Events
Biofuels and land use changes
19th March 2008
Professor Timothy Searchinger of Princeton University will deliver a free public lecture on the subject: "How Land Use Change Alters Our Thinking About Biofuels" in a joint LowCVP/Imperial College event on Wednesday 19 March, 3.15pm-5pm.
Tim Searchinger is a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is also a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute. Trained as a lawyer, Searchinger now works primarily on interdisciplinary environmental issues related to agriculture.
Professor Searchinger will be presenting the results of his recent study into biofuels and land-use change.
The Abstract of Searchinger's study says: "Most prior studies have found that substituting biofuels for gasoline will reduce greenhouse gasses because growing the crops for biofuels sequesters carbon. These analyses have failed to count the carbon emissions that will occur either as farmers worldwide directly convert forest or grassland to produce biofuels or as farmers worldwide respond to higher prices and convert forest and grassland to new cropland to replace the grain (or cropland) diverted to biofuels.
Two new papers in Science magazine have now calculated that the emissions from this land use change for most biofuels that use productive land are likely to mean that these biofuels overall result in substantially increases greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years. Even advanced biofuels from biomass, if produced on good cropland, could have adverse greenhouse gas effects."
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