GoodFuels

Fairness Needed in Indirect Land Use Analysis

Regulatory agencies and environmental groups should be considering the indirect land use impacts of ALL fuels, not just biofuels, when they look at lifecycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions.

That is the message that Geoff Cooper with the Renewable Fuels Association took to the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin last weekend.

“Every energy decision we make has indirect effects associated with those decisions and we’re not looking at any of those other fuels and their indirect impacts,” Cooper says. “If we’re going to look at indirect effects for biofuels, we need to look at indirect effects for every energy source and we need to be fair.”

Cooper says the environmental journalists he addressed seemed to be surprised that only biofuels were being subjected to indirect effects and he was happy to share some of the new studies that analyze the carbon footprint of such practices as petroleum production from the Canadian tar sands. “Most previous reports excluded emissions from land use change and exploration and development of the natural gas used in the tar sands process.”

This edition of “The Ethanol Report” features an interview with Geoff about these topics and others related to ethanol and the environment.

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