U.S. environmentalist lawsuit seeks to roll back EPA's science and policy review on biomass energy carbon emissions; NAFO says it will support EPA against attempt to undermine process
Lorena Madrigal
WASHINGTON
,
August 16, 2011
(press release)
–
The National Alliance of Forest Owners (NAFO) commented on a lawsuit filed today by the Center for Biological Diversity and others in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit seeks to roll back the EPA’s science and policy review of the regulation of biomass energy carbon emissions.
NAFO supports the EPA’s scientific and policy review and the three-year deferral of regulating biomass carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act to allow time for the review. David P. Tenny, President and CEO of NAFO, said, "Biomass carbon emissions are fundamentally different than fossil fuels emissions, and EPA policy should reflect that scientific fact. That is why NAFO supports EPA’s decision to take a step back from treating the two identically and conduct a science and technical review. We will support EPA against an attempt to undermine this process, because it is the right thing to do."
Tenny emphasized that, while NAFO supports the scientific and policy review by EPA, it is important that, "the EPA and other key agencies, like the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Energy, work together on a review free of arbitrary assumptions or parameters that could distort well-settled science. For instance, the review should recognize the well-established scientific fact that the forest carbon cycle is a dynamic, ongoing process occurring across broad landscapes with no specific start or end date. Arbitrarily limiting areas and timeframes when accounting for biomass carbon emissions, as some have tried to do, inevitably skews the forest carbon picture."
* All content is copyrighted by Industry Intelligence, or the original respective author or source. You may not recirculate, redistrubte or publish the analysis and presentation included in the service without Industry Intelligence's prior written consent. Please review our terms of use.
