Today in Biofuels Opinion: “indirect land use change is the ripple effect that results from using land currently used for food for fuel production.”

Jeff Gazzard in GreenAir Online: “Against a background of increasing pressure on the industry to do more to control and reduce its carbon emissions, alternative fuels have moved firmly onto and up the agenda as one way in which some or all of aviation’s greenhouse gas emissions might be further controlled and reduced…The main question in climate change terms is whether such fuels have an overall benign or negative carbon balance.”

From a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson from the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists: “In last year’s energy bill, Congress explicitly required the EPA to accurately measure global warming emissions from renewable fuels based on their entire lifecycle, from cultivation to fuel production to vehicle exhaust. However, industry trade groups and others are pressuring EPA to omit or delay accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, such as tropical deforestation, tied to expanding biofuels production. Such indirect land use change is the ripple effect that results from using land currently used for food for fuel production. This may indirectly lead to decimated forests or tilled prairies for new farms to make up for lost food crops. Such land clearing, especially in tropical forests, releases large amounts of greenhouse gases.”

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