Today in Biofuels Opinion: “[EPA's] current methodology treats biofuels and petroleum derived fuel inconsistently.”

From a letter to Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry from 20 bioenergy executives: “While we commend EPA for its preliminary efforts to consider all possible carbon impacts from transportation fuels, their current methodology treats biofuels and petroleum derived fuel inconsistently. The point of controversy is EPA’s preliminary decision to enforce “indirect land use change” penalties against biofuels. This is problematic for three reasons: (1) biofuels are being penalized for indirect carbon effects while petroleum is not, setting up an inconsistent system boundary and an asymmetrical comparison between the fuels; (2) indirect effects are incredibly difficult to predict with any precision, especially using economic models not designed for direct regulation;  and (3) there are public policy questions related to the fact that indirect land use change is not the land cultivated to produce biofuel feedstock, but rather is the land expansion theoretically occurring on the margins of the agricultural sector for food, feed and fiber production….It is also clear that “land use change” is not the only significant indirect carbon effect of using more biofuels. For example, using more biofuel replaces demand for the next gallon of petroleum introduced into the system (i.e. the marginal oil gallon), which will be produced using far more carbon?intensive practices (e.g. tar sands, thermally enhanced oil recovery, heavy crude, etc.). Crediting biofuels for this real world indirect benefit also corrects the asymmetry of comparing marginal biofuel gallons to average 2005 gasoline or diesel, which is a mythical baseline that will get much dirtier over time. Even Saudi Arabia, home to the largest light crude reserves in the world, is beginning to move away from light sweet to sour fossil crude oil.”
The complete letter is available here.

Cleantech named the following bioenergy companies to its annual Global Cleantech 100: Amyris Biotechnologies, BioGasol, Chemrec. Cobalt Biofuels, Coskata, Gevo, LS9, Sapphire Energy, Solazyme, and ZeaChem

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