University professor, students disagree with new EPA guidelines

Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at the Princeton Environmental Institute and the Wilson School, said that his main problem with the guidelines is that they call for biofuels to be produced from productive rather than unproductive land.

“The big problem is that you basically take carbon that the land is already producing and you use it for one purpose rather than another, and you call yourself richer,” Searchinger said. “It’s really just diverting.”

Some students voiced similar concerns about the EPA’s new guidelines as well.

“Unless the calculation that corn ethanol is a low-emission fuel is inarguable, the Obama Administration and the EPA should resist the pressure of the powerful corn lobby,” Danny Growald ’11, vice chair of Students United for a Responsible Global Environment, said in an e-mail.

“[The EPA should] instead focus on promoting carefully accounted second-generation cellulosic biofuels,” Growald added.

Searchinger noted that the EPA does not account for the offsets in food production that result from using corn for ethanol.

“One of the interesting things people haven’t realized is that ... when you divert cropland to biofuel production, one of the consequences is that prices go up and people eat less,” Searchinger explained. “That, actually, in the case of the greenhouse-gas calculation, shows up [in the EPA’s analysis] as a benefit ... because you save all the greenhouse gases in food production.”

The consequences of diverting resources toward crops designated as biofuels — and away from traditional farming — will therefore be more detrimental than beneficial, Searchinger added.

“What’s happening here is that people are going hungry,” he said. “The point is that if [the EPA] is right, the result is very bad.”

Growald echoed Searchinger’s concerns about the worldwide food market.

“The dangers of calling for increased corn-ethanol production as a result of the new calculations are multifold,” Growald explained. “If the calculations are not correct ... they risk promoting a fuel that is at best only slightly lower than gasoline in carbon emissions and competes with global food markets.”

He added that this increased competition would contribute to already rising food prices.

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Searchinger said his criticism is based on the results of published research.

“There have been about 10 major scientific reviews of biofuels in the last two years by European agencies, technical agencies, [the] National Academy of Sciences, etc.,” he said. “All of them have concluded that the risk of increased greenhouse gas emissions and hunger because of land use is such that we essentially should not use productive land to make biofuels.”

“We should instead use residue and waste and unproductive land,” he added.

In addition, Growald said, “much of the science on the topic suggests that secondary land-use change emissions make corn ethanol a dramatically higher carbon fuel than gasoline.”

Growald called this outcome of the EPA’s new ethanol guidelines “exactly the opposite of what we need in the face of a warming climate.”

Katherine Song ’11, vice president of the Princeton chapter of the International Association for Hydrogen Energy, said in an e-mail that she was also disappointed by the policy.

“I am skeptical of the claim that [corn-based ethanol production] is an environmentally friendly and economical alternative to traditional fuels,” she said.

“Especially given the potential consequences that increased corn-based ethanol production may have on the agricultural industry and economy as a whole, I believe that we must ensure that politicians fully understand the principles, costs and risks ... before policies encouraging this technology are made,” she explained.