O’Hare et al. refute the recent Kim and Dale paper that argued US biofuel demand hadn’t caused iLUC

Earlier this year, Biomass and Bioenergy published an article by Kim and Dale in which they looked for iLUC from US biofuel mandates with a statistical test, and asserted that none had occurred (or their instrument was unable to find it). This result has been very widely circulated, but now the same journal has published a short refutation by O’Hare et al., with co-authors representing institutions including GTAP, IFPRI and the EU Joint Research Centre. They argue that the Kim and Dale data is in fact (albeit weakly) supportive of the occurrence of iLUC, and that Kim and Dale have used statistical methods inappropriately and drawn incorrect conclusions. The letter is available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096195341100434X