NCEE Seminar: Making Policy in the Absence of Certainty: Understanding and Interpreting Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) Estimates

Virtual Seminar
Washington, DC 20460
United States

Contact: Ann Wolverton, 202-566-2278 (wolverton.ann@epa.gov)

Presenters: Dr Colin Murphy, UC-Davis

Description: 

Biofuels have the potential to help achieve GHG reduction goals, and support reduced emissions in difficult-to-electrify sectors such as aviation. Understanding the GHG impacts of biofuels can be difficult, however, because they interact with agricultural, natural resource, and energy markets in complex ways. One of the most important interactions to consider is indirect land use change (ILUC), the expansion of cultivation that occurs in response to increased demand for agricultural commodities from biofuel production. Fully understanding ILUC impacts requires complex modeling of international agricultural commodity markets and many assumptions regarding counterfactual impacts. This results in estimates of ILUC impact that vary widely between different models and create significant uncertainties around whether many biofuels are effective at reducing GHG emissions.

In this talk, I will discuss ILUC modeling and current estimates of ILUC impact for several fuels of interest, especially sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and how the uncertainty in data and modeling impacts assessed GHG impacts from ILUC. More importantly, I will discuss how to interpret and contextualize the uncertainty behind widely varying estimates of biofuel GHG impact, and how policy makers can effectively navigate this uncertainty to effectively support the transition to low-carbon transportation. 

For more information on our presenter, see https://policyinstitute.ucdavis.edu/people/colin-murphy

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This seminar is not open to the media. The purpose of the seminar, and all our seminars, is to foster the free exchange of information. For media inquiries, please contact the Office of Public Affairs (https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/about-office-public-affairs-opa).