IPCC report relies heavily on bioenergy, but EPA rule shows policy isn't ready
Posted May 10, 2011 in Solving Global Warming
Last Monday, the IPCC released a policy makers summary of study that predicts that the world could get nearly 80% of its energy from renewable sources by 2050. The full report won't be available until the end of May.
"The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades," said Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III in the press release.
There have been other studies that have shown similar technical potential and it's important to regularly remind policy makers that the technologies are ready to go, we just have to choose to use them and adopt smart policies to get us there.
And therein lies a rub with the IPCC report. The summary shows a tremendous growth in the amount of bioenergy as part of its many of the scenarios that form the basis for its conclusions. For the scenarios that keep global GHG emissions concentrations below 440 ppm in 2050, the median contribution from bioenergy is more than any other renewable energy technology by a lot and bioenergy would experience more 200% growth. (At first glance, it looks like bioenergy provides more than all other renewables combined, but bioenergy is accounted for based on its primary energy value and the other renewable based on their secondary energy values, which understates their value by up to 3 fold.) The figure below, Figure SPM.11. tells the basic story, though it takes some close inspection.
Unfortunately, the section on bioenergy reads as if it were written by an industry association with a number of demonstrably false statements, such as "Most current bioenergy systems, including liquid biofuels, result in GHG emission
reductions." (page 16.) Palm oil biodiesel and current corn ethanol do not reduce GHG emissions. Then there's this doozy at the end of the section:
Proper governance of land use, zoning, and choice of biomass production systems are key considerations for policy makers. Policies are in place that aim to ensure that the benefits from bioenergy, such as rural development, overall improvement of agricultural management and the contribution to climate change mitigation, are realized; their effectiveness has not been assessed.
Statements like this, make this report really dangerous. No policy maker should be fooled into thinking the policies exist that would be needed to make the levels of bioenergy suggested by this report actually sustainable. Not only are there no examples of policies that require or encourage broadly sustainable bioenergy, here in the US, the debate is trending in the wrong direction.
As I wrote recently, EPA has proposed to entirely ignore biogenic carbon for 3 years.How can we possibly hope to induce smart, low carbon land-use, zoning or biomass production choices if we don't even count their GHG emissions? (Look for a blog soon on NRDC's comments to EPA.)
What makes this proposal and the IPCC statement particularly vexing is that it is the IPCC's accounting system that is often used to justify assumptions that bioenergy is carbon neutral. As discussed in more detail in this letter from a group of scientists to the Washington state legislature, when the IPCC was developing an inventory system for global GHG emissions, the scientists decided to account for biomass emissions as as changes in terrestrial carbon emissions and therefore count biomass combustion emissions as zero to avoid double counting them. Of course EPA isn't regulating terrestrial carbon, so ignoring the combustion emissions amounts to ignoring bioenergy pollution entirely.
So you'll forgive my frustration when EPA points to the IPCC accounting to justify a 3 year delay in counting bioenergy pollution and the IPCC releases a report saying that the policies needed to drive low-pollution bioenergy are in place.
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Comments
Geoff Cooper — May 18 2011 11:31 AM
Nathanael,
Please defend your statement that suggests "...current corn ethanol do[es] not reduce GHG emissions."
The very latest published research on corn ethanol lifecycle GHG emissions found that "...at PRESENT and in the near future, using corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emission by more than 20%, relative to those of petroleum gasoline." The 20% reduction figure INCLUDES prescriptive and uncertain GHG emissions from ILUC. Of course the merits and fairness of including indirect GHGs for corn ethanol when indirect emissions are excluded for the comparator (crude oil) are debatable. The appropriateness of including ILUC penaties for corn ethanol within the context of lifecycle analysis should also be questioned based on the results of another new study that shows biofuels expansion in the U.S. likely has not induced ILUC. (See: Kim & Dale. "Indirect land use change for biofuels: Testing predictions and improving analytical methodologies." Biomass & Bioenergy)
But in any case, the newest research shows that even when you unfairly saddle current corn ethanol with ILUC emissions, it still is 24% better than gasoline that is not subject to any form of indirect GHG penalization. [See "Energy and greenhouse gas emission effects of corn and cellulosic ethanol with technology improvements and land use changes." Wang et al. Biomass and Bioenergy 35 (2011) 1885-1896.
Further, the new corn ethanol pathways approved by CARB for the LCFS all show that current corn ethanol is reducing GHGs relative to gasoline; some of those pathways result in 30-40% GHG reductions.
Please tell me you're not still desperately clinging to Searchinger's analysis as thin support for your belief that current corn ethanol doesn't offer GHG savings?! Get wth the times, man! Try to keep up!
Geoff
Nathanael Greene — May 18 2011 12:22 PM
Thanks for dropping by, Geoff.
Here's the link to my colleague's blog laying out how EPA's analysis shows that current corn ethanol doesn't reduce GHG emissions: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/slyutse/as_i_discussed_here_last.html
I don't doubt that a corn ethanol plant done in the best possible ways can offset EPA or CARB's ILUC factors and breakeven with gasoline, but that's not what the current industry is doing. Of course some studies, such as Plevin's 2010 article in ES&T , suggest that the real ILUC emissions may be as much as 10 times greater than what CARB is currently estimating.
And as to Kim and Dale's analysis, it's just a variation on the approach that ORNL did, and as with that analysis, they asked the wrong question and so their answer doesn't tell us anything about ILUC. As you know, you can only measure ILUC compared to an analysis of what the world would look like without the demand for biofuels. (Here's my blog on the ORNL analysis: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ngreene/ornl_report_tells_us_nothing_a.html)
Geoff Cooper — May 18 2011 03:14 PM
Let me get this straight: It's OK to charge current corn ethanol with hypothetical future GHG emissions from potential future ILUC that may or may not actually occur...but it's not OK to credit corn ethanol with future efficiency gains? That seems to be what you're saying in regard to EPA's analysis.
In any regard, EPA's analysis is already outdated--and it likely will be updated in the next several years to incoporate advances in the science and better data. A 2010 paper published in Biotechnology Letters shows that the CURRENT industry is ALREADY operating at the efficiency levels assumed by EPA for 2022. And these aren't the "best possible ways of producing corn ethanol"--these are industry averages.
Not to mention, EPA's ILUC analysis contains a major methodological flaw that significantly inflates the ILUC emissions estimates (a problem we explained here: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/exchange/entry/no-surprise-here-more-problems-emerge-with-rfs-greenhouse-gas-calculat/).
CARB has already approved 22 new corn ethanol pathways and is considering another 15-20. These pathways have been submitted by more than a dozen corn ethanol companies owning ~50 plants. So it is't just a few outliers. ALL of these pathways produce corn ethanol that reduces GHGs relative to gasoline (even with ILUC) and some are as high as a 35-40% reduction. These pathways are based on what the plants are doing NOW, not in 2017 or 2022.
As for uncertainty, there is as much information out there that shows ILUC emissions may be lower than current EPA and CARB assumptions as there is showing it may be higher.
I remain surprised at your unwillingness to give a fair shake to the new Kim & Dale paper or the Oak Ridge work. These are smart scientsts who know a thing or two about bioenergy, carbon accounting, land use change, etc. (in fact I think you mentioned that Bruce Dale "taught you everything you know about biofuels" at our conference last year). I won't rehash my thoughts on the ORNL approach here; I'll just direct folks who are interested here: http://www.ethanolrfa.org/exchange/entry/making-mountains-out-of-molehills/.
But I really am interested, though, in your response to a question I posed when the ORNL work came out--if the ORNL (or Kim & Dale) approach to empirically testing ILUC isn't acceptable to you, what method do you recommend for verifying the occurence of ILUC and calculating its magnitude? Don't you agree that it is fundamentally unfair to penalize an entire industry for an effect that can't be proven, can't be measured (according to you), and can't be controlled by those who are being penalized? And don't just say "well, I can't prove gravity either, but I know it exists." That's a rhetorical cop-out. I seriously am interested in whether you have any real ideas on how to track, measure, validate, verify whether and to what extent ILUC is happening as a result of biofuels expansion.
Geoff
Russ Finley — May 22 2011 11:45 AM
Geoff,
As a corn ethanol lobbyist employed by the largest and best funded corn ethanol lobbying organization in the world, your praise of researchers who support your paycheck and critique of those who don't is comical, literally.
Where's the love for the researcher published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons who drew this conclusion:
"...Using statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Indur Goklany estimates that this would lead to at least 192,000 excess deaths per year, plus disease resulting in the loss of 6.7 million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) per year...."
Ten inter-govermental organizations (FAO, IFAD, IMF,OECD, UNCTAD, WFP, the World Bank, the WTO, IFPRI and the UN HLTF) just recommended that ...
"...G20 governments remove provisions of current national policies that subsidize (or mandate) biofuels production or
consumption...."
Did you borrow the following line from a cigarette lobbyist? Sounds eerily familiar:
"...it is fundamentally unfair to penalize an entire industry for an effect that can't be proven..."
ILUC can't be proven? Farmers are not motivated to plant more acreage in corn when they can get much more per acre for it? You seem to have a low opinion of their intelligence.
When more acreage goes under corn more land magically appears to be planted in what was on the land that is now under corn?
Oh, and have you heard that the largest wheat ethanol plant in Europe will temporarily shut down in response to high wheat prices?"
...and on and on.
Sources:
http://www.jpands.org/vol16no1/goklany.pdf
http://ictsd.org/downloads/2011/05/finalg20report.pdf
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/05/ensus-20110514.html