BIOMASS HUB

A new policy brief released this week by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy addresses shortcomings of EU sustainability factors in regulating bioenergy feedstock production.

Lange argues that failure to account for actual carbon displacement resulting from land use change (LUC) in feedstock development leads to an “overestimation of the carbon mitigation potential of biodiversity.”  Current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings in the EU are calculated as a measure of gross biofuel savings less GHG inputs.  By neglecting to incorporate IPCC guidelines for above and below ground carbon displacement arising from LUC, the EU fails to account for conversion practices releasing 20% of global GHGs.  Proper sustainability models would factor carbon release from wood, leaves, roots, and soils, particularized to geographic biomes.

Current EU regulations promote sustainability in biofuel development by prohibiting conversion of certain carbon-dense lands like wetlands, while limiting biomass production in other areas by requiring increasing threshold efficiency standards through 2018.  Quantifying biodiversity is a more arduous task, and yet unsettled.  Both carbon-in-conversion and biodiversity regulations determine biofuel imports, potentially upending markets in the U.S., Argentina, and Brazil.

Lange ultimately offers both theoretical and practical approaches to calculating the actual effects of biofuels upon climate change mitigation.  In practical terms, Lange uses the IPCC guidelines for carbon content of living and dead biomass and soil, to introduce carbon conversion factors ultimately determinative of which world regions promote sustainable biofuels, and whether some bionergy crops should be rejected by EU regulators.

This study finds that the conversion of natural land for bionergy production never meets the minimum emissions reduction target of 35%, and in most cases even leads to much higher emissions than the use of fossil fuels.  As a result, it is advised that the only way for Argentinean soy, German wheat and rapeseed, and US wheat to achieve minimum reduction targets of EU regulators would be to grow feedstocks exclusively on croplands and degraded grasslands.

More on the GHG balance of biofuels and land use change (available in English).