Today in Biofuels Opinion: “In a head to head contest between corn ethanol and doing nothing over a 50 year period, doing nothing would be better for the environment for the first 48 years.”

Brooke Coleman, New Fuels Alliance: “Today’s Air Board decision means Californians will be producing more greenhouse gasses over the coming years, not less. This proposal blurs the Governor’s vision of creating honest standards to judge all fuels equitably. Enforcing indirect effects against biofuels and not oil encourages petroleum companies to sell dirty oil — even tar sands — in place of biofuels produced in California and across the nation. Unless the Governor takes steps to fix CARB’s initial decision, the future of advanced biofuels will suffer because the most risk-free investment will continue to be in dirty fossil fuels. Without the Governor’s influence, bioenergy jobs will leave the state and result in California being behind the clean fuels curve instead of ahead of it.”

From Greentech: “A new study from Duke University (by way of Green Car Congress) indicates that we’re probably better off from an environmental perspective by leaving fields fallow and not trying to grow corn ethanol at all.The researchers, after analyzing 142 soil studies and extrapolating forward, found that…a better way to reduce carbon in the atmosphere would be to plant fields and leave them. The growing plants would absorb carbon dioxide. In a head to head contest between corn ethanol and doing nothing over a 50 year period, doing nothing would be better for the environment for the first 48 years, the study stated. It’s also a lot cheaper…And just to take a walk down memory lane, let’s salute Cornell’s David Pimentel.  Back in the early part of the decade, he criticized corn ethanol. He was heavily criticized in many quarters for this.”

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