Will the Biofuels Industry Hang Itself in the Climate Bill?

Last week I wrote about the danger of industry-backed changes to the Waxman-Markey climate bill that could, perversely, incentivize deforestation and increase global warming emissions.  Comparing the current bill language to the drastically weaker alternative advocated by Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, House leaders face a relatively clear choice between bioenergy done right and bioenergy done wrong.

A Washington Post editorial yesterday reinforces the importance of that choice, arguing that "Congress must ensure that it does not give biomass suppliers incentives to produce a fuel that is barely better -- or that is perhaps worse -- than fossil fuels."

Last week, I told EPA the following at their public hearing on their proposed rule to implement the RFS (here's the full draft of my testimony, which I mostly but not entirely stuck to):

The 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels demand alone will require an amount of biomass roughly equal to our annual average timber harvest for the past two decades (15.5 billion cubic feet of green wood).

Given current trends in deforestation around the world, the history of forest conversion by our timber industry, and even recent trends in CRP enrollment, it is impossible to imagine adding this much new demand for biomass to our lands and not creating new pressure for conversion of our natural forests and grasslands.

The laws of supply and demand are not laws of physics, but as capitalists, we believe they are the laws that govern our markets. Only your regulation can keep this new demand from having a huge negative impact.(emphasis added)

Now the biofuels industry is pushing to gut both the biomass sourcing safeguards and requirement for full accounting of the GHG emissions from biofuels. This means that while we force Americans to buy three and a half times more biofuels than they do today, we'll have no ability to protect our most sensitive forests or wildlife habitat and no ability to know if we're getting something that's actually better than gasoline or diesel.  Basically the biofuels industry wants to put the market in overdrive, take the safety railings off and then blind EPA. 

If they succeed, the renewable fuel standard should be suspended at least until the situation is fixed. It will be the worst irony if the biofuels industry succeeds in turning the biofuels backlash into its own coffin, but that's what they're pushing Peterson to do.

This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.

Comments

[doctorkosan]

Either your math or assumptions are flawed.
Multiple current biomass to fuel developing processes are achieving over 100 gallons of fuel per ton (bone dry) of biomass. To make 21 billion gallons of biofuel then requires 0.21 billion tons of biomass.
A recent USDA study assessed that the USA has 0.4 billion tons per year of waste forest biomass and 1 billion tons per year of agricultural waste biomass so there is plenty of biomass feedstock by a factor of 7 to hit the target volume. Not all would have to be forest biomass and re-cycle cellulosic waste pulled from garbage streams will also be used.
A recent analysis by the National Renewable Energy Lab reached the same conclusion.
Who vets the junk science that gets spouted at these public hearings? I hope no one of influence takes what you say seriously.

[Benblanken]

Why the hurry in Congress to stitch something, anything together to gets its hands on more tax money? Here's why: They must strike while the iron is still hot. Otherwise, another cooling year passes and more folks realize that we’re not to blame for climate change.

Why we’re not? Here’s a Jim-dandy reason: the sun.

According to Dr. Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, "...there are very few sunspots." Their appearance runs in 11-year cycles...“[t]his is the quietest (fewest sunspots) we have had in almost a century." That means a cooler planet.

Another reason we’re in for a cool spell, claims geologist Don Easterbrook: “Cool water in the Pacific extends from the equator all the way up the west coast of North America into the Gulf of Alaska [and it] isn’t going to change...the earth is in for global cooling for the next 2-3 decades...”

So no wonder Congress is going hell for leather to get the energy tax law passed. All sorts of deals are being made to keep constituent groups on board. Cow-towing to ethanol interests may screw up the whole tax measure. Let's hope so.

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Let's face it, so called biofuels for the most part, work out to be net ecological loosers compared with gasoline.
Face facts people, the most environementally responsible way of running the mass personal automobile as we know it is the refined petroleum, ICE engine.
Which should give you a clue that the concept of a 'green' car as we know it is a Big Lie.
And that anyone who thinks that going 'green' doesn't mean a lot fewer cars on the road is just plain misinformed.