Professor David Driesen teaches at the Syracuse College of Law and at SUNY ESF.  He specializes in environmental law, international environmental law, and constitutional law.  He edited and contributed two chapters to the seminal Economic Thought and U.S. Climate Change Policy, published by MIT Press in 2009.  

This blog post originally appeared on March 7th, 2014, at the Center for Progressive Reform’s blog.  The original post can be found here.  It is reprinted here with the permission of both the author and the original host.

 

The media has reported, erroneously, that the Obama Administration’s environmental impact statement concluded that the Keystone Pipeline would have no impact on global climate disruption. The facts are a bit more complicated, and much more interesting. Basically, the final EIS concedes that Keystone would increase greenhouse gas emissions, but it uses a silent political judgment masquerading as scientific analysis to minimize its estimate of the increase’s magnitude. Accordingly, President Obama has ample grounds to reject the Keystone Pipeline application.

Let me explain. The EIS concedes that the construction project creating the Keystone Pipeline would produce .24 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTCO₂E) per year until TransCanada completes the pipeline. It also admits that operation of the pipeline after construction would produce 1.44 MMTCO₂E per year, about the emissions of 300,000 passenger vehicles.

Although this is a lot of emissions, the really huge emissions come not from the construction and operation of the pipeline, but from the extraction and use of tar sands oil. The EIS concludes that the tar sands oil transported through the pipeline would produce a whopping 147 to 168 MMTCO₂E per year in lifecycle emissions, approximating the annual emissions of more than 30 million cars. The huge emissions associated with tar sands oil has led James Hansen, a leading climate scientist, to conclude that exploiting tar sands oil means “game over” for climate change.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. In spite of the some 500 tons of annual emissions that the EIS concedes comes from the tar sands oil that the Keystone Pipeline would carry, the EIS concludes that this project would produce only 0 to 27.4 MMTCO₂E annually. Now the high end of that 0 to 27 estimate is a pretty high number. Indeed, at the high end, the rejection implies a savings of emissions comparable to that of proposed new standards for emissions from trucks. But even this “high end” estimate reduces the estimate of emissions tar sands oil associated with the Keystone by more than 80% from what it might be.

It’s not too surprising that the media has equated this minimization with denying emissions altogether, even though the combined high end estimated emissions from construction, operation, and added tar sands production exceed those of 6 million vehicles. Six million is a lot of cars, but not nearly as many as 30 million. Nor is it too surprising that the media has attributed this disappearing act to corruption, since the contractor that prepared the EIS, Environmental Resources Management (ERM), had Keystone as a client in the past. But there is a logic to this that has escaped media attention.

The logic is this: stopping Keystone’s construction would not necessarily stop the production of all of the oil the pipeline would carry. It is possible that some or even all of that oil would be produced anyway and shipped via other pipelines or rail. ERM, corrupt or not, estimates that a very large percentage would be produced anyway, perhaps all of it. This assumption does not change the concession about emissions from operation or construction, but it radically reduces the estimate of the pipeline’s impact on emissions from tar sands oil exploitation.

Several analysts and financial institutions disagree with ERM, finding that failing to build Keystone would significantly influence tar sands production. And ERM concedes that if no new pipelines are built and prices of oil range from $65 to $75 a barrel, denying this permit would have a big impact on production.

But all of these findings depend on economic analysis, whilst tar sands oil’s future depends, in large, part on political decisionmaking. There was some tacit acknowledgment of this political dimension in the Supplemental EIS, which considered, for the first time in this process, the possibility that citizens concerned about tar sands oil’s impact would succeed in blocking construction of new pipelines to carry tar sands oil altogether. But citizens’ goals go further than that. They want to shut down tar sands production. They argue vehemently against expansion of rail capacity to carry tar sands oil, since rail oil transport poses safety risks greater than those stemming from pipelines. An explosion last summer destroyed the town of Lac Mégantic, Quebec, killing 47 people. And, if it comes to that, environmentalists will oppose shipping tar sands oil by existing pipelines, although that’s a harder issue to win on. In short, it’s possible that stopping Keystone XL would ultimately eliminate the 500 tons of emissions associated with its capacity and add political momentum to stopping production of tar sands oil altogether.

So, what does all of this mean for President Obama? President Obama pledged to disapprove Keystone if it substantially increased greenhouse gas emissions. Even without entering the thicket of considering the pipeline’s impacts on tar sands production, Obama could disapprove the project simply based on the narrow technical ground that emissions associated with the pipeline’s construction and operation are significant. But he should also recognize that the view that construction of a new pipeline would have no impact on production at all seems extreme, and consider that even ERM’s projections suggest the possibility of significant remaining emissions from production.

But Obama is a President, not just an administrator. And he needs to consider this decision in the broader context of how he wants to contribute to shaping the arc of history. That is, he needs to consider this decision in the context of the broader political movement to stop tar sands production altogether in order to reverse the trajectory of ever increasing fossil fuel use and the dire consequences associated with that. Therefore, he should disapprove the Keystone pipeline and do everything in his power to shut down alternatives to it. Even if his leverage over these additional decisions is limited, his disapproval decision gives activists some time to work on efforts to shut down alternative transportation routes and ultimately production.

Nobody, certainly not the technocrats who prepared the EIS, knows whether the Keystone denial would only reduce the emissions that spell game over for climate disruption or constitute the first step in ending them altogether. But Obama needs to be one of the forces moving us toward shutting down a project that would have devastating consequences for America, the project of tar sands production.

 

I’ve touched on my thoughts about biofuels in previous posts. Essentially, I feel that (and a lot of science has shown that) corn ethanol is a waste of effort and energy, resulting in soil degradation and harm to farmers who have to deal with fluctuating corn prices. On the other hand, cellulosic ethanol has potential, but has yet to make it to commercial scale at any real volume.

 
Biofuels are a major topic in the energy conversation and fairly well covered by the media and in policy. But biomass energy is more than just biofuels. Biomass as a whole represents half of all renewable energy, according to the latest EIA data. According to this EIA data, wood biomass represents 2.007 quads (quadrillion British thermal units), compared to just 1.297 quads from liquid biofuels. There is also a category of “other biomass” representing 0.480 quads, which includes municipal solid waste from biological sources, as well as landfill gases and any other non-wood biomass.

 
It’s important to remember that wood biomass represents such a large portion of our renewable energy mix. Wood can be an affordable, sustainable source of energy for home heating in many rural areas. Additionally, modern outdoor wood boilers are more efficient and have lower emissions than the wood stoves of the past. Wood is typically considered a “traditional” fuel, rather than a modern energy source or an energy source of the future. But pellet stoves and other end-use technologies have made it progressively more important as a source of modern renewable energy.

 
Additionally, the production of energy crops has been increasing as farmers put some of their marginal land into the production of woody plants or perennial grasses. In upstate New York, this is typically shrub willow, a fast-growing woody crop related to the willow trees many people are familiar with. I am part of the shrub willow research group at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. We focus on the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of willow production systems. The Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) through the USDA was recently implemented to provide funding to farmers who establish energy crops on their land and to help with connecting farmers with end-users of the biomass. Energy crops tend to run into a chicken-and-egg scenario. It is difficult to convince people to grow the crop without a solid long-term market for the biomass, but it is also difficult to establish the market without a solid long-term supply of biomass. The BCAP help to alleviate this issue by setting up contracts between growers and end-users. The BCAP is likely to continue under the new Farm Bill, allowing more farmers to plant their marginal land with shrub willow or other energy crops, such as hybrid poplar, sorghum, or switchgrass.

 
Energy crops can be used in cellulosic ethanol systems when these systems become commercial scale, but can also be used directly for heating and electricity production. Some coal plants have found that co-firing biomass (usually wood) with coal, with only minor retrofitting of the plant, can be an economical way to reduce emissions in the face of stricter regulations. There are also several biomass-to-electricity plants, including some in upstate New York that run primarily on wood residues from logging operations and other waste wood. Wood and grasses can also be pelletized and burned for home heating. The new Gateway Center at SUNY ESF contains a wood pellet boiler that provides heat and hot water to campus for 3 seasons of the year.
In a future post, I can speak more specifically to the environmental benefits of growing energy crops over traditional row crops on marginal land. But for now, when you think of renewable energy, don’t just think of solar panels and wind farms!

 

For more information on the potential of wood biomass in the Northeast.
For more information on the SUNY ESF willow biomass research group.