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  • U.S. EPA Establishes Renewable Fuel Standard

    Authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the RFS program requires that the equivalent of at least 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel be blended into motor vehicle fuel sold in the U.S. by 2012. The program is estimated to cut petroleum use by up to 3.9 billion gallons and cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by up to 13.1 million metric tons by 2012 — the equivalent of preventing the emissions of 2.3 million cars.

    "The Renewable Fuel Standard offers the American people a hat trick — it protects the environment, strengthens our energy security, and supports America’s farmers," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson.

    In keeping with President Bush’s call to reduce gasoline use by 20-percent within 10 years, the RFS program will promote the use of fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, which are largely produced from American crops. The program will also create new markets for farm products, increase energy security, and promote the development of advanced technologies that will help make renewable fuel cost-competitive with conventional gasoline.

    In particular, the RFS program establishes special incentives for producing and using fuels produced from cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass and woodchips.

    Nicole R. Nason, Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said, "As a part of the President’s "20 in 10" energy security plan, we need Congress to give the Secretary of Transportation the authority to reform the current passenger car fuel economy standard."

    "Increasing the use of renewable and alternative fuels to power our nation’s vehicles will help meet the President’s Twenty in Ten goal of reducing gasoline usage by 20 percent in ten years," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

  • Biofuels and Greenhouse Gas

    "Biofuels have a great potential to reduce our dependence on imported gasoline and diesel fuel," said William Parton, researcher from Colorado State’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL). "We have performed a unique analysis of the net biofuel greenhouse emissions from major biofuel cropping systems by combining ecosystem computer model data with estimates of the amount fossil fuels used to grow and produce crops for biofuels."

    Parton, along with Stephen Del Grosso, USDA scientist and NREL researcher; and Paul Adler from the USDA used the DAYCENT biogeochemistry model, developed by Parton and Del Grosso, to assess soil greenhouse gas fluxes and biomass yields for corn, soybean, alfalfa, hybrid poplar, reed canarygrass and switchgrass.

    "Although fossil fuel inputs are required to produce and process biofuels, hybrid poplar and switchgrass converted to ethanol compensate for these emissions and actually remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere when the benefits of co-products are included. Greenhouse gas savings from biomass gasification for electricity generation are even greater. This research provides the basis for evaluating net biofuel greenhouse gas emissions and highlights the need to improve the technologies used for large scale conversion of biomass to energy and to more fully exploit agricultural co-products," Del Grosso said.

    Ethanol and biodiesel from corn and soybean are currently the main biofuel crops in the U.S., but the perennial crops alfalfa, hybrid poplar, reed canarygrass and switchgrass have been proposed as future dedicated energy crops.

    Bioenergy crops are able to offset carbon dioxide emissions by converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon in biomass and soil, but the production of biofuels requires fossil fuels and impacts greenhouse gas fluxes.

    The primary sources of greenhouse gas emissions associated with crop production are soil nitrous oxide emissions and the CO2 emissions from farm machinery, farm inputs and agricultural processes. Colorado State and USDA scientists quantified all of these factors to determine the net effect of several bioenergy crops on greenhouse gas emissions.

    Researchers found that, once the DAYCENT results were combined with estimates of the amounts of fossil fuels used to provide farm inputs and operate agricultural machinery and the amount of fossil fuel offsets from biomass yields, they were able to calculate the net greenhouse gas fluxes for each cropping system.

    "We used extensive observed greenhouse gas flux and crop yield data to verify DAYCENT model predictions of crop yields and net greenhouse gas fluxes from all of the biofuel crop rotations. DAYCENT model results were combined with life cycle analyses of crop production, conversion to biofuel, and fossil fuel displaced to estimate net greenhouse gas emissions," said Parton.

    This study was a unique and complete analysis of bioenergy cropping for several reasons. Different crops vary with respect to length of plant life cycle, yields, biomass conversion efficiencies, required nutrients, net soil carbon balance, nitrogen losses and other characteristics which in turn impact management operations. Additionally, crops have different requirements for farm machinery inputs from planting, growing, soil tillage, applying fertilizer and pesticide and finally harvesting.

    The researchers were able to use life cycle analyses and the DAYCENT model to account for all of these factors as well as integrate climate, soil properties and land use to accurately evaluate the impact of bioenergy cropping systems on crop production, soil organic carbon and greenhouse gas fluxes.

    The study was published in the April 2007 issue of Ecological Applications.

  • Turnbull touts metered farm water

     

    Australia’s Environment Minister says water meters will become a key part of Australian agriculture in the next few years.

     

    Malcolm Turnbull yesterday unveiled an $18 million water efficiency scheme in north-west Tasmania.

     

    Hydro Tasmania’s new meter measures up-to-the-minute water use and availability.

     

    Results are sent to a central database where more than 3,000 Tasmanian farmers will log on by the end of next year.

     

    Mr Turnbull says improving efficiency is a key part of his water security plan and nearly all Australian farms will eventually need water meters.

     

    "This will be a bigger and bigger part of water management, everywhere in the world," he said.

     

    Hydro Tasmania’s Christoff LeGrande says the new invention is ready to lead the way.

     

    "There are already trials running in Queensland and South Australia and there’s then the potential of taking it internationally," he said.

     

    He says the new water meters are quicker and more accurate than manual monitoring.

  • Japan and China negotiate Kyoto

     Beijing has not set caps on its rapidly increasing emissions, saying that rising global temperatures are mainly due to fossil fuel use by industrialised nations and that China is entitled to pursue the same level of prosperity that they enjoy.

    China’s top climate change official said in March that a national plan on global warming set to be released this month would include policies for cutting back greenhouse gases, but did not say whether it would give an overall national target.

    The two countries also agreed to cooperate on other measures regarding the environment including: – technical assistance by Japan on desulphurisation of Chinese coal-fired thermal power plants. – setting up an experimental model of recycling society in Qingdao. – joint monitoring of harmful chemical substances including persistent organic pollutants.

  • Courts and Greens – Times Editorial

    The courts, of course, have hardly been alone in this struggle. When the history of this administration’s endless tussles with environmental law and practice is written, the various advocacy groups that challenged the administration in court at nearly every step of the way will occupy a major role. So, too, will an often underappreciated group, the states’ attorneys general, particularly those from California and the Northeast.

    It was Eliot Spitzer, for instance, then New York’s attorney general and now its governor, who helped revive a dormant provision of the Clean Air Act known as “new source review” to force the cleanup of dirty plants grandfathered in under the original law. And it was New York, 11 other states, three cities (including New York City, which served as the lead city petitioner), American Samoa and various environmental groups that together brought the global warming case to the Supreme Court.

    Yet all of these efforts would have been for naught had the courts not read the law the same way. Some cases, of course, were easier than others. In the salmon case, for example, the government advanced a weak (and preposterous) salmon “recovery” plan that, among other things, argued that dams were immutable parts of the landscape, like mountains, and could not be tampered with to help fish. James Redden, a federal district court judge, saw through this nonsense and ordered the government to draw up a more plausible plan. This week, he was resoundingly upheld by the Ninth Circuit.

    The clean air cases were more difficult, involving complex industry arguments about measuring pollution — arguments that would essentially have allowed industry to evade the law. The Seventh Circuit ruled against industry’s position and the Fourth Circuit for it, but when the Fourth Circuit case reached the Supreme Court, the court (ruling on the same day it issued its global warming decision) came down firmly on the side of the law.

    Nothing inspires litigation like environmental regulation, so these cases are hardly the end of the struggle. But so far — given the administration’s determination to roll back the law and the acquiescence, until recently, of Congress — we can be grateful for the existence of the third branch.

  • Costello warns against emission ‘zealots’.

    A Federal Government appointed task group will report on a potential national emissions trading scheme next month.

    Mr Costello, who is in Washington for a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wants to make sure any future system does not cripple the mining industry or send the economy into a downward spiral.

    "Nobody should be thrown out of work or lose their business or lose their home because of a zealot, or zealotry in relation to policy," he said.

    But the federal Opposition has criticised Mr Costello for branding the state and territory leaders’ call for a national carbon trading system as zealotry.

    Opposition spokesman for the environment Peter Garrett says the scheme keeps people in work while enabling them to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    "It’s extraordinary that the Treasurer should be going on the public record talking about zealotry in relation to establishing a market to trade a commodity, something which businesses want to do," he said.

    "I’ve had no suggestions from anybody about a national emissions trading scheme is actually going to be designed to put people out of work, in fact it’s designed to do the opposite."

    © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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