Brazil critiques proposed California Low Carbon Fuel Standard; Air Resources Board to vote this week on indirect land use change, low carbon standard
In Brazil, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) said that sugarcane ethanol’s carbon intensity is lower than calculated by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). “Sugarcane ethanol has a verifiable reduction in greenhouse gases of 90% compared to gasoline. Sugarcane ethanol will easily meet the LCFS, not just in 2020 but today,” said Marcos Jank, UNICA’s President & CEO.
Preliminary CARB calculations gave sugarcane ethanol a carbon intensity of 27 grams of CO2 per megajoule of energy, but UNICA says that CARB did not account “for basic elements of sugarcane production and ethanol processing that directly affect that result.”
UNICA also cautioned CARB against employing indirect land use change analyses in its calculations, or to change the methodologies.
CARB is scheduled to vote on the first-of-its-kind Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) on April 23-24. As part of broader climate change regulations, CARB is calculating the carbon intensity of all fuels used in the state. It has determined that the carbon intensity of gasoline is about 95 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (gCO2/MJ), meaning that gasoline must reduce its carbon intensity to 86 gCO2/MJ by 2020 to meet the LCFS.
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sugarcaneblog | Apr 20, 2009 | Reply
Today’s Los Angeles Times brings an op-ed on California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard. While the op-ed recognizes that CARB is using “untested and possibly unreliable science” the paper concludes that “California’s efforts to regulate fuels [is] ambitious and extremely worthy project that deserves to be approved Thursday.”
Too bad the paper didn’t read the substantive comments on CARB’s website. For instance, UNICA’s comments last week showed that sugarcane ethanol — and advanced biofuel by any measure — has a 80-90% reduction in GHG compared with gasoline… and that’s not tomorrow but today, even including the so called market-mediated indirect effects.
http://sugarcaneblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/la-times-on-californias-low-carbon-fuel-standard/
Joelle Brink | Apr 20, 2009 | Reply
The detailed comments and production information supplied by UNICA document best practices in the world’s leading sugarcane-to-ethanol industry. They will also be useful to other sugarcane-to-ethanol producers looking to increase the efficiency, and reduce the carbon footprint, of their own operations.