Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/107452
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- Title
- Biofuels and indirect land use change effects : the debate continues
- Related
- Biofuels, bioproducts and biorefining, Vol. 3, Issue 3 (2009), p.305-317
- DOI
- 10.1002/bbb.147
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date
- 2009
- FoR/RFCD Code(s)
-
090700 Environmental Engineering
091300 Mechanical Engineering
100300 Industrial Biotechnology
- Author/Creator
- Mathews, John A
- Author/Creator
- Tan, Hao
- Description
- While debate on biofuels and bioenergy generally has sparked controversy over claimed greenhouse gas emissions benefits available with a switch to biomass, these claims have generally not taken into account indirect land use changes. Carbon emissions from land that is newly planted with biocrops, after land use changes such as deforestation, are certainly real - but efforts to measure them have been presented subject to severe qualifi cations. No such qualifications accompanied the paper by Searchinger et al. published in Science in February 2008, where the claim was made that a spike of ethanol consumption in the USA up to the year 2016 would divert corn grown in the USA and lead to new plantings of grain crops around the world to make up the shortfall, resulting in land use changes covering 10.8 million hectares and leading to the release of 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent. These emissions, the paper argued, would more than offset any savings in emissions by growing biofuels in the first place; in fact they would create a carbon debt that would take 160 years to repay. Such criticism would be devastating, if it were valid. The aim of this perspective is to probe the assumptions and models used in the Searchinger et al. paper, to evaluate their validity and plausibility, and contrast them with other approaches taken or available to be taken. It is argued that indirect land use change effects are too diffuse and subject to too many arbitrary assumptions to be useful for rule-making, and that the use of direct and controllable measures, such as building statements of origin of biofuels into the contracts that regulate the sale of such commodities, would secure better results.
- Description
- 13 page(s)
- Subject Keyword
- 090700 Environmental Engineering
- Subject Keyword
- 091300 Mechanical Engineering
- Subject Keyword
- 100300 Industrial Biotechnology
- Subject Keyword
- biofuels
- Subject Keyword
- indirect land use changes (ILUC)
- Subject Keyword
- carbon emissions
- Subject Keyword
- Searchinger et al
- Subject Keyword
- biopact
- Subject Keyword
- proof of origin certification
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Organisation
- Macquarie University. Macquarie Graduate School of Management
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/107452
- Identifier
- ISSN:1932-104X
- Identifier
- mq-rm-2009002825
- Language
- eng
- Reviewed
