Senators: Don't include indirect land use in EPA regulations

March 5, 2009

BY Erin Krueger

Web exclusive posted March 19, 2009, at 3:09 p.m. CST

A bipartisan group of 12 U.S. senators led by Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, issued a letter to U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson on March 13 urging the agency not to include indirect land use changes in proposed regulations. The senators argue that the data and methods for calculating these indirect land use changes (ILUC) are not adequately developed and should not be used in ways that make it more difficult for ethanol and biodiesel to meet the requirements of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 for reduced carbon emissions from advanced biofuels under the renewable fuel standard (RFS).

"With the RFS, we put ourselves on a clear path of producing and using steadily increasing levels of a variety of biofuels over the next 15 years, and we included these emissions' limits to ensure that these new fuels would also be good for our environment and climate," Harkin said. "However, for this to work, we simply must have valid data and methods for calculating the emissions. Otherwise, we'll exclude some good biofuels and stifle the investment that is so essential to our national renewable fuels strategy."

While the law requires biofuels to meet certain life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission caps in order to quality for the RFS, and specifies that those life-cycle GHG emissions are to include the effects of indirect land use changes, the senators argue that the ability to calculate future indirect land use changers is limited by the lack of proven and accepted land use models and sufficient information about input data.

"Given the complexity and uncertainty of this issue as well as what we believe are basic analytical limitations, we urge EPA to refrain from including any calculations of the ILUC components in determining life-cycle GHG emissions for biofuels at this time," the letter stated. "The premature publication and use of inaccurate or incomplete data could compromise the ability to formulate a sound approach to implementing this life cycle GHG emissions requirement in the future. And the resultant rulemaking confusion could seriously harm our U.S. biofuels growth strategy by introducing uncertainty and discouraging future investments." The senators urged the EPA to move forward in a manner that allows for public review and refinement of the methodology that is used to calculate ILUC.

In addition to Harkin and Grassley, the letter was signed by Senators Kit Bond, R-Mo.; Sam Brownback, R-Kan.; Bob Corker, R-Tenn.; Kent Conrad, D-N.D.; Tim Johnson, D-S.D.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Pat Roberts, R-Kan.; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and John Thune, R-S.D.

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