In 2009, the European Union (EU) Renewable Energy Directive (RED) mandated that 20% of the EU's fi nal energy consumption consist of renewable sources by 2020, and included sustainability criteria for liquid biofuels. Discussions around extending criteria to solid and gaseous biomass, including wood pellets, have been ongoing. Continued investment in forest bioenergy feedstock production is partly dependent on the stability of global market demand and the economic viability of feedstock production and trade. For trans-boundary governance mechanisms such as the RED to be effi cient, a proper assessment of the specifi c forest and land policy contexts of wood pellet exporters that the mechanism will affect, such as Canada, the USA, and Russia, is crucial. This paper builds on sustainability criteria for biodiversity protection and assurance of sustainable forest management (SFM) for woody biomass that are currently under discussion for inclusion in the RED and compares them with national and local regulations of those three countries. This illustrates potential challenges in the establishment of sustainability criteria related to: differences in land defi nitions, delineation and reporting systems; lack of a uniform defi nitional paradigm for SFM; and diffi culties in establishing effi cient monitoring/auditing systems. Regulators wanting to implement supra-national sustainability schemes such as the EU RED need to be aware of challenges that such schemes carry and make efforts to reduce or eliminate pitfalls. There is also a need to assess the aggregated effects of these various tools, and a need for communication, collaboration and outreach among stakeholders.
By 2030, the United States will consume over 300 million tons of forest and agricultural feedstocks for energy production. The supply chain necessary to provide unprecedented quantities of new "bioenergy crops," however, is fraught with uncertainty. The vertically integrated model currently used by the nascent sector may have limited opportunity for expansion to meet renewable energy mandates. A hybrid structure is likely to emerge as the industry evolves, in which end-users closely cooperate with a large number of heterogeneous producers through long-term contracting rather than as direct owners or operators of biomass farms. This "vertically coordinated" industry model is dependent on a series of biomass supply contracts between end-user and farmer. The "take it or leave it" production contracts offered by end-users represent the archetypal cost-and risk-minimization perspectives common in the fossil fuel-based energy context (e.g., petroleum, coal). These initial offerings lack many of the
Solutions to nutrient pollution in America's most significant watersheds have eluded the Clean Water Act since its inception. Although the Act places primary responsibility on states to address agricultural runoff of nitrogen and phosphorus, the states have failed to implement effective remedies, evidenced by widespread hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico, impaired waterways in Florida, and a declining fishing industry in the Chesapeake Bay. The U.S. administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken three very different approaches within the Mississippi, the Chesapeake, and Floridian watersheds, all aimed at pressing the states to embrace numeric water quality criteria for these pollutants. The three approaches have stimulated litigation that should help clarify the level of discretion the EPA has in deciding how to work with states in implementing nutrient reduction strategies, versus federalized water quality criteria. Further, the suits illustrate the political and cultural clashes that have produced inaction on this problem. They expose the complex institutional, stakeholder, and scientific challenges that both the U.S EPA and the states face in adopting and implementing numeric criteria for waterways. Success in actually remediating the watersheds ultimately will depend not on lawsuits compelling federal action, but on forces outside the courtroom that pressure agricultural producers and other nonpoint sources to assess their role in nutrient pollution and implement best practices that lead to measurable results. We highlight these realities by examining the issues in the three lawsuits and explaining the role of the U.S. EPA, which is caught in the middle of a clash between conservation interests and politically and culturally powerful polluter interests.
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