Web exclusive posted May 21, 2009, at 2:20 p.m. CST 
 
 The House Committee on Agriculture held a <a target="_blank" href="http://agriculture.house.gov/hearings/statements.html" rel="external">hearing</a> May 21 regarding proposals for a low carbon fuel standard. Representatives of the American Coalition for Ethanol, Growth Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association and Verenium Corp. testified at the hearing and shared their concerns regarding the inclusion of international indirect land use change effects in state and federal regulations. 
 
 House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., opened the hearing, stating that he strongly feels that the U.S. does't currently have the right policies that are needed to ensure the nation can produce a cost-effective domestic supply of clean renewable fuels. "These issues and how we address them - or don't address them - will shape our nation's energy options," he said. 
 

 According to the committee's ranking member Frank Lucas, R-Okla., lawmakers must ensure that the U.S. EPA is only administering policy as Congress intended, not developing its own environmental policy. 
 
 Peterson and Lucas recently introduced legislation that aims to eliminate the requirement that the EPA considers indirect land use when calculating the life-cycle carbon emissions associated with advanced biofuels. The bill, titled the Renewable Fuel Standard Improvement Act, would also alter the definition of renewable biomass that was included in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. 
 
 According to ACE Executive Vice President Brian Jennings, his organization believes that properly designed and implemented low carbon policies can help the biofuels industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions. "However…because the California Air Resources Board and EPA are selectively enforcing the untested theory of international indirect land use change, we cannot support these policies as they stand," Jennings said. 
 
 "International land use change theory predicts that using corn ethanol in the United States somehow causes ripple effects in the food and feed systems that cause farmers literally halfway around the world to make a land use decision to put virgin land into production to replace feed, and the carbon emission resulting from this should be ascribed to corn ethanol," Jennings said. However, the fact is that real world measurements do not corroborate this theory. Instead, Jennings said that real world measurements indicate that the level of deforestation in the Amazon was actually reduced during the ethanol boom that spanned from 2004 until 2007. "The fact that the international land use change predictions are not validated by on the ground measurements should be persuasive enough to justify more scientific scrutiny before moving ahead in a policy context," he said. 
 
 Jennings offered three ways to improve policy making in this area. First, he said lawmakers must insist upon widespread scientific agreement on real world data - or lack thereof - regarding indirect effects before moving forward on policy. "The science should drive the politics on this issue, not the other way around," he said. Second, if indirect effects are assigned to one transportation fuel, they should be assigned to all fuels covered by the regulation. Third, Jennings said the EPA needs to more carefully examine the role that distillers grains play in replacing corn and soybean meal in livestock rations. 
 
 "Any low carbon policy that precludes corn ethanol from a fair shake in the market is also likely to unnecessarily jeopardize the future for advanced biofuels, because indeed advanced biofuel technology innovations are going to depend upon corn ethanol to build a bridge to their successful commercialization," Jennings said. 
 
 In his testimony, Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis said members of his organization could support a low carbon fuel standard so long as it is developed correctly. He said such a standard should apply equally to all transportation fuels, should be based on universally accepted science and economic modeling, and should exclude indirect land use change considerations. "The proposals at both the state and federal level that we've reviewed do not meet these requirements, and we've spoken out aggressively to address the shortcomings in these proposals," he said. 
 
 According to RFA president and CEO Bob Dinneen, EPA has over-read the statute for developing the next stage of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) and under-evaluated the science they are using. "And as a consequence, has threatened the continued development and evolution of the biofuels industry," he said. "More importantly [the EPA] may have undermined the continued movement toward climate change policy in this country."
 
 Dinneen criticized the EPA's focus on using only commodity prices in the science that is used to calculate international indirect land use change, while ignoring many other factors that influence a farmer's decision to plant crops. "Biofuels are being penalized for market induced behavior around the globe, over which our industry has absolutely no control," Dinneen said. 

 
 "I believe that there are much better ways, less invasive ways - a more effective way - to meet our goals of large scale biofuels development without risking land use change," said Verenium president and CEO Carlos Riva. This includes using incentives rather than regulation to encourage the right combinations of feedstock, technology and land use to occur. Riva encouraged the EPA to refrain from assigning land use change effects to advanced biofuels until the industry is more established.

Ethanol industry testifies against indirect land use change at congressional hearing

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Ethanol industry testifies against indirect land use change at congressional hearing.css-7jxktu{position:absolute;bottom:0px;left:0px;right:0px;height:3px;border-radius:3px;background-color:var(--chakra-colors-brandBlack);}

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Ethanol industry testifies against indirect land use change at congressional hearing