RFS final rule much improved

February 8, 2010

BY Susanne Retka Schill


Last week was a good one for biofuels. EPA's final rule to administer the revised renewable fuels standard was much improved over the proposed rule. While international indirect land use is still part of the equation, the revised model incorporated nearly all countries into the equation and improved the modeling for Brazil, in particular, resulting in a lowering of indirect impacts by half for corn ethanol. Of course, many in the ethanol industry contend that indirect land use doesn't belong in the GHG accounting equations at all.

EPA also improved its corn yield estimates and adjusted the credit for distillers grains, both of which improved corn's performance.

Probably the biggest change came when EPA decided since pre-2007 ethanol plants were to be grandfathered in, they should not be included in the life cycle analysis (LCA). When the numbers were run on the new generation of efficient corn ethanol plants, the LCA improved considerably. In the proposed rule, corn ethanol's GHG impact was slightly greater than the baseline gasoline. The revised LCA show new corn ethanol plants provide a GHG reduction of about 21 percent when compared to gasoline. The 2007 Energy Bill required that to be considered renewable fuel in the RFS, corn ethanol from plants coming online since the law's enactment had to have at least a 20 percent reduction. The ethanol industry has dodged a bullet.

I listened in to the press conference when the administration's Biofuels Interagency Working Group announced the outline of a new coordinated effort to fast track advanced biofuels. I was struck by two things.

One, the working group acknowledges biomass is local. Corn makes sense in the Midwest and one goal should be to expand E85 usage in that region. Other parts of the country will need to focus on the feedstocks that make sense in those environments. To farming communities, it seems like common sense. But for city-born bureaucrats to acknowledge that one-size does not fit all when it comes to stimulating a bioeconomy is a big deal.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, the news conference was a strong signal that biofuels are not the bad boys to be relegated to the back forty. Advanced biofuels will only be built on the foundation of a strong first generation of biofuels. They get it.

I was also struck that there didn't seem be an immediate outcry of environmental backlash. The statements from the Union of Concerned Scientists and National Resource Defense Council seemed satisfied with the EPA rule in that indirect land use is still in the equation. It almost seemed as if they were relieved that conventional biofuels aren't as bad as feared. Perhaps the pro-biofuels folks within the organizations now have a bit of ammunition to use with the ethanol-bashers amongst them.




Advertisement

Advertisement

Upcoming Events

Sign up for our e-newsletter!

Advertisement

Advertisement