ecoplasm’s Recent Comments

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  correction above (too quick on the post): EDF supports phasing out CDM offsets from projects that will fall under a country's sector-wide baseline, not all international forestry projects

  On Peterson’s Waxman-Markey amendment: the nitty gritty and what it means posted 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  Actually, what 'waste aeration' refers to is a process that oxygenates manure effluent in anaerobic lagoons sufficiently well to prevent the methane generation that would normally result from anaerobic activity.  This is no mystery since it is already an approved methodology with the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for both manure and wastewater treatment systems.  It just sounds exotic because most of us in the US removed our GHG thinking caps between 2000 and 2007 and are still largely ignorant - even many of our so-called policy experts. It is embarrasing to play catch-up to the Europeans on what was originally home-grown Clinton/Gore-era policy design; California has been dutifully resurrecting early EPA policy and borrowing heavily from the European 'forbidden zone' although, Zaius-like, not quite getting it right and claiming full credit for it all (damn dirty apes!).

  Don't worry though, plenty of people at both the EPA and USDA know what 'waste aeration' means, and the USDA has been funding scientific research and development projects for this and many of the other practices on the list above for quite some time (some of our more important conservation programs with regard to water quaility have been more or less successfully administered by the USDA for many years).  Check the IPCC 4th Assessment Report if you want to see a similar list.

  And this 'Peterson list' is not new either, it comes from the Senate side (much credit goes to Stabenow and the 'Gang of 16') and was part of the Lieberman-Warner debate last year.  It actually originally included non-agricultural offset projects such as landfill and wastewater methane capture, but those got scrubbed last week - by Waxman, not Peterson.  So don't blame the ag community for an all-ag offsets program.  As it is right now, WM doesn't leave much for the EPA to do with regard to offsets, except to qualify international forestry offsets (which EDF and others would like to phase out altogether by 2018).

  As for Life Cycle Analysis, I'm not sure why you think the EPA is, or would be, so good at this.  There's not much evidence for them having any overwhelming mastery of this area - got to go to Berkeley or Carnegie Mellon or Argonne to find that.  Anyway, how is a biofuels life cycle analysis that is conducted TODAY relevant to an economy that will TOMORROW be under a mutli-sector carbon constraint (assuming we pass some legislation)??  LCA is a retrospective (backward-looking) and heavily assumptive methodology; trying to look ahead (predict the future) with LCA is much like tossing chicken bones, not really science.  Don't get too hung up on a policy fashion trend that has already peaked (like pointy-toed high heels) with the serious environmental policy wonks (none of the girls are wearing that stuff anymore).  Selecting 'scientific' analytical tools to meet some influence group's desired result was a hallmark of the past adminsitration's EPA, hopefully not this one's.

   

  On Peterson’s Waxman-Markey amendment: the nitty gritty and what it means posted 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  "Don’t panic—carbon offsets for going organic!"

  OK, not a bad slogan. Offsets may not be the enemy of the people after all.

  Wouldn't composting be a good thing to incentivize as well if we're pushing hard to promote organic ag as a possible beneficial outcome of this bill?  Diverting food residuals and other organic wastes from landfills could lead to huge reductions in methane emisisons as well as provide nutrients and carbon sources for low input/high carbon agriculture.  Unfortunately, the current WM bill takes away offset opportunties for composting by forcing the EPA to regulate landfill methane emissions through "performance standards", and the Peterson/Waxman amendments today don't address this.

  California is making the same mistake by 'regulating' landfill methane emissions through performance standards. Frankly, the landfill giants are just loving it, since it is likely to provide a crooked but plausible-sounding justification for sending more organics to the landfill, not less (to produce more methane to help pay for the increased gas collection costs and keep 'rate payer' prices down through already subsidized renwable energy generation...).  You will continue to hear the false argument that landfill gas collection is highly efficient and landfills will be formally rebranded as 'methane bioreactors'. Not good for composters or new anaerobic digestion technologies that can be much more efficient at methane reduction as well as capturing useful energy, both biological (compost) and chemical (methane).

  Does the EPA really want this? How about we ask the group that pioneered the original landfill methane offset protocols for the EPA Climate Leaders Program (several years ago), or ask those who work for the Landfill Methane Outreach Program who have been actively anticipating and promoting environmental markets for years, or ask the Reduce, Reuse and Recycle folks in the EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, or even ask the really smart people in the EPA Office of Climate Change (they practically invented offset policy).  Is it a good idea for a few special interest groups to second-guess the EPA on whether offsets might actually be sound policy for this sector?

  I think a lot more people, once they see through the trees, will understand that offset policy is what you make of it (and not necessarily the devil's weed); wouldn't it be funny if Monsanto, as a capped entity, ended up funding the widespread development of organic agriculture in the US through the purchase of offsets from organic farmers, as overseen and encouraged by an Obama administration run USDA?

  Sounds pretty not-so-bad to me.

  On The bad and maybe not-so-bad of the Waxman-Peterson deal posted 5 months ago 6 Responses

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  Meridith, I hope so to.  EPA's Climate Change office has a very good working relationship with folks at USDA, and relies on them heavily for national GHG inventory work and modeling in the ag and forestry sector.  Many of the early offset program design concepts for Kyoto came out of this EPA group. However, given the long-simmering bad blood at other levels and especially with respective consitutuents, perhaps something akin to a Rwanda-style unity and reconciliation effort would be necessary for an ideal working relationship between these two agencies to be possible.

  I'm not so sure about the maturity of EPA's life cycle analysis capabilities, however.  A great hueristic tool, LCA, but EPA's recent oopsy in the ethanol debate was largely the result of a borrowed Berkeley approach and I've heard that even the EPA economists would be hard pressed to call it anything more than a work in progress. EPA's LCA Waste and Recycling Model (WARM) developed in what used to be called the Solid Waste Division has gotten nothing but rotten tomatoes from the Climate Change office, and is also literally a work in progress (again).  In fact, the biggest cart-tip Lisa Jackson has experienced so far, in which she apparently lost a few political apples, was due to a political decision to rush ethanol LCA into the rulemaking process - probably well before it was ready.

  I think there is already some good experience accumulated both nationally and internationally for applying LCA, when appropriate, to offset program leakage evaluations.  Most of it, however, has been outside of the EPA (remember that in the 'dark days' until the Obama admin they lacked both funding and political will to spend much time on this - it's hard to get good at something you're not allowed to do).

   

   

  On How bad is the Peterson-Waxman deal on climate legislation? posted 5 months ago 7 Responses

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  A bit unfair to say Waxman 'caved'.  He's actually a masterful politician.  Do you want climate change legislation or not?

  Anyway, the House and the Senate already voted to authorize the USDA to develop a carbon offsets program, including a registry -- signed into law last year -- it's called the 2008 Farm Bill (Sec. 1245). Waxman only agreed to include this type of program in his cap-and-trade system as a mechanism to provide compliance offsets from agriculture and forestry. Lisa Jackson (EPA) already publicly ceded this part of the offsets program to the USDA last week (I think she's trying to keep her new job; wish her luck).

  By the way, by design, an offsets program is not a regulatory program but an incentives program.  To be sure, if it is to provide compliance offsets then there has to be a high bar for eligibility, quantification and issuance of credits, but the goal of offsets programs is to incentivize emission reductions in difficult to regulate sectors, not to regulate them.  EPA, as a regulatory agency, may not be the best choice if we're honestly trying to reduce GHG emissions in these sectors as quickly and practically as possible, especially in ag, where it has almost no boots on the ground and barely speaks the language.  EPA is better suited to regulate the large emitters.  And despite the high hopes of some, the EPA is probably not the best vehicle for ruling the earth.

  Hooray for climate legislation and Hooray for Waxman!  It will only get better as we can all finally get to work on reducing global warming.

   

  On How bad is the Peterson-Waxman deal on climate legislation? posted 5 months ago 7 Responses