Advanced Biofuels Canada lines out benefits of Clean Fuel Standard

August 30, 2018 |

In Canada, Advanced Biofuels Canada says the average driver under BC’s low carbon fuel standard has paid C$16/year less than they would have paid for gasoline alone since 2010. It says carbon pricing can be effective in reducing industrial emissions, but is largely ineffectual on transportation emissions, due to market failures (lack of competition), design failures (in the carbon tax systems), and the broad absence of practical fuel alternatives, and went on to say:
• Existing provincial renewable and low carbon fuel regulations do not duplicate the Clean Fuel Standard; to the contrary, compliance with them will do much of the work to ease the CFS requirement.
• Provinces continue to assert their sovereignty over energy and climate regulation; this refutes refiners’ claims that the provinces should rescind their ‘duplicative’ regulations and be ruled by federal regulations (which they also oppose).
• Provincial and federal fuel regulations have negligible actual overhead costs, in contrast to refiners’ claims that the CFS will be costly to administer. Public filings by one large refiner with C$4.5 billion of 2017 net earnings show its 2017 ‘compliance and administrative costs’ associated with the BC low carbon fuel standard to be 0.009% of net earnings (C$0.4 million).
• Because imported liquid transportation fuels must also meet low-carbon content requirements, competitiveness issues for refiners relative to blending low carbon fuels into gasoline and diesel are addressed. This may not be the case for gaseous and solid fuels, or liquids used in petroleum refinery processes.

Category: Fuels

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