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      Incorporating equity into sustainability assessments of biofuels

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      Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
      Elsevier BV

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          Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

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            Use of U.S. croplands for biofuels increases greenhouse gases through emissions from land-use change.

            Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gases because biofuels sequester carbon through the growth of the feedstock. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that occur as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels. By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. This result raises concerns about large biofuel mandates and highlights the value of using waste products.
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              Land clearing and the biofuel carbon debt.

              Increasing energy use, climate change, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels make switching to low-carbon fuels a high priority. Biofuels are a potential low-carbon energy source, but whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a "biofuel carbon debt" by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages.
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                Author and article information

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                Journal
                Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
                Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
                Elsevier BV
                18773435
                June 2015
                June 2015
                : 14
                : 180-186
                Article
                10.1016/j.cosust.2015.05.006
                eb8f2ab4-0ebd-45ef-88c0-c53c017e4eb7
                © 2015

                https://www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/

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