The Biotech Industry Organization (BIO) has been asking the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publicly release its new methodology for calculating biofuels' life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, which will include emissions from indirect land use changes. The biotech industry needs “an actual measurement” of the effects biofuels have on the agricultural market, and how those effects are “translated into the actual land use around the world,” says Paul Winters, BIO communications director. The calculations are required by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 and help determine which biofuels qualify for inclusion in the annual US quota for renewable fuel blended into gasoline, thus allowing the petroleum industry to purchase the biofuels to meet this quota. (For 2009, this quota is set at about 11 billion gallons.) Though some argue that indirect land use effects cannot be reliably measured, Tim Searchinger, visiting scholar at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, counters that his analysis suggests even “the most heroic of assumptions” won't show that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced over “a reasonable period” by the use of biofuels in the gas supply. Regardless, BIO's biofuel members have a meaningful stake in the EPA's calculations. EPA has not set a date for the release of its Notice of Proposed Rule Making for EISA 2007.