Debates over two looming shifts for the role of agriculture in fighting climate change reached a fever pitch this week. The hot topics included key pieces of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, and the U.S. EPA’s proposed changes to the renewable fuel standard, which will set minimum volume requirements for different types of biofuels used in U.S. transportation fuels each year, starting in 2010. The outcome of these debates will go a long way to determine how big a player the agriculture industry will be in upcoming carbon and alternative fuel markets — and offer a glimpse of how the government evaluates politically-charged climate solutions with big lobbying budgets behind them.

This week’s battles — in a U.S. EPA hearing, fuel standard workshops, negotiations among legislators and in the flurry of press releases that surrounded it all — represent some of the final showdowns in a high-stakes fight over how first-generation biofuels that use agricultural crops for feedstock and agriculture-based carbon offsets will figure into, and compete, in a rapidly changing market. Biofuels are moving toward cellulosic feedstocks, and the still-nascent carbon market is for the first time facing comprehensive regulation in the U.S. that’s placing new scrutiny on offset projects, such as methane capture from animal-waste lagoons and reforestation of pastureland, as Climatewire explains today.

Farm-state legislators threatened to block the Waxman-Markey bill this week unless the traditionally agro-friendly USDA is put in charge of managing offset programs and decides what kinds of projects will qualify, and thus be able to vie for a piece of the estimated $24 billion market in agriculture-based offsets. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

”[R]ecent analyses by the EPA suggest the environmental agency will rein in what qualifies as an offset. That would mean less money for farmers.”

Meanwhile, agriculture and ethanol lobbies have rallied their considerable political forces this week in opposition to the EPA plan to consider land-use changes — such as clearing a forest and turning it into cropland — when judging the greenhouse gas emissions associated with different biofuels under the renewable fuel standard.

The fuel standard itself is not new, having been created as part of the 2005 Energy Act. But the EPA is proposing to implement what it calls the “first ever mandatory GHG reduction thresholds for the various categories of fuels.” With land use changes taken into account, this, in short, would spell very tough times for much of the ethanol industry.

National Biodiesel Board blasts EPA in ILUC hearings: “Faulty data and unrealistic scenarios that punish the U.S. biodiesel industry for wholly unrelated land use decisions in South America.”

In Washington, National Biodiesel Board public affairs head Manning Feraci said that the EISA Act required the EPA to conduct a lifecycle analysis of biofuels as part of the Renewable Fuel Standard’s implementation, but said that “This does not require the EPA to rely on faulty data and unrealistic scenarios that punish the U.S. biodiesel industry for wholly unrelated land use decisions in South America.”

Faraci’s comments came as a flock of biofuels friends and foes descended on the EPA for a day of public hearings. The hearings were part of public outreach on the EPA’s proposed rulemaking for the Renewable Fuel Standard.

Speakers, who were limited to five minutes of comment because of the numbers requesting a hearing, included the CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, Bon Dineen, and representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the American Petroleum Institute among other stakeholders in the RFS.

Dinneen said that “for the potential benefits of the RFS2 to be fully realized, it is imperative that the regulation is guided by sound science, transparent analysis and economic modeling that stands up to scrutiny.” The RFA said it opposed using 2005 as a baseline year for gasoline, noting the increased usage of tar sand oil since then, and raised major concerns over indirect land use change analysis (ILUC). ILUC received the majority of comments, with NRDC’s Nathaniel Greene saying that “you can’t put a value of zero on indirect emissions” just because the “cutting edge” science is immature, while the NBB, RFA and others sharply criticized the ILUC methodology and data sources.

The Illinois Corn Growers Association called the international land use effects methodology “deeply flawed”, and the attorney for ICGA, David Crow, said “the EPA’s proposal for including indirect effects rests on a “scientific black box” the contents of which have been withheld from the best available public knowledge and scrutiny”.

Nebraska Corn Board Chair Jon Holzfaster commented, “Along with the White House and EPA, Nebraska and all farmers support rulemaking that is based on sound science, while Iowa Corn Growers President Gary Edwards added that “The Iowa Corn Growers Association shares many of the concerns about the ongoing development of new Renewable Fuel Standards raised in today’s ICGA testimony before the EPA’s hearing”.

Dr. Mark Stowers, vice president of science and technology for POET, said that the ILUC analysis was “flawed and has no basis in law or science,” adding that they failed to make proper comparison to gasoline, and said that the models underestimated corn and ethanol yields.

Brent Erickson of BIO said “The EPA’s own analysis makes clear that the infancy of the science makes the determination of international impacts highly uncertain at best. Furthermore, EPA’s proposed approach to classifying biofuels into a limited number of rigid, pre-determined categories limits the industry’s ability to innovate, since practice and process improvements are not recognized or rewarded.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Washington, Senator Charles Grassley noted that the EPA report on its indirect land use change methodology used the word “uncertain” more than 60 times.

Meanwhile, Noam Ross of GreenOrder, in an article published this week, proposed that “Congress lets the ethanol industry off the hook for its indirect upstream effects, and the industry agrees that some of its massive subsidies be diverted to programs that protect forests and give farmers options beyond burning them down.”

Coverage from six different sources - who’s was best? The Digest’s WyrdChoice™ tells all.

A wide number of sources looked at the EPA hearings this week. Biofuels Digest used its new WyrdChoice™ software (info on WyrdChoice™) to analyze who got down to the essential “news you can use” the quickest. The higher score, the better - with 100 representing a story of “average interest” to readers.

Biofuels Journal — score: 271
Domestic Fuel — score: 612
Earth Times — score: 247
AgriServices.com — score: 592
Press release from BIO — score: 1167
Wall Street Journal — score 877

Well, the numbers are in, and, amazingly, a press release from BIO was able to get down to the topics of interest to bioenergy readers with the greatest speed. A blog posting on the respected Environmental Capital page of the Wall Street Journal came in second, followed by a report in Domestic Fuel (which continues to provide outstanding reporting, as well as a good-looking site, on a wide variety of fronts).

Alas, outlets such as Biofuels Journal and Earth Times had more trouble in getting down to the essentials. The difference? The best-rated stories conveyed quickly a broader set of concerns — to biodiesel and biofuels as a whole, rather than focusing on the concerns of ethanol producers and corn growers.