Environmental Defense Fund to Launch Stakeholder Process to Explore Bioenergy Policy Options

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact
Tony Kreindler, tkreindler@edf.org, 202-572-3378 (office), 202-445-8108 (cell)

(Washington, DC - October 26, 2009) Environmental Defense Fund today announced it is planning to convene a broad-based working group to explore consensus approaches to carbon accounting for bioenergy and biofuels, following the publication of a paper in Science magazine that highlights the challenge of creating incentives for bioenergy in domestic climate legislation and international agreements.

“Bioenergy and biofuels can be a key part of the solution to climate change if we get the right policies and incentives in place,” said Environmental Defense Fund Chief Scientist Steven Hamburg, co-author of the Science paper. “We’re reaching out to a broad group to craft policies that maximize the benefits while minimizing environmental downsides.”

Environmental Defense Fund is in the early stages of reaching out to agriculture groups, forest landowner groups, biofuel and bioenergy producers, and other environmental groups to convene a facilitated stakeholder process that can produce a consensus-based mechanism for bioenergy carbon accounting.

In the United States and several other countries, existing and proposed climate change regulations treat bioenergy as carbon neutral. The Science paper says that approach is based on incorrect assumptions that if not corrected, will in the long-term create incentives for increasing types of bioenergy production that actually increase greenhouse gas emissions.

“Environmental Defense Fund recognizes that fossil fuels are responsible for the largest share of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, so tackling those is our first priority,” said Hamburg. “But over time, we also need to fix this accounting error so that the benefits of biofuels can be harvested and negative impacts on the climate and ecosystem health can be avoided. We may not reach consensus before the Senate completes its work on climate legislation, but we hope to provide a long-term path forward for addressing the issue as the U.S. and other nations pursue their climate change mitigation goals.”

Environmental Defense Fund is committed to developing solutions and policies that promote innovation through market incentives - including a robust market for agriculture offsets in cap and trade legislation and incentives for land-use practices that reduce carbon emissions - rather than the direct regulation of agriculture under carbon caps.

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Environmental Defense Fund, a leading national nonprofit organization, represents more than 700,000 members. Since 1967, Environmental Defense Fund has linked science, economics, law and innovative private-sector partnerships to create breakthrough solutions to the most serious environmental problems. For more information, visit www.edf.org.