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.

Blinded By Junk Science

Two different university studies in the past few weeks have come to two completely different conclusions regarding the greenhouse gas emissions of corn ethanol, which clearly proves there is no scientific consensus on this issue.

The first study, by the University of Nebraska, concluded that “recent improvements in crop production, biorefinery operation, and coproduct utilization in U.S. corn-ethanol systems result in greater GHG emissions reduction, energy efficiency, and ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios compared to previous studies. Direct-effect GHG emissions reductions were found to be 48% to 59% compared to gasoline, which is two to three times greater than estimated in previous reports.”

The second study, just released last week by the University of Minnesota, comes up with a conclusion that only a rocket scientist could decipher. “If C is valued at $120 Mg_1, the societal climate-change cost from production and consumption of gasoline is $0.10 L_1 ($0.37 gal_1), between $0.08–$0.14 L_1 ($0.31 and $0.52 gal_1) for corn ethanol, but only between $0.01–$0.02 L_1 ($0.03 and $0.09 gal_1) for cellulosic ethanol.”

Unfortunately, the UMN study is getting lots of media attention because the sound bite is that corn ethanol “can be as harmful to the environment as gasoline, and that the combined costs to climate-change and health exceed that of gas.”

That simplistic conclusion is based only on certain hypotheses, including the baseless assumption that additional corn demand for increased ethanol production will cause conversion of large amounts of grassland enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program.

The paper itself states that if the authors’ assumed land use change emissions are removed from the analysis, average corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gases by 30% compared to gasoline and advanced corn ethanol reduces GHGs by 46%. According to the report, “Whether corn ethanol has lower life-cycle GHG emissions than gasoline depends on biorefinery heat source, assumptions about technology, and land-use change.”

In other words, the authors of the UMN study considered several different land use scenarios and process heat sources, and came up with DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS. The headlines come from the worst possible scenario which assumes all corn ethanol is produced in one way and relies on debatable methodologies for which no scientific consensus exists, including land use change and carbon social cost.

The sad thing is that journalists get blinded by all this junk science and report whatever translates into a simple sound bite. It is imperative that the industry constructively engage in this issue to insist that it is driven only by sound science.

Attack of the Killer Turkey Prices

The cost of this year’s Thanksgiving meal is up almost six percent this year, with turkey prices leading the way, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The cost of a 16-pound turkey, at $19.09 or roughly $1.19 per pound, reflects an increase of 9 cents per pound, or a total of $1.46 per turkey compared to 2007. This is the largest contributor to the overall increase in the cost of the 2008 Thanksgiving dinner.

Some are placing the blame on the ethanol industry, even though the Renewable Fuels Association has calculated that only 1.4% of price for the typical holiday meal for 10 this Thanksgiving can be attributed to the U.S. ethanol industry’s demand for corn.

The Associated Press had an interesting take on the turkey prices in an article last week, which uses the National Turkey Federation as its source saying that “consumers will see good prices this year” for turkeys. At the same time, the article quotes the Farm Bureau survey, without noting the fact that turkey makes up the majority of the price increase for the meal!

The article included comments from Keith Shoemaker, chief executive of Butterball, blaming corn prices and ethanol - not for higher turkey prices for the consumer, but for lower profits for the companies.

”In 2008, it was kind of the perfect storm. Corn prices were high, there was oversupply and speculation helped to drive it more,” Shoemaker said. ”Ethanol helped to drive it more and the value of U.S. currency made it cheaper for other people to import grain, and also import turkey.”

The turkey industry has also had to reverse direction — after having a good year in 2006, producers ramped up production the next year and are now having a tough time scaling back, Shoemaker said.

What they are trying to do now is cut production in order to boost prices EVEN MORE! That means you might want to buy two turkeys this year and freeze one for next year.