New Studies (Fargione, Searchinger) Portray Unbalanced Perspective on Biofuels: DOE

This is kindof an old piece, but one I missed. I don't remember DOE issuing such a dismissive appraisal of Fargione's and Searchinger's hypothoses of Indirect Land Use Changes due to biofuel production.


http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/news_detail.html?news_id=11794">New Studies Portray Unbalanced Perspective on Biofuels: DOE Committed to Environmentally Sound Biofuels Development
May 23, 2008

DOE response based on contributions from Office of Biomass Program; Argonne National Lab, National Renewable Energy Lab, Oak Ridge National Lab, Pacific Northwest National Lab; USDA

Two studies posted February 8, 2008 on “ScienceExpress” -- an advance web version of Science Magazine -- and widely reported in the press, raise important issues but often read like conclusions looking for an underlying rationale. These two studies fundamentally misunderstand the local forces behind land use change issues and make no provision for mitigating impacts such as the slowdown in urbanization that a vibrant agricultural economy would bring.



http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/pdfs/obp_science_response_web.pdf

The Searchinger study ("Use of US Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases through Emissions from Land Use Change") claims that biofuels production in the US, whether by corn or switchgrass, will trigger harmful land use changes elsewhere, in response to higher agricultural commodity prices, and thereby lead to huge GHG increases initially. The study claims that no greenhouse gas benefits will occur for the first 167 years of corn ethanol production.

The Searchinger study contains some unrealistic assumptions and obsolete data. The key issues are as follows:

• The study assumes a corn ethanol production scenario of 30 billion gallons per year by 2015, which is double the amount established by EISA (see Figure 1). To meet the new RFS, after 15 billion gallons, biofuels must come from feedstocks other than grain, and primarily be produced from cellulosic feedstocks, such as agricultural wastes and forest residues.

• The study relies on a worst-case scenario by assuming that land use and deforestation in 2015 will mirror that which occurred in the 1990s. Better land management practices and avoided deforestation credits, if adopted, could reduce deforestation rates. In fact, deforestation rates have slowed down over the past decade.

• The assumption that corn exports will decline by 62 percent is contradicted by historical trends. As Figure 2 shows, U.S. corn exports have remained fairly constant at around 2 billion bushels per year throughout the entire growth phase of the ethanol industry. Specifically, the 2007 exports represent a 14% increase compared to 2006 level, while US corn ethanol production has reached close to six billion gallons that same year.

• The premise that dramatic land use will result from U.S. corn ethanol use production is flawed. US corn production for food and feed has increased by 1 percent per year for the past two decades. Moreover, Figure 3 shows the increase in protein-rich U.S. Distiller Dry Grains (DDGS) exports, which are growing significantly as U.S. corn ethanol production expands. DDGS export growth will be a growing contributor to the global food supply.2

• One scenario analyzed in the study incorrectly assumes the conversion of US corn cropland to switchgrass. No farmer would convert corn acreage to switchgrass as the value of corn will most likely exceed that of a non-food crop. Furthermore, a DOE/Oak Ridge National Laboratory study found that more than 1 billion tons of biomass resources are available in this country (Figure 4) without displacing corn cropland.

2 DDGS can partially replace the nutrient value of corn as animal feed. However, they are not directly interchangeable and some modifications to feed rations are needed.
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BTW the Ghallager review of the Searchinger "study" found that he under calculated the replacement value of DDGS for other feed and thus OVER ESTIMATED the amount of land needed to make up the difference (for filed coorn grown for ethanol) by 100%. RATHER a LARGE error ...(to BE and error). NOTE I said "under-calculated" as this is hardly a matter of conjecture. Such data, based on experience of farmers) are available to anybody who takes the trouble to read it.