Should indirect land-use change emissions from biofuel production be attributed to biofuels? A review of Kim et al., 2008

There are two types of land-use change: ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’, the former referring to the removal of previously-growing vegetation together with the carbon it stores within it and replacing it with the biofuel crops. 'Indirect' involves land-use change elsewhere (Mellilo et al., 2009). Indirect land-use change is said to account for twice as many emissions as direct at the present (Mellilo et al., 2009), making it especially important. Some studies suggest that if indirect land-use changes are taken into account, the expected reduction in GHG emissions by substituting fossil fuels with corn ethanol biofuels, for example, becomes negligible (Searchinger et al., 2008), reflecting on the importance of the issue of whether the responsibility of indirect land-use changes should be given to biofuels.

Kim et al. (2008) question whether indirect land-use change should be taken into account in biofuel emissions calculations, or at least how much of the indirect emissions should be attributed to biofuels and who should be blamed for the indirect land-use change emissions. This is because the amount of emissions depends not just on biofuel growers but also on the grower of the crop that would have been grown instead of the biofuel. Would it be fair to attribute all the land-use change emissions to an environmentally-conscious ethanol producer, and not holding the potentially unsustainable activities of those producing land-use changes elsewhere, such as clearing the rainforest to produce soya, responsible for any? Kim et al. (2008) question the universal applicability of the concepts of the ‘polluter pays’ and ‘think globally, act locally’ to biofuels, due to the difficulties that arise in establishing who the polluter is and how to distribute emissions. They illustrate the validity of their belief by showing that at least 70% of crops such as corn grown globally is used as animal feed, meaning that biofuels contribute relatively little to emissions if the bigger picture is taken into account. Additionally, total agricultural emissions account for less than 20% of the total GHG emissions from land-use change, making biofuels seem even less responsible for the impact.

However, I feel that Kim et al. (2008) seem to draw attention away from the impact of biofuels. For example, they suggest that since 90% of all land-use change emissions arise from agriculture, timber and construction industries, biofuels are of little importance here. I, on the other hand, feel that all of these parties should be attributed equal responsibility and that biofuels are thus no less important. Attributing less responsibility to biofuels is potentially encouraging unsustainable practices in their production.

Nonetheless, this is an important point, showing where variations in indirect land-use change calculations may arise even under identical conditions and reminding of the importance of other parties producing land-use emissions. This also demonstrates the problem with most indirect land-use change calculations of biofuels, which usually attribute all the emissions to the biofuel industry, meaning that the calculations suggest worst-case scenarios of biofuels impact. This should thus be kept in mind when evaluating biofuels’ emissions.

My conclusion after reading Kim et al.’s (2008) view is thus that biofuels should be responsible for a part of the emissions to avoid the arguably current overestimation of emissions from biofuels. However, the other often-ignored participants of the land-use change emissions should be given more responsibility than they seem to be at the moment.