Fuels America: How did the oil industry suddenly become Obama Administration climate policy advisors?

In Washington, Fuels America will launch a seven-figure TV and digital ad campaign Friday morning depicting President Obama’s choice of who to listen to when it comes to the Renewable Fuel Standard: his own experts who have repeatedly shown that ethanol and renewable fuel is dramatically reducing carbon emissions, or the oil industry, which has spent decades covering up the science and facts on both renewable fuel and climate science.

“The oil industry has been covering up climate science for decades, and now suddenly they’re advising the Obama Administration on climate policy,” said Brent Erickson, Executive Vice President at BIO. President Obama’s choice on the Renewable Fuel Standard is clear. He can choose to listen to Big Oil’s distortions and lies, or he can listen to his own scientists who have shown that the RFS significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.”

The campaign follows aggressive attempts by oil industry-funded special interest groups API and Smarter Fuel Future to discredit the climate benefits of renewable fuel—and as usual, their claims are false and wholly unsupported.

In reality, the RFS is the most effective policy reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions, and cutting down asthma- and cancer-causing pollution. The Department of Energy (DOE) found that using traditional corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent in comparison to regular gasoline. Administrator McCarthy recently called the RFS a “vital tool” in the fight against climate change. And DOE research has shown that advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol—the cleanest motor fuel in the world, produced right here in America—reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 88-108 percent compared to gasoline.

“It’s absurd that oil companies are feigning concern over America’s climate after over a century of oil spills, pollution, and harm to our environment and public health,” said Chip Bowling, President of the National Corn Growers Association. “The truth is that slashing the amount of clean, domestic renewable fuel in our motor fuel supply would dramatically increase pollution and carbon emissions, while strengthening the RFS and building on the progress of the past 10 years would help in our efforts to combat climate change.”

See the new TV spot.