I welcomed the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act last month. It is a good bill that gets us going down the road toward clean energy and climate solutions. But passing the bill in the House required some last-minute deal making, and one of the most troubling concessions made -- and one my colleagues and I will push to change in the Senate -- are the biofuels provisions.
At NRDC, we have long seen the promise in biofuels. Done right -- using sustainable crops and assessing the carbon footprint from soil to fuel tank -- biofuels can help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, bring new markets to rural communities, and be a real part of the solution to global warming.
But biofuels can also be done wrong, and if the ACES provisions don't get fixed, that is what will happen. Biofuels production will start threatening forests and wildlife habitat and even increase global warming pollution.
Biofuels done that way is something NRDC can't support. And it is something the American public won't support either. Americans have been willing to embrace biofuels as a clean energy solution, but if it turns into just another dirty fuel, they won't buy it. Nor will they tolerate the huge mandates and generous tax credits that direct more public money to biofuels than any other form of renewables.
I don't want to see that happen. I want to see America realize the promise of biofuels. That's why NRDC will be fighting to stop the three most problematic parts of the ACES biofuels policy from going forward. My NRDC colleague Dave Hawkins is testifying today, along with Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, before the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee on biofuels and other aspects of the ACES bill (follow or read his testimony here). These are some of the things we intend to fix:
1. Using Faulty Carbon Accounting
Current law (the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007) requires the use of a huge amount of biofuels -- 36 billion gallons -- and requires new biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Now, however, as a result of an eleventh-hour change, ACES weakens this requirement by forcing the EPA to use faulty carbon accounting.
Rep. Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson and entrenched Big-Ag interests held ACES hostage, demanding changes that strip away the existing requirement that biofuels producers do a full life-cycle accounting of their carbon emissions, including market-driven impacts such as international deforestation.
This means that if a biofuels company persuades a farmer to grow biofuels feedstock instead of soy, it doesn't have to account for the fact that this decision impacts the global food market, and that somewhere in the world, another farmer is likely to clear carbon-storing tropical rainforest in order to grow soy to make up for the lost American supply.
In this fuzzy accounting system, we wouldn't have to acknowledge that the carbon released from deforestation is greater than the carbon pollution we were trying to limit by burning biofuels in cars.
Unless we fix this, the only responsible course for Congress is to temporarily suspend the renewable fuel standard, which creates the 36 billion gallon requirement. If we can't tell whether our biofuels are taking us in the right direction, we shouldn't require people to use them.
The truth is American farmers can produce biofuels from biomass that doesn't disrupt the food supply or raze our lands by reviving degraded farm land and using residues from agriculture, forestry, and recycling. But without the right signal -- a requirement to fully account for life-cycle carbon emissions -- American farmers won't have the incentive they need to explore biomass opportunities that prevent deforestation and genuinely reduce carbon emissions.
2. Watering Down Criteria for Biomass Sources
The ACES compromises took another step backward from existing law by dramatically weakening the guidelines for what constitutes renewable biomass -- a change that leaves our native grasslands, wildlife habitat, old-growth forests, and federal lands in danger of being cleared to produce energy crops. ACES now eliminates all sourcing guidelines on non-federal lands and significantly dilutes the level of protection for our federal forests.
3. Giving Biofuels a Big Loophole
The entire purpose of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is to track carbon emissions and account for them under the carbon cap. But lawmakers decided that emissions from burning biomass would not be covered under the cap. If a coal power plant replaces half of its coal with biomass, it only has to buy carbon allowances for half of its pollution.
This makes sense if the biomass is sourced in a sustainable, low-carbon way, but if the biomass comes from old growth trees or plowed under forests, then burning that biomass constitutes a major increase in carbon pollution. It should be covered under the cap, not given a free pass.
Undermining Public Support for Biofuels
The American public already tempered its support for biofuels when last year's spike in biofuels production was held responsible for rising global food costs.
Once people learn that lawmakers such as Representative Peterson are trying to strip away the guidelines that protect tropical forests, safeguard American wildlands, and ensure that biofuels are genuinely low-carbon, they will rightly grow more skeptical of the biofuels industry.
If we can repeal the last-minute biofuels amendments to ACES, we can replace that skepticism with a belief that biofuels done right can be a real, American-grown, global warming solution.
This post orginally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.