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International Energy Agency/(S&T)2 Consultants Inc., February 2009
A new study commissioned by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has examined greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction since 1995. The conclusion, the development and use of ethanol in place of petroleum reduces GHG emissions by 39% with that number continuing to grow year by year, reaching a reduction of 55% by 2015, doubling since 1995.
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Air Improvement Resoure Inc.
A new study released by Air Improvement Resource, Inc. (AIR) focuses on the impact increased grain-based ethanol production may have on land use changes. According to this study the best estimate impact of expanding ethanol production to 15 billion gallons by 2015 will have no U.S. or international land use impact.
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Dr. Kenneth Cassman, University of Nebraska in Lincoln, January 2009
This report, completed by a team of researchers from the University of Nebraska and led by Dr. Ken Cassman, evaluates dry-mill ethanol plants that use natural gas. Such plants account for nearly 90 percent of current production capacity.The study evaluates the corn and ethanol production data to determine the effects that this will have on the environment. The researchers found that corn-ethanol emits an average 51 percent less greenhouse gas than gasoline, as much as three times the reduction reported in earlier research.
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Harvard Kennedy School of Government, May 2008
This report concludes that the development of sustainable biofuels requires a firm commitment to the Renewable Fuels Standard as well as other biofuels incentives. The report is based on a discussion on the impact of biofuels on the global environment and economy among twenty-five of the world’s top experts on biofuels, economic development and ecology. These experts agreed that, “Despite pressure from biofuel critics, governments should avoid simplistic and precipitous changes in course such as rollback or moratoria on existing biofuels mandates or incentives.” The report concludes that such action would “almost certainly cause more harm than good.”
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U.S. Department of Energy
Two recent 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. Further, these two studies somewhat conflict with one another, with one supporting cellulosic ethanol and the other one opposing it, except if produced from waste.
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Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), February 2008
Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen says, “Assigning the blame for rainforest deforestation and grassland conversion to agriculture production solely to the renewable fuels industry ignores key factors that play a greater role. The continued growth of the global population, surging global demand for food from expanding middle classes in China and India, and continued expansion of development and urban sprawl are all factors contributing to the increased demand for arable acres.
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Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), White Paper
Understanding the impacts of land use changes is important to developing strategies to address global climate change. However, such efforts must take into account a myriad of factors – rising global populations, soaring demand for food, continued development and urban sprawl – that contribute to the need for more arable acres.
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Michael Wang, Argonne National Laboratory, February 2008
With no data or modeling, the article by Searchinger et al. in Sciencexpress used historical land use changes that occurred in the 1990s in individual countries to predict future land use changes in those countries (2015 and beyond). This assumption is seriously flawed by predicting deforestation in the Amazon and conversion of grassland into crop land in China, India, and the United States. The fact is, deforestation rates have already declined through legislation in Brazil and elsewhere. In China, contrary to the Searchinger et al. assumptions, efforts have been made in the past ten years to convert marginal crop land into grassland and forest land in order to prevent soil erosion and other environmental problems.
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Geoff Cooper, National Corn Growers Association (NCGA)
Land use changes cannot be looked at in the singular context of increased biofuels production. The impacts and interplay of numerous global economic, social and political factors on land use also need to be considered. In particular, it is imperative that the impact of global energy markets on agricultural markets (and specifically land use) are understood and properly modeled. Current models do not thoroughly account for these factors.
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Bruce Dale, Michigan State University, February 2008
Also, biofuels must be compared with appropriate alternatives. The choice is not between biofuels and some perfect, imaginary fuel. We are going to provide fuels for our vehicles, whether those fuels come from biomass, tar sands, coal, oil shale or some other source. I believe there are strong reasons to question the assumptions, data and comparisons made in some of the recent papers criticizing biofuels and their exaggerated connection to land use changes.
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Bruce Dale, Michigan State University (complete letter), February 2008
There are no real, verifiable data in either of the recent papers on the land use changes that actually occur as more corn is processed to ethanol—hence these papers are not LCA studies. They are in fact highly speculative and uncertain scenarios for what might happen as a result of increased demand for corn grain.
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Lou Honary, University of Northern Iowa
In technology forecasting, some predictions can be self-defeating just as others can become self-fulfilling. In this case, recent reports and their projections of a pending global disaster due to inappropriate land use are overly simplistic and do not take into account many other related factors. The assumption that corn and soybeans are and will continue to be the long term source of raw materials for biofuels production is incorrect, and it is this assumption that leads us to make self-defeating projections.
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Institute for Local Self-Reliance, February 2008
The studies in Science maintain that only the use of cellulosic wastes or the growing of perennial prairie grasses could result in greenhouse gas reductions. But their own data seem to clearly show that cellulosic energy crops, even if they are grown on existing grassland and especially if they are grown on CRP land, significantly reduce GHGs. Indeed, the data might be viewed as an argument to convert CRP land to the growing of cellulosic energy crops as a climate change strategy.
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Institute for Local Self-Reliance, News Release
These studies fail to recognize the very low greenhouse gas emissions from advanced ethanol plants, plants that can reduce emissions by over 50 percent as compared to gasoline. Nor do the studies factor in the higher greenhouse gases that will be emitted when crude oil is extracted from unconventional sources like tar sands.
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