The opportunity to comment on the U.S. EPA's proposed RFS2 rule ended last Friday, but not before the renewable fuels industry rallied to make its final case against indirect land use change (ILUC) and other issues addressed in the proposal. Thousands of comments were filed throughout the 120-day comment period, but many industry groups that had been commenting on single issues throughout the course of the comment period chose to file all-inclusive comments on Friday as a way to reiterate their opinions. Among them were the American Coalition for Ethanol, the Renewable Fuels Association and the National Biodiesel Board.

Of course, there is not a renewable fuels group out there that supports, in any way, the inclusion of international ILUC. I liked ACE Executive Vice President Brian Jennings' analogy the best. In his final comment to the EPA, he stated, "Chinese officials argue that the U.S. should be responsible for emissions that are released in China to produce goods and products that are exported to the U.S. Our trade negotiators are fighting that argument. Yet, EPA is counting supposed emissions in Brazil and charging U.S. corn ethanol a penalty for those supposed emissions, and implying that the U.S. should take responsibility for those emissions. This makes no sense at all."

He's right, in my opinion. To me, the idea of imposing ILUC penalties on American producers is pure lunacy and should be a non-issue. Yet, it has provoked the majority of comments. In some ways, this worries me because I think there are more potentially damaging issues in this rule that have been overlooked by the ILUC section of the proposal. For instance, the proposed requirement for producers to track their feedstocks to prove they were generated on already-cultivated land is a nearly impossible task. When I read that proposal, one of the first thoughts I had was that it is obvious whoever wrote this rule has never been to a grain elevator. Buying corn for an ethanol plant is not like visiting your local farmers market to buy fresh produce for your next meal. Perhaps the EPA doesn't realize that many farmers sell their corn to the same local elevators and it all gets mixed into bins. They don't color-code each farmer's corn and they certainly don't ask which tract of land each truckload came from. But if this provision of the rule passes in the final, they will have to start. Isn't that absurd?

I'm glad we are moving forward with the RFS2, but I certainly hope the EPA takes our industry's comments into consideration and comes to its senses before making its final rule. I know my words may seem a bit harsh, and I truly respect the enormous task that must be accomplished by a minimal EPA staff, but there should still be room for common sense and I hope they see it that way, too.