The Policy Landscape for Agricultural Bioenergy

Agricultural (ag) bioenergy has received financial and technical support from the Energy Title of the Farm Bill, first established in 2002. At present, however, the primary drivers of ag bioenergy are incentives in federal energy legislation (the Renewable Fuel Standard or RFS) and California legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of transportation fuels (the Low Carbon Fuel Standard or LCFS), along with policies administered by the US Environmental Protection Agency.The RFS creates requirements for incorporating various categories of renewable sources, including ag biofuels, into liquid transportation fuels. A complex credit program based on sales of qualifying renewable sources facilitates the achievement of those requirements. The thresholds for qualifying (20, 50, or 60 percent lower estimated lifecycle greenhouse gas intensity) are coarse-grained and thus coarsely targeted for providing incentives to reduce greenhouse gas intensity.The LCFS also uses a credit system to achieve targeted reductions in lifecycle greenhouse gas intensity over time. However, the emissions intensities of qualifying renewable sources are based on technology pathways, with careful assessments of actual emissions that provide incentives for reducing actual emissions intensity. Nevertheless, the measurement of reductions in emissions intensity is only as good as the baseline used for comparison—a concern that has been expressed over the calculation of negative emissions intensity for manure-derived biogas.There is vigorous debate about the overall reduction in greenhouse gases achieved with conventional bioethanol made from corn. Lower-carbon technologies remain costly to use at scale. Adverse environmental impacts also can arise from producing biofuels, some of which raise environmental justice concerns.