UN Panel: GHGs Up, ILUC Unverifiable

STREATOR, Ill. (DTN) -- The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its "Bioenergy and Climate Change Mitigation: An Assessment" report in Berlin on Sunday, April 13, that showed carbon dioxide emissions doubled their rate of growth from 2000 to 2010, biofuels production is economically beneficial and that Indirect Land Use Change modeling is unverifiable.

The report, prepared by a panel of 235 authors and review editors from 58 countries known as Working Group III, said that increased reliance on coal worldwide led to a near doubling of the rate of greenhouse gas emissions in the first decade of the century "despite a growing number of climate mitigation policies."

The report attributes coal with reversing "the long-standing trend of gradual decarbonization of the world's energy supply."

On the subject of indirect land use change, the IPCC report contained an attempt to predict future land use patterns globally. ILUC has been used by some scientists to show biofuel production increases GHG emissions because they say nations cut down forests to plant crops for biofuels.

The report stated that "These estimates of global LUC (Land Use Change) are highly uncertain, unobservable, unverifiable, and dependent on assumed policy, economic contexts, and inputs used in the modeling."

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These findings mean the panel has joined other scientists and academics that have found the ILUC theory to be "faulty because modeling relies on hundreds of assumptions, not facts, to predict future land use patterns around the world," according to the Global Renewable Fuels Alliance, based in Canada, in a news release Monday morning.

"The GRFA applauds the UN for recognizing that the ILUC theory has no ability to accurately predict future land use patterns and hopefully it can now focus on the real challenges to food security like rising crude oil prices and food waste," concluded Bliss Baker, spokesman for the GRFA.

"Sunday's report from the IPCC is further proof that biofuels contribute to local economies and that Indirect Land Use Change modeling is nothing more than a flawed theory," Baker added.

The UN IPCC report found that "Bioenergy projects can be economically beneficial, by raising and diversifying farm incomes and increasing rural employment through the production of biofuels for domestic or export markets."

The report added Brazilian sugar cane ethanol production provides six times more jobs than the Brazilian petroleum sector and spreads income benefits across numerous municipalities.

"Worker income is higher than in nearly all other agricultural sectors and several sustainability standards have been adopted," the report said.

The IPCC report's findings are consistent with a 2012 GRFA report which found that global ethanol production in 2010 supported nearly 1.4 million jobs in all sectors worldwide and contributed over $273 million to the global economy. In the European Union alone, the ethanol industry created 70,000 direct and indirect jobs. The IPCC report also reinforces a recent study conducted by ABF Economics, which found that the U.S ethanol industry in 2013 created 86,503 jobs, sustained an additional 300,277 indirect and induced jobs while contributing $44 billion to U.S. Gross Domestic Product and added $30.7 billion to household incomes.

"Not only do biofuels, particularly ethanol, have the lowest CO2 abatements compared to any other renewable energy but the latest IPCC climate change mitigation report confirmed that they make significant contributions to economies around the world and in some cases like Brazil, biofuels employment is eclipsing crude oil," stated Baker.

The GRFA is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting biofuel policies internationally.

(BM/AG)

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