CARB's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, EPA rules might put the hurt on biofuels
The proposal from the California Air Resources Board for a Low Carbon Fuel Standard that we mentioned the other day might deal a blow to the biofuels industry. The LCFS might be one way for California to meet its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through lowered carbon in California transportation fuels by an average of 10 percent by the year 2020. To enact some of this reduction, CARB is looking at lifecycle emissions of biofuels. According to the New York Times, some ethanol makers were "enraged" at the prospect that questions about emissions and indirect land use will make ethanol look badin CARB's eye. One ethanol company spokesman told The Los Angeles Times that CARB's LCFS proposal was "a perversion of science and a prescription for disaster."Under a 2007 federal law (one that the EPA has yet to implement) biodiesel might not fare well, either. As we know, "The Biodiesel Industry Is Struggling And Needs Your Help!", and the law's requirement that soy biodiesel needs to reduce greenhouse gasses by 50 percent (compared to compared to conventional diesel) might no longer be feasible. The reason, again, is a broader look at the impacts of biofuel production, and new EPA calculations that take into account the damage done overseas, where some of the biodiesel feedstock is produced. More details here.
[Source: Dow Jones / New York Times]
Photo by Nelson D. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Toshi 8:21PM (3/08/2009)
The ethanol industry needs to can it. Lifecycle carbon emissions are an important thing to consider -- no sense in jumping from the frying pan to the fire, so to speak -- and if their product is inferior then it deserves to be passed up in favor of other, better options.
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Noz 12:18AM (3/09/2009)
Indeed. The reduction of carbon based fuels is the only option we have to move forward. Ethanol is one big scam.
Carney 1:22PM (3/09/2009)
Actually, lifecycle emissions are THE reason that switching to ethanol, including much maligned corn ethanol, makes sense.
Not all CO2 emissions are the same, and mindlessly treating them as such ignores reality. Petroleum CO2 is necessarily a net increase in atmospheric CO2 levels, but that is not the case with ethanol because it comes from plants. For more see below.
Carney 1:35PM (3/09/2009)
noz is a hydrogen advocate, and the only way to make hydrogen merely expensive, rather than ludicrously expensive, is to make it from fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
beam_me_up_snotty 9:28PM (3/08/2009)
Toshi: I could not agree with you more.
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jake 2:47AM (3/09/2009)
I agree life-cycle assessments are important, without them then we might be doing more bad than good.
However I don't think they should be penalized for not meeting 50% less greenhouse gases if assessed by life-cycle. I think to be fair, they should be given a few bonus points for being partly renewable, so that even if they match the emissions life-cycle wise then it should be fine (unless of course this is involving heavy subsidies, then I understand why they want 50% improvement).
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Randy S 3:13AM (3/09/2009)
I agree too that ethanol from corn is non-starter, but this article is about bio-diesel.
Biodiesel can be made from algae very effectively from what I remember from a study/report I read a couple of months ago in water filled solar tubes that can be pumped up on CO2 to help the algae grow.
Unfortunately I can’t remember the source, but I remember it seemed legitimate and I think it was by a British scientist in the UK, possibly posted on EVWorld.
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Carney 1:25PM (3/09/2009)
Corn ethanol gets a bum rap. It's true that the corn industry has pushed for stupid protectionist tariffs against Brazilian ethanol that helps make ethanol less price competitive with gasoline, and has helped make methanol fuel (which will need to be a key element in an alcohol economy) forgotten compared to its heyday in the 80s when environmentalists were big methanol boosters.
But corn ethanol is a significant improvement over petroleum from an overall environmental perspective, as well as from a narrowly focused carbon only one, and will also be a big part of any shift away from oil that makes economic, practical, and environmental sense.
Randy 2:02PM (3/09/2009)
I don't think corn ethanol is getting a bum rap, it's just that it's not feasible because the ROEI is so close to 1.
The report I refered to concluded that there was no net advantage of making
transportation fuels via corn based ethanol as do many other studies. The study also looked at soybeans, jatropha oil, sugar cane and other sources... and all I remmember was that the biofuel that showed the best return on energy was bio-diesel from algae, I think it was around 3:1 ROEI.
The study I'm refering to seemed to be very thoughtful and impartial. I tried looking for it again on the internet last night but could not find it.
Carney 10:19AM (3/10/2009)
Corn ethanol's ROEI is NOT close to 1, nowhere close.
The most prominent person claiming that is David Pimentel, who is not a chemical engineer or a fuel scientist, merely an insect entomologist who writes on this topic primarily because of his extremist views.
Pimentel opposes all modern agriculture and has blamed 40% of world deaths on chemical pollutants. He opposes keeping pet dogs and cats because they are "alien species". He wants to slash the US standard of living in half and get rid of two thirds of the Earth's population.
Despite all this, his "work" is eagerly trumpeted by oil-funded "free market" and conservative think tanks because it helps their pro-petroleum agenda.
Within the professional community, however, his work has no credibility. His 2001 paper making this claim was immediately torn apart in 2002 by Dr. Bruce Dale, real chemical engineer, who noted glaring errors such as the following:
-no credit for high energy animal feed byproduct produced from the portion of ethanol corn NOT made into fuel
-corn yields from 1992 (thus underestimated)
-figures for energy required to produce ethanol from 1979 (thus overestimated)
-figures for energy to produce fertilizer from 1990, and from the UN Food & Ag Org, not contemporary US figures (thus overestimated)
-blithely assuming all corn is irrigated (FATAL flaw here, as only 16% is, and virtually NO ethanol corn is, while Pimentel assigned huge energy costs for this)
etc etc
The real stake in the heart of this came in January 2006, when Alex Ferrell and colleagues at the Berkeley Energy & Resources Group published, in Science (the world's most prestigious journal along with Nature), a comprehensive look at all literature on the subject.
They proved that even with Pimentel's fatally flawed assumptions, one gets at least 5 units of ethanol for every unit of petroleum put in, and by mainstream assumptions, over ten units.
Tim 9:54AM (3/09/2009)
Statist Central Planning causing negative unintended consequences?
Tell me it ain't so!
(Politicians are so much smarter than the market, right comrades?)
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jim 10:18AM (3/09/2009)
The same statist central planning that created the bio-fuels industry by requiring ethanol mixtures and set a goal for the future use of bio fuels. The planners giveth and the planners take it away.
jim 10:20AM (3/09/2009)
Something else. All those free marketeers in the bio fuel industry lobbied hard for subsidies and tax breaks
Carney 1:27PM (3/09/2009)
jim, how about all those free marketeers in their oil-funded think tanks defending petroleum, which in effect has its price set artificially high by state fiat from OPEC, a cartel of socialist tyrannies, and thus taxes hundreds of billions of wealth away from the humane, free, and productive regions of the world to be spent on luxury, repression, extremist propaganda, and terrorism?
jim 10:07AM (3/10/2009)
Carney, them also, though the OPEC states are more likely to be theocracies, kingdoms or oligarchies than socialist. Why would you want to distribute the wealth when the government for life can keep most of it and spread a little around to its friends.
Carney 10:49AM (3/10/2009)
jim, regardless of the specific variety of tyranny each OPEC state engages in, they are all, in their oil industry at the very least, completely state-run, socialist monopolies.
And, again, most buy off their population with wide-ranging handouts. Only one in six Saudis works; the rest are free to idle in brothels and extremist mosques. All at our expense.
Bill 10:34AM (3/09/2009)
How much impact could there be on such a limited supply of biofuels in the first place?
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stas peterson 11:29AM (3/09/2009)
Warmist eco loonies always fall in love with impossible costly dreams. They choose them because nobody is doing them, and they are too stupid and uneducated in reality, to see the reasons why.
Inefficiency is its own death reward. People don't do things that are uneconomic , except for political reasons. But the Warmsits hoaxers don't care. They just need a conspiracy theory and something that is not being done is obviously only true because of malicious intent by somebody, that they can demonize. Demonization is a great way to distract attention, and increase fund-raising.
So stupidities like Wind, Solar, Volcano tapping, bio-ethenol and bio diesel scams proliferate. As if the atmossphere can tell the difference between a CO2 molecule from recently dead plant and a long dead one.
Why weren't these wonderful eco-loony technologies used before ? Becasue they have environmnetal defects and inefficeincy. And reasonable poeple discarded them as genuinely stupid things to do.
But not the AGW hoaxers and politcians. They give a fig about reality. Its all about the next poll or ther current fundraising effort to support their fat lifestyles. If they can manufacture a devil, wonderful, They are halfway to nirvana.
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Carney 1:32PM (3/09/2009)
"As if the atmossphere can tell the difference between a CO2 molecule from recently dead plant and a long dead one."
There's a BIG difference. When fossil fuels were biomass rather than coal, petroleum, and/or natural gas, the atmosphere had much higher CO2 levels and was MUCH warmer. That's why you had lush jungles and large reptiles in areas that could not support them today. Things are much colder now because that CO2 has been sequestered underground for basically forever in human terms. Extracting that CO2 from its "vault" where it could not affect the environment, and then throwing into the air, adds new extra CO2.
By contrast, CO2 from biofuels was already part of the current biosphere, and was recently in or would very soon have again been in the atmosphere. Already part of the carbon cycle. Burning and emitting it is thus NOT an NET INCREASE in atmospheric CO2, just maintaining the same level.
Both oil-funded "free market" think tank-addled libertarians/conservatives, as well as people who think themselves green but chase unfeasible will o wisps like hydrogen or not ready yet techs like EVs have a big blind spot when it comes to this CRUCIAL distinction.
Carney 1:44PM (3/09/2009)
Petroleum fuel beat alcohol in the marketplace because gasoline has higher energy content, more miles per gallon, and also became cheaper than alcohol.
However, those advantages fade when considering other costs. Since you would no doubt jeer at moving from a fuel that is a carcinogen, mutagen, toxic, sulfur emitting, smoke/soot/particulate matter emitting, and which remains concentrated and localized when spilled, to one that is and does none of those things, let's just focus on non environmental issues.
The world market for petroleum is effectively under the control of OPEC, a coalition of tyrannies that is deeply hostile to the United States and the rest of the free world. OPEC members reduce production below market demand by state fiat, and take all the artificially high proceeds for themselves because their oil sectors are socialist monopolies. They spend this wealth on obscene luxury at our expense, and also on vile lies and hateful terrorist producing propaganda, as well as directly funding terrorist groups, and even nuclear weapons programs.
OPEC manipulated high oil prices played a key role in the worldwide economic crash of fall 2008, wiping out trillions of wealth and harming millions of innocent decent people.
We can break their artificial monopoly over transportation fuel by mandating that all new cars have flex fuel capability as a standard feature like seat belts, able to run not just petroleum, but also any alcohol fuel. It's a $100 per car expense for automakers, a rounding error in the overall price, but with world changing possibilities.
For more see here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/achieving-energy-victory