(June 3, 2010) Washington – The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) today continued to call into question accounting gimmicks and unproven theories used by environmental activists seeking to undermine the growth of biofuels as a way to displace fossil fuels.

The latest iteration is a rehash of arguments made by environmental attorney Tim Searchinger. In his latest attempt to discredit ethanol and other biofuels as a tool to address climate change, Searchinger recycles the same oft-discredited arguments that were originally raised in 2008. A new article by Searchinger appearing in Environmental Research Letters suggests the climatic effects of using biomass for energy are no different than using fossil fuels. The article also rehashes the argument that biofuels could contribute to indirect land use change, resulting in carbon emissions that overwhelm the carbon benefits of biomass and biofuels. However, much of Searchinger’s original hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited, including a recent study from Purdue University that demonstrates Searchinger’s original estimate of ethanol’s possible indirect land use change emissions was overblown by a factor of eight.

“The latest scientific evidence clearly shows ethanol production is both environmentally responsible as well as increasingly sustainable,” said RFA President and CEO Bob Dinneen. “While the data increasingly demonstrates ethanol’s superiority over oil and other fossil fuels, environmental activists continue to postulate wild anti-renewable fuel theories that lack scientific merit. A perfect example is the latest charge from environmentalists that increasing American biofuel use will lead to increased oil use around the world and as such biofuels should be penalized for those carbon emissions.”

Searchinger and his colleagues have been nothing if not persistent. But try as they might to disavow the carbon benefits of biomass and biofuels, their concept has failed to gain traction. Here’s why: it fails to appropriately compare the full biomass carbon cycle to the fossil fuels carbon cycle. Searchinger says when biofuels use existing crops, they produce no direct carbon benefits. That is, the crops do not sequester any more CO2 than they would have if used for some other purpose. This may be technically true if the use of crops to produce biofuels is examined relative to doing nothing. It is not true, however, when using the crops to produce biofuels is compared to extracting fossil fuels from the ground to produce energy. In the case where the biofuels carbon cycle is appropriately compared to the fossil fuels carbon cycle, the benefits of using biomass are blatantly obvious.

By using Searchinger’s logic, a beverage can made from recycled aluminum is the same as a can made from aluminum that was just mined from the ground. That simply doesn’t make sense, nor does it do anything to break America’s addition to oil.

As President Obama noted in a speech in Pittsburg yesterday, “But if we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction -- if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs -- we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”