Controlling carbon emissions to forestall long-term climate change is critical to Michigan's future.
Our children and grandchildren will pay an increasingly expensive price for our unbridled use of fossil energy. Agriculture and tourism, hugely important to the state's economy, will be early losers because even small temperature increases will cause field crops to use more water, fruit trees to bud-break too early and the loss of prized cool-water fish, such as trout from Michigan waters.
Biofuels are one of several important options for reducing carbon emissions. But carbon credit legislation under consideration doesn't distinguish between different sources of biofuel carbon. This is a carbon accounting error that will hurt Michigan.
Biofuels are important because we can burn plants that have absorbed recent carbon from the atmosphere. This keeps carbon dioxide levels constant. Biofuel crops put into the atmosphere no more carbon than they pulled out while they were growing.
But there's a catch. To the atmosphere, not all biofuel carbon is equal. In particular, burning carbon that is stored in older trees increases the atmosphere's carbon dioxide burden. This is because carbon in most trees would otherwise stay stored in forests and out of the atmosphere.
For biofuels to help avoid climate change, the carbon they release must have been captured in the past year or so.
Failing to make the distinction between good and bad sources of biofuel damages the credibility of the emerging cellulosic biofuels industry. Without this distinction, the promise of biofuel's ability to reduce climate change won't be realized, and the backlash will be serious -- especially if we've already sacrificed many of our forests.
It's been estimated that under proposed and current legislation, all of the world could be deforested for biofuel sometime in the next century.
And to have the greatest effect on atmospheric carbon levels, biofuel crops should be grown on land not now used to produce food. This is because taking land out of food production in one place may cause forested land elsewhere to be cleared for crops, which releases stored carbon and removes the capacity of the forest to store additional carbon.
Making the distinction between biofuel carbon sources also will make Michigan's future biofuel stocks more valuable.
Michigan has a lot of land that could be used to grow innovative carbon-neutral biofuels. Abandoned land formerly used for field crops or pasture could be used to grow grasses that are harvested annually for energy production. Formerly cleared land in the Upper Peninsula could be planted with grasses or very fast-growing trees like poplar and willow. Biofuel plantings also could have valuable conservation benefits.
I co-wrote a paper in Science last month in which my colleagues and I pointed out the harm of allowing carbon accounting errors to persist.
We should work to correct this loophole to protect an industry that will become increasingly important to Michigan's burgeoning bioeconomy and to take meaningful steps to slow climate change.
Correcting this mistake would not only ensure the long-term market value for biofuels, but would protect early investments by farmers and refiners and help ensure that U.S. biofuels have access to international markets with stricter emissions standards.
More than most Midwestern states, Michigan stands to benefit from correct accounting rules for biofuel carbon. Policymakers should make these corrections now so we can avoid a very expensive fix later.
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