Science, Not Industry, Should Determine Rules for Fuels

From the Union of Concerned Scientists;

If pursued wisely, biofuels, such as corn ethanol, have the potential to play a pivotal role in reducing global warming emissions from vehicles. But research indicates that conventional biofuels can result in substantial global warming pollution when forests and grasslands are converted to farmlands for fuel crop production.

Lobbyists for the conventional biofuels industry are mounting a vigorous campaign to push the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ignore these vital scientific findings when implementing the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS)—which has created the first national global warming pollution criteria for ethanol, biodiesel, and other renewable fuels.

The EPA is holding a public comment period through July 27 on their proposed standards. Please tell Administrator Lisa Jackson that the best science must be incorporated into the RFS to ensure that biofuels truly become part of a clean transportation future.

Sincerely,

Scott Nathanson
National Field Organizer
UCS Clean Vehicles Program

P.S. If you are a Ph.D. professional at a university or research institution, who has expertise relevant to the scientific and economic dimensions of climate change or of land use change, we also welcome you to join our National Scientists’ Statement on Biofuels and Land Use.



Contact the EPA today
Dear Administrator Jackson,

In keeping with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) commitment to use the best available science when developing policy, I am writing to recommend that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) use the latest science to calculate the lifecycle analyses of heat-trapping emissions from biofuels. This would ensure that indirect land use change, resulting from converting forests and grasslands to farmland for fuel crop production, is taken into account.

Recent peer-reviewed research indicates that the production of conventional biofuels can directly or indirectly result in substantial global warming emissions. Previous lifecycle analyses of biofuels did not adequately account for these emissions, giving these fuels credit for greater reductions in heat-trapping emissions than actually achieved.

The data on land use change indicate that the emissions related to biofuels are significant and can be quite large. Although it’s currently difficult to assign a precise value to the effect of indirect land use, we need to develop regulations based on the best available science without ignoring this major source of global warming pollution.

Therefore, I urge the EPA to base all future biofuels policies on the best science, including assigning a value to emissions from indirect changes in land use based on the most recent peer-reviewed research.

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