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Cellulosic Ethanol from Corn Stover: Can We Get It Right?

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Cellulosic Ethanol from Corn Stover: Can We Get It Right? NOVEMBER 2015 R-15-08-A CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FROM CORN STOVER: CAN WE GET IT RIGHT? AUTHOR Loni Kemp EDITOR Sasha Stashwick Acknowledgments Nathanael Greene, Mary Heglar, Barbara Bramble, Jeremy Martin, and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. About NRDC The Natural Resources Defense Council is a international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.4 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Montana, and Beijing. Visit us at nrdc.org. NRDC Chief Communications Officer: Lisa Benenson NRDC Deputy Director of Communications: Lisa Goffredi NRDC Policy Publications Director: Alex Kennaugh Design and Production: www.suerossi.com © Natural Resources Defense Council 2015 Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 PART 1: BEYOND CORN; CHALLENGES IN ENSURING SUSTAINABLE STOVER HARVEST FOR ETHANOL ..................................... 6 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................... 6 Lack of Policy Guidance ................................................................................................................................................................. 7 First-Generation Feedstock: Impacts of Corn Production ..............................................................................................................9 Second-Generation Feedstocks: Stover Soil Benefits Versus Damage from Overharvest .............................................................10 PART 2: THREE Case STUDIES .................................................................................................................................................... 14 DuPont Cellulosic Ethanol Facility, Nevada, Iowa ......................................................................................................................... 14 Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass, Hugoton, Kansas............................................................................................................................16 POET-DSM Advanced Biofuels, Emmetsburg, Iowa ....................................................................................................................... 17 PART 3: ANALYSIS, CONCERNS, AND CRITICAL ELEMENTS FOR SUSTAINABILITY .....................................................................19 Analysis ........................................................................................................................................................................................19 Key Areas of Concern ...................................................................................................................................................................20 Recommendations to Ensure Stover Biofuel Sustainability ......................................................................................................... 22 Executive Summary Low-carbon liquid fuels are an essential component of the effort to reduce fossil fuel use and achieve necessary reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to avert catastrophic climate change. Second-generation biofuels must achieve a lower carbon impact than corn ethanol and avoid the negative environmental impacts of corn ethanol. Failure to deliver on these environmental promises could irreparably damage public policy support for biofuels. Production of second-generation biofuels is now under way, The practices of these first three facilities are important with three major facilities on track to produce a combined and precedent setting, especially to the extent that they 80 million gallons per year of ethanol from corn stover. demonstrate leadership in setting a high bar for the Stover is the corn plant residues typically left in the field industry as a whole. However, no public policies are in after corn grain harvest—the cobs, husks, leaves, and place today to guide or regulate stover harvest, and future stalks. Stover has the advantage of not being a food source facilities are currently under no obligation to take similar like corn itself, and as a by-product of corn production, approaches. Further, if the technologies employed by these it has lower production costs. However, corn stover is leading companies prove viable and more facilities are built not “waste.” Some amount of crop residues are essential that rely on stover, the value of stover—and thus the value to return organic matter to farm fields, maintain healthy of growing corn—will increase, contributing to demand for soils, minimize erosion and water pollution, and sequester ever more corn production. carbon. Research shows that a modest portion of stover Production of corn at the scale currently seen in the can be sustainably harvested for biofuel production on flat United States is almost certainly inherently unsustainable, and highly productive fields, if erosion is under control resulting in a broad spectrum of impacts to water quality and harvest amounts are carefully limited. On the other and quantity, soil, wildlife habitat, and air quality. hand, excessive stover removal (or any removal at all on While the facilities described in this report have chosen many corn acres) harms the soil, increases erosion, leads locations where they believe they can collect corn stover to water pollution, increases nutrient applications and without exacerbating soil erosion and nutrient loss, the pollution, and can reduce the amount of carbon sequestered other impacts of growing corn may still be intensified. At in soil organic matter. the same time, greater demand for stover will increase The first three companies to launch stover-to-ethanol pressure on farmers to provide more of it, potentially plants—owned by Abengoa, POET-DSM, and DuPont— threatening the types of measures being taken to limit either opened their doors in 2014 or are planning to open in the impacts of these facilities, even if these measures are 2015. Each has voluntarily adopted its own sustainability ultimately made mandatory. approaches for stover harvest. Thus, the race is on not just to identify the best soil This paper is an early response to this emerging industry. conservation practices and stover harvest management It explores the conditions under which stover harvest systems—and to work to make these mandatory—but can be carried out without compromising soil health or to do so in a way that continues to be effective even as contributing to water degradation—an issue that will the scale of the market grows. This requires more than grow more prominent as production of second-generation discouraging practices that would make an environmentally biofuels from stover expands. It then profiles the different unsustainable farming system worse; it means actually approaches the three leading cellulosic ethanol plants encouraging changes in farming practices that are better are taking to limit stover removal to environmentally for the land. Measuring the impacts on the land of stover- sustainable levels and ensure that stover sourcing practices fueled facilities and transparently reporting these impacts do not harm the land. It details the information each are likely insufficient to accomplish this goal, but they are company reports relying on to determine sustainable certainly necessary steps. harvest levels and examines how each plans to monitor and enforce company standards to ensure implementation by supplying farmers. Page 4 CELLULOSIC ETHANOL FROM CORN STOVER: CAN WE GET IT RIGHT? NRDC Beyond voluntary corporate standards, this paper also planning. These practices are vastly underutilized and examines government policies (or lack thereof) regarding can be combined to maximize carbon sequestration and stover-based cellulosic ethanol production and how the water quality and quantity issues, possibly alongside United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other modest stover harvest. Cellulosic biofuel producers agencies could be involved in ensuring sustainable stover should also explain and expedite plans to incorporate harvest rates. It also looks at potential problems with perennial energy crops, including grasses, prairie mixes, stover-based biofuels that may have been overlooked thus and hay, into their facilities. far, and examines what conservation practices farmers With future cellulosic biofuels development, it is should be using to accompany stover removal. Finally, it important to identify the real decision makers in ensuring makes recommendations to support companies in ensuring sustainable harvests. Who should decide the extent of sustainable stover harvest, and to equip policymakers to the stover harvest? Is it the farmer, the harvester, the put in place guidelines for farmers as the new stover-based stover aggregator, or the biofuel producer? The first ethanol industry grows and we move toward an expected three facilities, profiled here, chose to direct third-party expansion of cellulosic ethanol feedstocks from agriculture. harvesters and advise farmers according to their own These recommendations include, but are not limited to, guidelines. In the future, biofuel companies
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