Fuels America to Prez: Your RFS proposal at odds with National Climate Assessment

May 12, 2014 |

fuels-americaIn a letter to President Obama, leaders of America’s renewable fuel industry urge the Administration to rethink its proposal to weaken the bipartisan Renewable Fuel Standard – a proposal that is at odds with the National Climate Assessment the White House released earlier this week.

The letter is signed by Abengoa Bioenergy, the Advanced Ethanol Council, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, DuPont, DSM, Growth Energy, the National Corn Growers Association, Novozymes, the Renewable Fuels Association, and POET.

Interestingly we don’t see any signatories from the world of algae-based technologies, or from the Advanced Biofuels Association and its cadre of technologies in renewable diesel, drop-in fuels and more. Perhaps not coincidentally, a cleavage between the technologies supported by the DOE between, say, 2005 and 2012 and now approaching commercialization — and those now targeted by the DOE as candidates for large-scale volumes of $3.00 per gallon fuels by 2030 or earlier.

The companies and organizations write that the Administration’s proposal to reduce the amount of renewable fuel in gasoline and diesel would “make us more oil dependent, effectively gut the bipartisan Renewable Fuel Standard, strand billions of dollars in private investment, and send emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants sharply higher.”

The letter notes that the impact of the Administration’s proposal would increase carbon pollution by an estimated 28.2 million metric tons in 2014 alone – which is equivalent to building 7 new coal fired power plants or cancelling every wind farm project currently under construction in the United States.

They add that “EPA continues to rely on outdated analysis from 2007 and an archaic view of some commercial biofuels.  The 2007 analysis does not take into account the significant improvements that have been made in recent years to reduce the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from feedstocks and from renewable fuel production.  For example, the land use changes predicted by EPA’s modeling simply have not materialized.”

The complete text of the letter is here.

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