Don’t Single Out Ethanol on Land-Use Changes, Says Trade Group Chief

Bob Dinneen, the president of the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group, stopped by our New York offices today to discuss recent moves by the Obama administration that offer both good and bad news for the industry.

On Tuesday, the administration moved to provide loan guarantees and other financial help to struggling ethanol producers. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a more comprehensive way of measuring the carbon impact of ethanol that that puts the industry in a lesser light.

According to Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, the ethanol industry currently produces 16 percent fewer emissions than gasoline — short of a requirement of 20 percent. This 16 percent tally factors in “indirect land use,” in accordance with the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

That means that in addition to weighing the carbon emissions from fertilizer and tractor fuel, the E.P.A. accounted for the idea that corn grown for ethanol in this country displaces food crops, driving the expansion of agriculture — and the loss of precious, carbon-capturing forest land — elsewhere on the planet to compensate for the lost food and feed supply.

Mr. Dinneen emphasized that his group was perfectly willing to factor in such indirect land-use changes. But he expressed concern that biofuels are the only industry for which this calculation is made. Petroleum, for example, does not factor in land-use changes — and besides, he said, “Where’s the carbon impact associated with development in suburbia?”

“They can’t just do it to us and not to everyone else,” he argued.


Mr. Dinneen welcomed the comment period that will follow the E.P.A.’s proposals, and said that the ethanol industry believed that adjustments on the land-use front are needed.

“Right now, I think the model is too uncertain, the assumptions are out of whack and it needs to be promulgated more fairly,” he said.

On the subject of cellulosic ethanol — a fledgling but more climate-friendly type of ethanol made from non-food sources like stalks or switchgrass — Mr. Dinneen expressed doubts that federal requirements for the country to use 100 million gallons of the fuel next year would be met. No commercial-scale plants are currently in operation in this country, though a few are being built, with a Range Fuels plant in Georgia being perhaps the furthest along.

“One hundred million gallons in 2010 is going to be a challenge,” Mr. Dinneen conceded. The 2011 target of 250 million gallons, he said, is “probably also going to be hard to meet.”

SOURCE: greeninc.blogs.nytimes