On October 26th, Log Lunch welcomed Dan Lashof, the Director of the World Resource Institute along. Williams Professor of Environmental Law and Policy Lindi Von Mutius ‘03 welcomed those who made the journey for parents weekend, before introducing Lashof. An old acquaintance and colleague, Von Mutius described Lashof as the kind of friend who “joined me in sliding down a glacier in Alaska on our bums.” She noted that Dan’s role as the Director of WRI is to coordinate their work across sustainability and the environment, overseeing the work of the American climate team and their development of just and equitable solutions.
Lashof started his talk by introducing three key takeaways from his work with colleagues Haley Leslie-Bole, Audrey Denvir, Angela Scafidi, and Caroline Melo Ribeiro.
- Land is scarce
- Biomass and biofuels are dominant in land use energy sources
- Biomass carbon is too valuable to burn
Regarding the first takeaway, Lashof noted that global agriculture is expanding, even though the availability of land is decreasing. The process of clearing areas for new cropland comes at the expense of forests: 217 million hectares of agricultural land has been created in the last 15 years, half of which comes from forests. This has increased carbon emissions and decreased natural carbon sequestration from trees. Some key strategies to deal with this loss include curtailing the demand for agricultural land, which entails reducing food waste, increasing plant-based diets, and maximizing use per acre of farmland.
Lashof emphasized that most global climate mitigation pathways rely heavily on biomass (fuel made from anything that was recently a plant), especially as an alternative to fossil fuels. In the United States, 60 million acres of agricultural land is used to produce biofuel, the majority of which is corn and soy–this is a third of all corn and soy planted in the US, an amount that has major implications for land use. Land use comparisons show that the land required for wind and solar is still available for indirect farming and production. However, Lashof noted that the amount of land for solar and wind is significantly less than the current amount of land used for biofuels. Lashof’s team at WRI looks at what a truly sustainable biomass supply might be, considering what is available. This involves looking at what’s called the “carbon opportunity cost” of using land for fuel rather than food, meaning the“opportunity” for potential carbon sequestration or emission.
Given that land used for biofuel would require land for agriculture to move elsewhere, what would the carbon emission implication of that displacement be? The food has to be replaced somewhere, and the emissions necessary to clear land for agriculture is calculated against the potential carbon sequestration of reforesting the land. In the scenario of high biomass usage, the chemical use of biomass would also increase significantly, as well as the biomass of agricultural residue, which would be a cost-effective use of biomass for fuel.
Around 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol is currently used for biofuel. If you don’t account for the opportunity cost of ethanol, the industry will continue to shift to “sustainable aviation fuel,” which would blend the ethanol with fuel for aviation. If that opportunity cost IS accounted for, then corn ethanol will eventually be phased out, given how much opportunity for sequestration would be lost. Carbon removal is potentially more expensive than sequestering carbon by burying agricultural or forestry residue, but as Lashof mentioned, “we need our economy to get to the point of incentivizing sequestration and removal.”
Lashof ended with some conclusions from the analysis carried out at WRI: biomass dominates all other energy sources when it comes to land use, and biomass carbon is much too valuable to burn, given that we have the potential to use it for energy. When we account for the carbon opportunity of land, we should not be dedicating land to biomass production. Policy implications include the fact that tax credits and standards should promote use of waste and residues, including used fats, wildfire reduction thinnings, forestry residues, and municipal solid waste. As Lashof stated, it’s not a matter of ending the production of corn and soy, but redirecting its use more sustainably: “We’re not telling people to stop growing, it’s just a question of what it’s being used for.”
This week, the Log Lunch chefs prepared a red pepper gouda soup, inspired by a soup at the Prospect Ski Lodge, with Chenaille’s farm’s onions and bell peppers. The sides included crusty bread, honeynut squash and fennel gratin with lots of fennel from Bigfoot Farm. For crunch, they made heaps of a honeycrisp apple and daikon salad, with purple daikons also from Bigfoot Farm. To finish, diners enjoyed a moist and fluffy clementine cake with chocolate glaze.
BY CAMPBELL LEONARD ’25