GoodFuels

Huffington Post blog

RFA’s CEO, Bob Dinneen, has published his latest blog on Huffington Post.

This time, he covers California’s Air Resource Board (ARB) and their recent proposal for carbon reduction. ARB suggests that continuing to use petroleum would be preferable to using biofuels. Why is this, you ask? Dinneen explains:

Based on faulty modeling, the agency is alleging that increased demand for crops for biofuels will trigger cultivation of non-agricultural lands (like grassland and forest) in the U.S. and abroad. They call this occurrence “indirect land use change.” Cultivation of those lands would cause the release of stored carbon from the soil and vegetation, ARB says, and they argue those emissions should be debited to biofuels.

As we’ve covered before, indirect land use change science is faulty at best. In fact, just last week, 111 scientists from across the country signed a letter challenging this proposal.

Dinneen goes on to make some interesting points on why this proposal is flawed:

Yet, the agency failed to evaluate any indirect effects at all for oil production or gasoline consumption (or any other transportation fuels for that matter). Thus, ARB’s biased finding is that gasoline is slightly better than many forms of ethanol and other biofuels. This position completely ignores environmentally disruptive projects like Canadian tar sands, the impact of expanding oil production in previously pristine forest regions such as those in South America or the mangrove forests in Nigeria, or the impact of sending tens of thousands of American soldiers to protect the sea lanes for shipping oil from the Persian Gulf.

The blog ends with asking those who feel so inclined to make comments on March 23 when ARB opens the proposed regulation up for public comment.

Read the whole blog here.