As the California Air Resources Board (CARB) prepares to hold a Biofuels and Land Use Change Public Forum tomorrow, a comprehensive new report from Life Cycle Associates, Advances in Estimation of Land Use Change Emissions Associated with Ethanol, shows that CARB’s decade-old estimate of hypothetical indirect land use change (ILUC) associated with ethanol is obsolete and should be revised.
California last conducted an analysis of ILUC in 2014 and 2015, when economic models were less refined for the purpose of estimating land use change and limited historical data were available for the period when the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) had been in effect.
According to Life Cycle Associates, “The cumulative effect of methodological improvements has been a steady reduction in estimated GHG emissions from corn ethanol land use change, producing results that are more consistent with observed global market behavior.” After extensively reviewing the evolution of models and emissions factor estimates, they conclude, “These improvements have allowed for a more nuanced and accurate assessment of how modeled biofuel shocks in response to different policies affect land use and associated GHG emissions. A key outcome of these analysis efforts is a reduction in predicted GHG emissions from LUC associated with corn ethanol.”
Read more from RFA here: https://ethanolrfa.org/media-and-news/category/news-releases/article/2025/11/new-study-finds-california-s-indirect-land-use-change-score-for-ethanol-is-obsolete
