomass Crop Assistance Program” that supports farmers as they establish and grow cellulosic biomass crops. As we advance policy to encourage cellulosic production, however, we cannot assume that “better than corn” means sustainable. Different feedstocks will have widely varying environmental footprints that must be understood and acknowledged within flexible biofuel policies that ensure sustainable outcomes. Designing such policies will require greatly increased investment in understanding the potential impacts of various proposed feedstocks, how producer decisions infl uence those impacts, and how producer decisions respond to policy and market incentives.

Key Findings

Even moderate harvest of corn stover and other agricultural residues for use as an ethanol raw material, or “feedstock,” threatens to significantly increase erosion and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from the agricultural sector.
The estimates of stover availability appearing in the USDA/USDOE report “Biomass as Feedstock for a Bioenergy and Bioproducts Industry: The Technical Feasibility of a Billion-Ton Annual Supply” rely on harvest levels that would substantially increase erosion levels and GHG emissions from agriculture and are therefore unsustainable.
A large-scale switch to no-till agricultural production would mitigate the increased risk of erosion, but would be relatively ineffective at managing the risks of increased soil carbon loss and increased agricultural GHG emissions that arise with harvest of corn residues. Alternative best management practices (BMPs) for agriculture, including increased use of cover crops, green manures, and precision nitrogen management, may be effective at addressing negative impacts to air, water, and soil resources.
Effective integration of BMPs into crop rotations with corn stover harvest will require greatly increased federal investment in research on the long-term impacts and effectiveness of BMPs as well as on overcoming obstacles to farmer adoption.
The current system of incentives is not suffi cient to induce farmers to voluntarily adopt BMPs such as no-till production in association with corn stover harvest to reduce damaging side effects. Farmers do not switch to no-till production unless the price received for stover is significantly higher than the price at which conventional stover enters the market. Additional incentives and safeguards must be established to ensure sustainable supply.

Policy Recommendations

All biofuel incentive programs and policies, including the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard and the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, should be revised to include a broad array of safeguards to protect air, soil, and water quality.
Existing federal biomass research programs, such as the jointly administered USDA/USDOE Biomass Research and Development Initiative, should be fully funded and should prioritize research on the short- and long-term environmental impacts of harvesting stover and other biomass crops in their funding allocations.
Environmental safeguards attached to feedstock production should be performance-based rather than technology- or feedstock-specific. Performance-based safeguards offer maximum flexibility in that they provide incentives for improving feedstock management practices without pre-judging what levels of sustainability are achievable by a given feedstock.
To complement feedstock-specific research, greater investment is required for the development of tools to measure the performance, or environmental impacts, of agricultural systems in an affordable and accurate way. Such tools are the foundation of cost-effective agricultural and biofuel sustainability policies.
Programs within both USDA and EPA should invest more heavily in research on the contribution of nitrogen (through nitrous oxide) and soil carbon to greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture and in ways to manage those contributions through both on-farm and off-farm changes in production practices and land management.

Plants at the Pump: Reviewing Biofuels' Impacts and Policy Recommendations

Tim Herzog — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:07:40 -0400

As biofuels become a larger part of the social, economic, and environmental strategies of countries around the world, standards and regulations are needed to ensure that biofuels do in fact reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promote sustainable development.

In a world of rapidly rising GHG emissions and growing unease about imported oil, the appeal of renewable fuels is growing apace. Biofuels — liquids produced from plant matter that can substitute for gasoline or diesel fuel—have become a hot topic from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Despite their promise, however, recent research suggests that most of today’s biofuels increase GHG emissions compared to gasoline or diesel fuel. These increases in greenhouse gas emissions primarily result from land-use changes associated with growing crops for biofuels. The scale-up of biofuels to meet market demands for alternative fuels should therefore be examined further for its impacts on greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions concerns, coupled with rising global food prices, have called into question biofuels policies, and some of the “silver bullet” sheen has begun to wear off. Policy makers should understand that the term “biofuels” covers a range of products with varying potentials to achieve energy, climate, transportation, or agricultural policy aims. A key policy question, then, is how to ensure that biofuels do not cause greater harm than good. Policy makers should:

Use technology-neutral policies, as opposed to technology-specific policies such as biofuel subsidies, to drive fuel choices in relation to desired policy goals (e.g., greenhouse gas reductions, energy security, and other social and environmental priorities).
Design methodologies for calculating the sustainability benefits of fuel options and incorporate these calculations into energy, climate, agricultural, land use, and trade policy.
Design certification programs to avoid “exporting” negative impacts of biofuels production to other producing countries where regulation is not yet in place.
Recognize that biofuels alone will not provide low-carbon transportation solutions needed to address climate change. Policy support for other mobility options, such as increased efficiency in the immediate term, or electricity for vehicle propulsion accompanied by an aggressive rise in zero-carbon power generation, should be explored. Addressing emissions from transport will ultimately require rethinking how cities are designed and must include an aggressive push toward improved public transportation.

Environmental Stories to Watch in 2008

Laura Lee Dooley — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:03:03 -0500

In this fifth in a series of annual briefings, WRI President Jonathan Lash briefed journalists on seven key environmental issues to watch in 2007:

Environmental Trends to Watch in 2008

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:25:39 -0500

Trends to Watch is WRI’s annual forecast of emerging issues that will have major impacts on environmental coverage in 2008. On climate change: what will happen between COP-13 in Bali, and COP-14 in Poznan? What role will China play? Will we see new legislation and regulations from Congress or the EPA? Where will biofuels and technology go? Where will the water come from? WRI President Jonathan Lash makes his predictions at the National Press Club.

TRANSCRIPT

World Resources Institute. Journalist Briefing On Environment Trends For 2008

Participants

Jonathan Lash (Moderator),
President, World Resources Institute

Dr. Jonathan Pershing, Director
Climate And Energy Program
World Resources Institute

Dr. Nancy Kete,
Director, Embarq Center On Sustainable Transportation
World Resources Institute

Transcript by National Press Club, Washington, D.C.

JONATHAN LASH: Good morning. I’m Jonathan Lash. I’m the president of the World Resources Institute, which is a nonprofit policy research institute that looks at global environmental problems, puts ideas into action to change the course of policies and institutions on issues ranging from global climate change to the capacity of ecosystems to provide for human well-being.

For the – this is now the fourth year that we have taken a little time at the end of December to talk about what we think will be the issues to watch in the coming year. This year, the conversation is going to be dominated by climate change because if you’re thinking about the issues to watch, I think climate will dominate the agenda. We’ll try to connect the climate change issue in several places to some other environmental issues.

In past years, we have talked about the rising importance of the private sector in driving the politics of climate change. We predicted last year that a set of companies would recommend to Congress mandatory cap-and-trade legislation, and in fact, a month later that happened. The year before, we said that the key to watch was the action of the states. That was the time at which the Northeast states were getting to sign an agreement to limit their own emissions and impose a cap-and-trade system, and of course, as you know, that process is underway.

This year, I want to talk about seven issues quickly. The first is from Bali to Poznan. So Bali is just over. The next meeting of the parties will be in Poznan in Poland. The question is what is going to happen in the coming year between now and next December. The second, what will Congress do during 2008. The third, does the Environmental Protection Agency have some surprises that we may see in 2008 on the climate issue. The fourth looking at where we are going to go with biofuels. The fifth at some questions about how China is going to play in this debate during 2008. The sixth, some developments that I think will emerge in the technology field. And finally, is the weather going to play a role in the U.S. elections next November.

Two of my colleagues are with me today who will help out in this process, Dr. Jonathan Pershing, sitting in the front row, who is the director of our Climate and Energy Program and was a long-time negotiator in the process building up to Bali; and at the back, Dr. Nancy Kete, who is the director of our EMBARQ Center on Sustainable Transportation, who may or may not add something when I’m talking about where EPA is going.

So let’s go to the events at Bali. For me, the crucial question is will the lame duck U.S. administration choose to play offense, defense, or to heckle during the coming year as the negotiators get together. There are four planned meetings, Jonathan, between now and Poznan.

The question that was before the parties to the framework convention on climate change in Bali was essentially a question of political will. Are we going to agree to negotiate an agreement to reduce emissions? And the answer, barely, was, yes. This is the preamble to the so-called Bali roadmap that was issued, and it did in fact call on countries going forward between now and 2009 when the parties meet in Copenhagen to negotiate a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals set in the convention, which all countries have signed and ratified, including the United States, to avoid dangerous human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Bali agreement does in fact commit nations to conduct that negotiation; however, it leaves so many questions unanswered, it had to leave so many questions unanswered because of the conflicts among the delegates there that the road laid out by the roadmap is going to be a very rough and long one, and the agreement itself doesn’t tell us where it’s going to end up.

I want to make four observations about what happened at Bali, and then ask my colleague, Jonathan Pershing to talk about what will happen over the coming 12 months.

First observation is about the role of the private sector at Bali. There were 10,000 people at these meetings, and there was a significant group who represented the private sector. At past meetings, the role of the private sector would have been largely to explain to negotiators how difficult it would be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At this meeting, this group which we’re part of and helped to organize, the United States Climate Action Partnership, staged an event calling on the negotiators to move as quickly as possible in noting that in the United States, we have asked Congress to impose mandatory economy-wide cap-and-trade legislation.

A similar group from Europe was also present there, also asking the negotiators to move as quickly as possible saying that certainty and predictability and rapid action to create a level playing field is far more important to them than the potential cost of having to act on climate. That was a very new development in these negotiations and will only grow stronger in the coming year.

The second observation is that the one very, very hopeful note in the Bali declaration was that both developed countries and developing countries will negotiate about the kinds of commitments they will make to reduce emissions. It is clear that developing countries may make different kinds of commitments from developed countries, but both are committed in this roadmap to take apart in the process of reducing emissions.

Third observation, Europe led in these negotiations in a way that they never have before, particularly the Germany of Chancellor Angela Merkel was very strong. They led both by the commitments they have made to reduce their own emissions and by what they called for in the negotiations.

And fourthly, the United States suffered an unprecedented public defeat, humiliation in the ultimate negotiations in which our negotiators were basically alone in resisting an agreement and forced to back down.

I want to make clear that the United States also played in a couple of areas a useful role. The reason that there is language in the roadmap that opens the door to developing country commitments is because of the U.S. insistence on that language. The unfortunate thing was that the U.S. continued as it has for the past seven years to fail to offer positive alternatives for the agreements for the issues on which they resisted.

Jonathan Pershing, do you want to add something about the Bali to Poznan process?

DR. JONATHAN PERSHING: Thanks very much. Just kind of to reiterate two things that Jonathan said, the first one is that we have got now four meetings leading up to the session in Poznan in Poland. The first will be in March or April. The final data has not yet been selected. That is the first intercessional meeting. The second one will be in June. Then we have one in August or September, and then finally we come to Poznan in December of 2008.

So the issue then is what do you over the course of these four meetings, and what kind of a process might we imagine going forward? I would say that there are going to be three key issues that we’ll be debating. The first one is going to be overall what the commitments for Annex One countries, or the developed countries, look like. And if we think about the guidance that has been provided, albeit limited in the context of this decision, two things emerge. The first is we don’t really know, and the second is that there is a lot on the table.

So what kinds of things, sectoral targets? That could mean a structure that is not comprehensive for all of the economies of all nations but might focus on individual sectors. We’ll have clearly additional guidance and direction on technology, agreements that might promote particular technologies like capture and storage. We’ll also have areas in which there will be a focus on the enhancement and the furthering of the market. So we look at the structure now of the European emission trading system. That will certainly continue. The open question is what is the extent of the market, what kind of prices might we see on carbon and other greenhouse gases, and whether that market will go beyond the framework now in Europe to incorporate Canada, Australia, the United States, outside of Europe.

The second – the next piece that I want to focus on is the forestry question. This was a huge issue that came up not surprisingly in Indonesia, which has got enormous focus on its forests. The open issue now is what kind of resources will be provided to the world, to the forested world, to try to offset their deforestation or to lead to reductions in deforestation. At the moment, there is to be a fund. What kind of subscription and how much money provided for this fund remains unclear; stay tuned for that negotiation this year as well.

And then lastly, we have the issue of adaptation, which, in the last five years has had an increasingly high profile in these negotiations. I think more and more as the world looks at existing impacts, we’re coming to the conclusion that we will not avoid them; we’ll have to manage them. And the kinds of funds that are being set aside are now measured in the hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars and we’ll look forward this year additionally to the discussions about how that money will be spent, who will have the authority to disperse it, and whether or not there will be additional funding forthcoming with those resources.

MR. LASH: So just to go back and talk about my initial question about the lame duck. The U.S. will be a participant in each of these meetings coming up. What will the instructions of our delegation be? Will they be help the parties find an agreement? Will they be – insist on the U.S. position and don’t commit the U.S. government to anything pending a new administration? Or will they be to lay landmines for succeeding administration?

I don’t know what is most – what is going to happen. I would say the most likely will be that the U.S. plays a largely passive role in the coming year, and that a huge set of decisions are pending for a new administration when they come in. The first meeting – the meeting in Poznan will take place after the election, but before the inauguration, and then there will be a set of meetings leading up to Copenhagen, which will present urgent questions for a new administration, which will have a tough time in dealing with them.

Of course a piece of that will be the question of whether Congress has acted in the interim. The question is really whether Congress acts in 2008. It will act. Congress will enact national legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the foreseeable future. This is Washington; you’re all here; you read the papers; you know that legislation is moving, that a very strong bill, the Lieberman-Warner bill, was voted out of committee a few weeks ago, that it probably has more than 50 votes on the floor of the Senate now, but not yet 60.

So will Congress act in 2008? If it does, will it act on a bill that sets a strong target for emissions reductions? And if it does, will that legislation include a so-called safety valve, or cost cap that says we’ll make reductions only up to the point that it costs a certain number of dollars per ton, and then we’ll stop making reductions.

I’ll make the case of why it’s possible that Congress will act, but let me first go back over some of the drivers. We talked to you three years ago about the fact that the states were becoming increasingly active in developing their own approaches to reducing emissions because of the failure of the federal government to take action.

There are now three groups of states. They include 21 states, more than 50 percent of the U.S. population, more than 50 percent of the U.S. economic output, and about 37 percent of U.S. emissions. The number of states has grown each year. And they present a significant problem even to those countries that want to make reduction because the companies now face the prospect of having to deal with one system in the West, another system in the Midwest, a third one in the Northeast, still another one in the states that haven’t taken action, and still another one in Europe.

That begins to become untenable for companies trying to figure out how to manage their own emissions and how to make investments in plant and equipment that will continue to operate for 25, 30, or 40 years, whether to invest in low carbon or conventional equipment.

Key states to watch in the coming year will be Alaska, which has been an observer in the Western process, but has been strongly affected by the rapid melting of the permafrost and serious erosion problems they are facing; Florida; Illinois, a big corn – a big coal state, but also a big corner producer; and Utah, another big coal state.

I showed you this, those of you who were here last year, last year. This was a chart of the legislation that had been proposed at that time and the reductions that that legislation would make. So business as usual, the Bingaman legislation, McCain-Lieberman, all the way down here, a bill proposed by Senator Jeffords and Senator Boxer, so a range of targets in the legislation.

This is what it looks like this year in terms of the legislation that has been proposed. You don’t even have to discriminate among the bills and understand why some go in steps and what this shaded area means. Everything points downward now. There has been a significant change in legislative goals in that every bill that is out there now makes significant reductions, and several of the most important bills are quite consistent with both the targets set by the United States climate action partnership, that industry group, and by the goal of trying to keep the U.S. to an emissions path that would be consistent with stopping the buildup of greenhouse gases before we reach two degrees centigrade of warming.

Here is the case for Congress acting in 2008. First of all, most of the major environmental legislation in the United States has passed in the two months before a national election. Second of all, most of the major environmental legislation in the United States was signed by Republican presidents who were not necessarily avid sponsors of it but who acknowledged the politics of the legislation that was moving. Third of all, Senator Reid is signaling that he’ll schedule a vote in the Senate on the Lieberman-Warner bill probably next summer. I’ll talk at the end of my presentation about the possibility that weather events will shape politics on this set of issues, but my guess is that Senator Reid is calculating that the political support for action, which has built significantly over the past year will continue to build over the coming year.

I think the key thing to watch is whether the House begins to move. There is no major bill pending in the House yet. Congressman Dingell and Congressman Boucher have said they will propose legislation. They have begun to issue white papers but they really haven’t outlined the key components of a bill. If they start early in 2008, to do that, that will signal an intention to bring something before the Congress before the end of 2008. If that pace is relatively relaxed they will be acknowledging that there is no possibility of getting action on the floor of the House, and then a conference committee that reaches agreement and puts the bill before the president.

My guess is if Congress passed a global warming bill next summer and sent it to President Bush, he would sign it. And he would do so in part because of the politics of the presidential election, in part because of his own sense of legacy. But my guess is, he will not face that test. Even, however, if Congress doesn’t pass legislation, what’s happening this year is laying a floor for what will happen in 2009 under the pressure of the upcoming negotiations in Copenhagen, which will be a critical test for a new administration.

And, even if Congress doesn’t act, the EPA is going to. This is something that is very much worth watching. The Supreme Court in April of 2007 in Massachusetts against EPA held that carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are pollutants and that they are, therefore, within the scope of the Clean Air Act, under which EPA has an obligation to protect public health and welfare. After that decision, about a month later, President Bush issued Executive Order 13432, which authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to move ahead with regulatory proceedings in response to the Supreme Court’s decision.

I think you will see two things during 2008. Within the next four weeks, you will see EPA issue a decision granting a waiver to the state of California, which is proceeding with its own fuel-economy standards for automobiles. At the end of the year, in December 2008, I think you’ll see EPA issuing a program in response to the Supreme Court decision. And that will be very significant because, unlike the energy legislation which Congress just passed, which tightened fuel-economy standards, and unlike the provisions of the energy legislation which require increased production of biofuels, the EPA’s approach will be based not on a focus on fuel economy, but a focus on health and welfare. And it will be an integrated approach dealing with automobile emissions that affect climate and both the car itself and the fuels. I actually think that what EPA comes out with is going to be a blockbuster and significantly increase the pressure on Congress to act in 2009 if it has not acted in 2008.

That EPA decision will also bring into focus a set of questions about biofuels, about how do you identify a biofuel whose overall impact is positive, both in terms of reducing emissions and in terms of its impact on pollution and land use and food and how do you identify one that is negative. There is very, very rapid growth in global production of biofuels. And it’s going to accelerate in the coming years. There are strong mandates in the 2007 energy bill for rapid increases in biofuel production. There are strong mandates in European policies for increases in biofuel production.

And while we were in Bali, we all heard constant stories about the pace at which deforestation was taking place, being driven by the demand to plant oil palms, which are an excellent source of feedstock for biodiesel. We heard about a major new deal that China had made with the Congo to cut hundreds of thousands of acres, replace them with oil palm to produce biofuels for China. This is a global process that’s going on. It’s clearly having an impact on food prices. I don’t know if you remembered, but last year, in January and February, there were tortilla riots in Mexico because the price of corn had gone up so rapidly. It’s only continued up since then. There were cooking-oil riots in China. Of course, energy prices have contributed to the rise in food costs, but the competition between fuel manufacturers and food sellers for supplies of corn, grain, and soy is creating significant pressures that will continue to grow in the coming year and become a more acute issue.

The issue is particularly important for the poorest countries in the world. This is just a map that superimposes poverty, food, and water scarcity. And the darker-colored countries are the ones where the three come together most sharply. As biofuels drive up food prices, as water regimes change because of climate change, this is where you see the impact play out most sharply.

Another way of looking at that is one that the British foreign office developed with their military leaders starting with looking at water scarcity the same way we did in the previous map, adding into that the question of rapidly growing populations, and where climate change was driving crop declines. This is not just biofuels pressure, but climate-driven crop declines where there is existing hunger, where there are high risks of damage from largest storms because of low-lying coast, and where there are recent military conflicts.

Climate change is going to play out in 2008 increasingly as a security issue. And the interaction of biofuels with all of these in 2008 is going to lead to rapidly rising pressures to develop a sustainable biofuels standard. That could be in the EPA process; the California legislation calls for such a process; the Europeans have called for such a process. The drive to increase the size of this industry and the drive to control its impact are going to come together during 2008.

China, either last year – either this year or next year or in 2009, my guess would be 2008, China will become the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions on Earth. China and the U.S., two countries which have not yet taken on any specific emissions-reduction commitment, together account for close to half of all global greenhouse gas emissions. China was a big topic in Bali. China will be a big topic in any congressional debate. The question is, how is China going to play in this process over the next year?

It’s interesting to look at how climate and environmental issues have begun to increase pressures on China over the years. They knew five years ago they faced energy-security problems. They’re not a major oil producer. Their energy needs are increasing rapidly. You all know the story that they’re building 100 major coal-fired power plants a year now. They are also building nuclear power plants. They also have very vigorous energy-efficiency program. They are seeing increasing domestic pressures because of localized pollution which they have acknowledged and are trying to address. They are very aware of the extent that climate change will directly affect them.

The supply of water in China per person is about one-eighth or one-ninth what it is, what the average is for the world. So they face acute water issues. They’ve begun a significant afforestation program. They will increasingly, in the coming year because they have become a major emitter, because they’re a major seller into world markets, face international pressures, particularly supply-chain pressures where large entities that purchase products from China will insist that the manufacturing process take CO2 emissions into account.

And finally, they certainly recognize that tomorrow’s markets will be carbon-constrained markets, that there will be a huge and growing demand for low-carbon products. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

And then, there are the Olympics, three weeks during which the focus of the world will be on Beijing. The Chinese are taking extraordinary steps to control air pollution for that period, negotiating agreements with surrounding industries to close down in order to assure that the air is clean because close to 50 percent of the air pollution in Beijing at some points is due to construction; it’s a very fast-growing city. They’ve already imposed a construction slow-down, which will take effect in the spring in order to have time to clean the air for the Olympics. But it will draw attention to China and how China is playing on international issues.

And the Chinese will face an important choice. They are a great power. They are a great power economically; they are a great power militarily; they are a major world player. And they will have to decide whether, in the negotiations and in their approach to climate change, they want to take the lead, help solve the problem, or wait to see what the United States does and what kind of deal they can get from a new administration in the United States. I think that will play out in particular around the time of the Olympics, when one of these negotiating sessions will take place.

Going on to technology, last year I suggested the key to this was follow the money. And the money is going into clean technology. The figure for 2007 is a little lower than 2006 only because that’s only three-quarters; that’s not the whole of 2007. Clean technology has gone from 3 percent of venture-capital investments to over 17 percent of venture-capital investments in five years. And in 2008, we’re going to see some of the first results.

But I actually think there’s a bigger story here that’s hidden by those figures I just showed you. And by these figures, these go through 2006 and show an enormous rate of investment in both Europe and the United States. This goes just beyond venture capital and also includes private equity and deals that are financed on Wall Street. But it cannot cover the internal investments made by big corporations in their own research on these technologies. And at least anecdotally, from my experience in dealing with these companies, those investments are growing enormously.

The one company which does publicly report them as part of a public commitment is GE. GE is now, essentially, spending more money than the United States government on clean technology research, close to $2 billion. I think that this hidden part is going to drive a remarkable competition between the United States, Europe, and China about who is going to be the supplier to the world for the new technologies. And here are some of the technologies that we’ll see playing out this year.

You often hear about how solar technology is not yet economic. But central-station solar power, concentrating solar-power technologies, are now competitive with competitive with conventional electricity plants in areas with significant sun: Spain, the Southwestern United States. There are now 5,800 megawatts of concentrating solar in place and here are the investment pipelines just as of 2007. These are not declining over time; these are just different companies, different projects. Spain and the U.S. are the leaders. The concentrating solar is now growing almost as fast as wind and will be sharply accelerated in 2008.

Another technology that’s going to begin to emerge in 2008 is second-generation biofuels technology. Range Fuels, a project that’s one of the pets of venture capitalist Vinod Khosla will begin to produce cellulosic ethanol in 2008. Five other projects are in the pipeline with U.S. DOE participation. Three of them are thermal-chemical processes and three of them are fermentation processes. DuPont and BP will break ground either in late 2008 or early 2009 on a biobutenol plant. These are all second-generation technologies which will produce far more CO2 reduction per gallon of biofuel than the current corn-based ethanol.

Some of the companies that it’s worth watching in terms of their participation in this area, beyond DuPont and GP and Range Fuels are Syngenta; Delphi, which is playing a role in creating the engine technology necessary for U.S. autos to burn 85 percent ethanol; General Motors and Ford, who are building the cars; Siemens, who was competing with Delphi; TIAX and Vestion, which are both trying to create new engine technologies that will use biofuels as efficiently as possible, green fuel technologies.

There is a mass of companies moving into this field, a mass of young engineers who want to play a role in this, young venture capitalists who see this as the future. And in 2008, this Chinese company, Suntech, is likely to become the largest manufacturer of solar PV in the world. Suntech didn’t exist 10 years ago. Suntech has driven the improvement in the efficiency of solar cells faster than any other company. They went through their initial public offering three years ago; their stock shot up. They are trading, the last I checked, at 63 times earning, which is an absurd price. It means there is a bubble in Suntech stock, but they are going to become the biggest in the world. They are going to become the leader of what I hope will become a competition between China, the U.S., and Europe to drive these technologies forward.

I think someplace in this building, a little later this morning, FutureGen is going to announce the site for their new carbon-capture and storage facility. That will be the first demonstration plant in the United States. It’s an interesting partnership with companies from four countries and eight U.S. states. Several more projects are in the pipeline in the U.S., but there’s going to be a very interesting competition between the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom who breaks ground on the first plant.

By 2010, there will be at least four CCS demonstrations in construction. My colleague Pershing and I disagreed on the metro over here this morning whether they’d be in operation by 2012 or 2013, but that’s the right area. This is the beginning of the introduction of the polio vaccine for global warming. If only we had it in place already.

In 2008, you’ll see cost estimates for carbon-capture and storage going up and up and up as the reality of designing and constructing these plants plays out. I hope that after 2012, as we get to plant number five and six and seven and eight and 10, you’ll see the costs coming down and down and down. But carbon-capture is a key part of the strategy for the world to use coal without accelerating warming. And by the way, if you could do carbon-capture for biofuels, you then have one energy source which actually reduces the atmospheric burden of CO2. Since the plant pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere to make the cellulose, if you can then use some of that cellulose to make energy and get rid of the CO2 from that process, you could actually, theoretically, have a CO2-reduction machine. Nobody is proposing this commercially; it’s just the idea appeals to me in the current atmosphere.

Okay, so last subject, the price of beer – Australia is suffering, as everybody knows, from an unprecedented drought: six years, they lost 60 percent of the wheat crop, power plants have had to shut down because there wasn’t enough water to cool them, and Kevin Rudd defeated John Howard in significant part because John Howard had refused to deal with the climate problem and Kevin Rudd said he would. Indeed, his first act in office was to sign the Kyoto Protocol. He was the hero of the Bali negotiations when he arrived having turned Australia on a dime.

This is not an easy challenge for Australia. They are the largest user of coal per capita of any country in the world; they are an exporter of aluminum, which is the most energy-intensive metal in the world. But it was the weather that drove this turnaround in Australian public opinion. So the question is, can that happen in the U.S.?

The Southeastern drought was relieved a little bit by rain over this past weekend, but the Southeastern states are meeting today to discuss their conflict over how much of the water in its reservoirs Georgia can keep and how much it must release to go downstream, particularly to Florida. And Atlanta is negotiating with Tennessee about whether they can build a pipeline for a couple of hundred miles to move massive amounts of water from the Tennessee River down to Atlanta and what the price would be. Tennessee has passed a law explicitly forbidding that. So we could actually see this summer, if this drought takes hold again in the spring and summer as the forecasters are now saying it will, intense conflicts over where Atlanta is going to get the water, not only to assure that there’s water coming out of people’s taps, but they have the water to run their power plants.

That could actually get public attention for this issue. I want to make clear, you can’t attribute any specific drought to climate change, but it’s what the models predict. And the public won’t be troubled by the scientific niceties when there is an unprecedented drought going on and tanker trucks are pulling into downtown Atlanta full of water. So it’s not inconceivable that the weather, be it drought, heat waves, or major cyclonic storms, could play a role not only in the congressional debate in the summer, but in the elections in the fall.

If you consider the range of the presidential candidates, all of the Democrats recognize climate change as a significant problem; all have recommended mandatory federal action. Only Richardson, Edwards, and Obama regularly talk about climate change on the stump. Senator Clinton, a few weeks ago, issued a major policy statement on energy and climate change. You all probably saw when Diane Sawyer had the candidates on to talk to them each about climate issues.

The Democrats were consistently strong on the issue. Senator McCain who has been a leader for seven or eight years was again very strong on the need for action. But most of the Republicans either have doubts about the importance of climate change or resist any call for mandatory action in the United States. So if the issue becomes politically more important in the fall, it is likely to play to the benefit of the Democratic candidate rather than the Republican, and it’s likely to drive that vote in the Senate.

We have one other thing we’d like to do this morning. We also each year pull together a summary of that year’s climate science, and I’ve asked Jonathan Pershing to talk about that.

DR. PERSHING: So I just want to give you four quick vignettes to give you some flavor of the science that’s come out in the last year. I think stay tuned for similar kinds of stories next year. This is more of a retrospective than a prospective assessment. What you’ve got here is a new analysis that was done by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in which what they have done is they’ve begun to plot long-term trends on climate. And what you see here is going back to the 1850s.

The blue and the black line in the background represents temperature. And we’ve done some long-term trend analysis where they did some long-term trend analysis looking at 150-year cycle in the red – so that’s that red line – looking at 100-year cycle – that’s in the purple, steeper – looking in the orange at a 50-year trend, and looking at the last 25 years in yellow. And what you end up seeing is a consistent and significant and regular increase in the rate of change and the kind of temperatures we’re seeing. I think we’ll see more of that. The most recent data available only through the end of November for this year suggests that 2007 will be the third-hottest year on record. It might fall to number four, but only if it’s an unusually cold December, which no one is currently thinking about.

A second story which came out this year – you probably all have seen some of this as well – this was reported from the sea ice data. This particular information comes from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at Boulder, Colorado, also part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and what you see in the orange line is the median average ice cover around the North Pole. You get a sense for the decline here. This is September 25th, 2007, so very, very recently. This is the most significant decline in sea ice that we’ve seen at any point in the historical recordkeeping. Current estimates suggest that we will have ice-free Arctic Ocean as early as 2025. So a staggering rate of change here seems to be projected. As little as three years ago, it was 2050. And as little as eight years ago, it was 2100. So you’re seeing this incredibly rapid increase in the change.

This is a paper that came out of the proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, reported here in the BBC, which kind of picks up a lot of these stories. And what you see here is that the rate of absorption of carbon dioxide by the atmosphere has begun to decline, we’re not seeing the same uptake from the biosphere – in other words from ecosystems, from trees, from the ocean systems. It’s somewhat more slow than we thought. And consistent with that previous story, we are seeing an increasing rate of concentration growth in the atmosphere. So it’s getting bigger faster and the ecosystems are just not taking as much out. That balance being distorted more than we used to see. This is another new story from this past year.

And then, one last one, just to pick up the comments that Jonathan was making about water, this is a story coming out of the projection from the Colorado River Basin. A series of scientists did an analysis in which what they established the upper river basin. The upper river basin is projected to have a 17 percent decline in water flow with a two-degrees rise in temperature. Two degrees is likely to happen within the course of the next 50 to 100 years.

Interestingly enough, just to take it in the context of the same conversation we’re having in the Tennessee River Valley, what you’ve got here is the water allocation there was made in 1922. In 1922, we had one of the wettest years on record. So if you kind of think about these projections going forward, and you think about your water damages, and the context in the West, which is already facing significant drought, I think the context of Australia may not be too far away to imagine.

We’ll release this particular study early in January, which will have a whole series of stories on the order of 50 of these kinds of things that are significant new events that came out in the last year of the scientific research.

MR. LASH: The reason we did this, this year, despite the fact that the IPCC report came out only a few months ago, is IPCC is a survey of the existing peer-reviewed literature, so it doesn’t cover any of the 2007 science. So this is all since –

MR. PERSHING: Since 2005.

MR. LASH: Since 2005, so I’m sorry; I was wrong. It covers only up to 2005. This is all new science compared to the IPCC. There’ll be, of course, more in the coming months. So questions for me, for Jonathan Pershing, or my colleague Nancy Kete, in the back, please.

PAUL MACKIE: This is being recorded so please just state your name and media affiliation.

Q: Gerald Kerry (sp) with Platts. A couple of things – the U.S. at the plenary session in Bali was booed, which was unprecedented. And I think it’s a reflection that among the delegates that it is a lame-duck administration. Do you think the administration acknowledges and recognizes that it’s a lame duck, and will in fact sort of back away and let the others take the course?

And this is the second question, which I usually hate, is are you guys optimistic or pessimistic about this outcome?

MR. LASH: Let me take the second question first. And I may give Pershing a chance to also answer your first one, because he and I take a slightly different view on this. We were both in Bali, and I came home with a little more negative view than he did.

I remain optimistic because I think there is an astonishing avalanche of technology coming. I think that what’s going to be produced by all that investment we saw will make the digital revolution look like nothing. And the key question for us is not going to be how can we produce energy with less CO2 emissions, but how can we get those technologies deployed fast enough to all the places they have to go? And that’s a pragmatic question. That is not an absolute broad action, and the climate is going to continue to increase the pressure on us to act. So I’m basically optimistic; it’s just is it going to be soon enough.

I think the U.S. will probably sit back and not be a significant player in the upcoming negotiations. That moment in Bali has to have been enormously difficult for the U.S. representatives there. Jim Connaughton had, after all, been out in public saying the United States is a leader. We’re playing a very positive role. And he got the unanimous reaction of the other delegates basically saying get out of our way so we can get on to deal with this problem. Anything to add?

Plants at the Pump: Biofuels, Climate Change, and Sustainability

Laura Lee Dooley — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Biofuels are being heralded as an alternative to oil that can be grown by farmers across the globe, addressing many of the economic, security, and environmental concerns associated with oil dependence. The story is not that simple, however, because the life-cycle energy efficiency and environmental impacts of biofuels varies significantly depending on feedstocks, production methods, and scale.

Plants at the Pump examines the feasibility of achieving significant emissions reductions from the proliferation of biofuels. First, it explores the challenges raised by today’s production and distribution technologies. It then turns to current biofuels policies and their environmental impacts, both positive and negative. The next section looks at how these policies drive investment, and argues that some technology incentives will make rapid scale-up of next-generation biofuels particularly challenging.

The report concludes that biofuels are not a complete, nor even the primary, solution to our transport fuel needs. They have the potential to play some role in meeting future energy demands. But since large-scale carbon displacement would require significant destruction of global forests, the benefits of biofuels would likely be outweighed by the costs with respect to forestry, agriculture markets, and economic hardship for the world’s poor.

This report is part of an ongoing collaboration between WRI and the Goldman Sachs Center for Environmental Markets.

Biofuels Production and Policy: Implications for Climate Change, Water Quality, and Agriculture

admin — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:53:46 -0400

Assessing the impact of agricultural bio-fuel production policies on the environment

With the global population growing by 90 million a year, the demand for food and energy is set to intensify. Despite our best efforts, agricultural practices are still compromising the natural resource base that we rely upon for food production. As in the past, science and technology offer some solutions to the world’s agricultural problems. But without significant policy changes and initiatives relating to agriculture, new ideas and technology can have only a limited impact.

The future of agricultural policy is complicated by the emerging potential for large-scale bio-energy production. The dependence of the United States on foreign, non-renewable sources of energy has been a topic of heated debate among U.S. policy makers and the general public. One path to energy independence lies in the development of renewable energy technologies and policy, such as those that promote the expansion of bio-fuel production. The growing demand for cleaner burning fuels, such as ethanol, is likely to generate changes in agricultural cropping patterns and land management practices, possibly further threatening our natural resource base.

The link between agriculture and energy production has made the agricultural industry a major player in the adoption and expansion of renewable energy technologies. It is not clear, however, how production decisions and policy developments surrounding the expansion of the ethanol industry will affect the environment, especially water quality and climate change. How policy is formulated will have a significant impact on how bio-fuel production develops. For example, a policy that favors increased production of starch based ethanol from sources such as corn could potentially have a negative impact on water quality. As compared to other crops, corn production has a higher nitrogen fertilization rate and greater nitrogen run-off, which would further compound existing water-related problems such as the hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. By examining the environmental costs and benefits of bio-fuel technologies we will be better able to understand the impact that renewable bio-energy technology and policy will have on the health of our nation’s water quality and atmosphere. WRI will use this information to educate the public, agricultural community, bio-fuel developers and policy makers in the quest for reliable, renewable and cost-effective sources on energy.

Our final message to these audiences will depend on the finding from our analyses. Ultimately though, policy makers, using our findings, will implement policies that promote the development of agricultural bio-fuels, taking into consideration the broader environmental impacts relating to the production of the various feedstocks. Industry representatives will design and build plants that will process the most “environmentally-friendly” bio-fuel feedstocks, and lastly, the agricultural community will alter their production practices to support these feedstocks.

Weighing U.S. Energy Options: The WRI Bubble chart

admin — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Energy security and climate change are priority issues for energy policymakers. Concerns about energy security in the United States are not new. The current environment of high prices and uncertain supply is different from earlier crises, however, due to the widespread recognition that climate change needs urgent attention and that conventional global oil production may soon peak. There is also concern in the United States that some post-9/11 oil revenues are fueling global instability. U.S. policymakers are promoting a variety of measures to address at least one of the challenges of energy security and climate change. These challenges are linked, however, and there are often unintended consequences when one is addressed without fully considering impacts on the other.

This policy brief presents the WRI “bubble chart,” developed to help inform the debate over the choices at hand. A complete description of the issues discussed here is available at http://www.wri.org/usenergyoptions.

Thirst for Corn: What 2007 Plantings Could Mean for the Environment

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0400

Thanks in large part to the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS)—a legislative mandate for increased renewable fuels use that passed as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005—the corn ethanol industry is expanding at an unprecedented rate in the United States. In its spring planting projections, the USDA projected that corn acreage in the U.S. would increase by 12 million acres, or 15%, during the 2007 planting season alone to meet demands for ethanol and other uses.

This study explores the potential environmental impacts of this surge in corn production, and suggests some policy measures to help make agriculture in general more robust to increased demands for energy production.

Farm Policy Recommendations

Resist the pressure to allow farmers penalty-free “early outs” from their CRP contracts.
Increase funding for working lands conservation programs such as CSP and EQIP.
Extend “sodbuster” compliance requirements for receipt of commodity payments to all acreage in production, not just highly erodible lands.
Create a pilot TMDL project for the Chesapeake Bay with joint USDA/EPA jurisdiction.
Extend compliance requirements for receipt of commodity payments to include nutrient management requirements in TMDL non-attainment watersheds.
Establish a new program in the Farm Bill to encourage riparian buffers.
Require all projects that receive federal funds to explore crop yield improvements to explicitly address the soil, water, and GHG implications of the new production methods.
Promote conservation tillage in corn production and provide research resources directed explicitly at use of slowrelease fertilizers and use of precision nitrogen management in row crop production.
Task the USDA with development of a consistent methodology for calculating the environmental impacts of biofuels feedstock production.

Topic: biofuels

Biofuel Investments Threaten Local Land Rights in Tanzania

MEDIA ADVISORY: 4th Annual Ecosystem Markets Conference - Making Ecosystems Work

Climate Science Research Review Answers Climate Change Questions

Slideshow:

Climate change impacts around the world

The Global Impacts of Climate Change

Uneven global sea level rise

Changing patterns for wildfires

Growing unpredictability in India’s monsoons

Extreme heat and the loss of land suitable for human habitation

Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching

Billions in losses for U.S. fishing industry

A later start to a shorter rainy season in the dry Sahel

Reduced water supply from the Colorado River

Hotter growing seasons and widespread crop loss

More destructive hurricanes

Widespread loss of lizard species around the world

Extreme temperature highs in the United States

Cold winter extremes in Europe and other northern regions

Major increases in human migration

Reduction and loss of major Asian sources of drinking water

Short-term loss of cloud cover

Threat of near extinction for Emperor penguin population

Faster glacial melting due to black carbon

Additional sea level rise in the northeast U.S.

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Interactive map:

How is climate change impacting the United States?

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Related Information

The Time Value of Carbon and Carbon Storage: Clarifying the terms and the policy implications of the debate

Executive Summary

Fields of Fuel: Market and Environmental Implications of Switching to Grass for U.S. Transport

Policy Recommendations

Rules for Fuels: Biofuels and Climate Change Impacts

Definitions

Biofuels and the Time Value of Carbon: Recommendations for GHG Accounting Protocols

Accounting recommendations for quantifying the emissions impact of land-use change for biofeedstock production

Corn Stover For Ethanol Production: Potential and Pitfalls

Key Findings

Policy Recommendations

Plants at the Pump: Reviewing Biofuels' Impacts and Policy Recommendations

Environmental Stories to Watch in 2008

More Links

Environmental Trends to Watch in 2008

Links

TRANSCRIPT

World Resources Institute. Journalist Briefing On Environment Trends For 2008

Participants

Plants at the Pump: Biofuels, Climate Change, and Sustainability

Biofuels Production and Policy: Implications for Climate Change, Water Quality, and Agriculture

Assessing the impact of agricultural bio-fuel production policies on the environment

Weighing U.S. Energy Options: The WRI Bubble chart

Thirst for Corn: What 2007 Plantings Could Mean for the Environment