A just-published article in Science reveals that the current greenhouse gas accounting system under the Kyoto Protocol, Europe’s ETS, and the climate bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives contains a significant, but fixable, error that will severely undermine GHG reduction goals. In this pioneering study, a group of prominent scientists and land use experts have concluded that bioenergy is erroneously treated as carbon neutral, regardless of the source of biomass and the actual net emissions, which creates perverse incentives for deforestation. A recent U.S. Department of Energy study estimated that a global CO2 target of 450 ppm under this accounting would cause bioenergy crops to expand to displace virtually all the world’s natural forests and savannahs by 2065.
The Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the US and the IDDRI cordially invite you to attend a presentation by Tim Searchinger, lead author of this article, Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and research scholar at Princeton University.
Discussant: Romain Pirard (IDDRI)
Moderator: Paul Taylor (European Policy Columnist, Reuters News)
