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Fuel Freedom Staff

EPA touts health, economic benefits of reducing smog

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The battle lines already are drawn over the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement Wednesday that it’s seeking to reduce the nation’s levels of ground-level ozone, the main component of smog.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review air-quality standards every five years. Under President George W. Bush, the agency set the ozone threshold at 75 parts per billion in 2008.

The EPA now wants to lower the bar to between 65 ppb and 70 ppb, the level that the agency’s advisory board of independent scientists and physicians has recommended. However, EPA will review comments on a lower benchmark of 60 ppb during its commentary period.

Ozone is created when sunlight hits emissions coming from vehicles, electricity-generating plants and factories. The EPA said ozone at the current accepted levels “can pose serious threats to public health, harm the respiratory system, cause or aggravate asthma and other lung diseases, and is linked to premature death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes.”

The NRDC said medical evidence shows that the revised limit, even at the lower end of 65 ppb, is harmful to health. ”So we urge EPA to set the standard at 60 ppb.”

AQI (Click on the image at right to check the national Air Quality Index.)

That stance will put the EPA on a collision course with the manufacturing sector and Republican elected officials, who will control both the Senate and House in January. Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who will take over as chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a statement that the lower threshold “will lower our nation’s economic competitiveness and stifle job creation for decades.”

National Association of Manufacturers president and CEO Jay Timmons said the new ozone regulation “threatens to be the most expensive ever imposed on industry in America and could jeopardize recent progress in manufacturing by placing massive new costs on manufacturers and closing off counties and states to new business …”

The Associated Press notes that the EPA initially proposed a range of 60 to 70 ppb in January 2010. Had that gone into effect, it would have come with an estimated price tag of between $19 billion and $90 billion and would have doubled the number of U.S. counties in violation.

In 2011, President Obama, in advance of his 2012 re-election campaign, “reneged on a plan by then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to lower the permissible level to be more protective of public health,” The AP wrote.

“Seldom do presidents get an opportunity to right a wrong,” Bill Becker of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies told AP. “Obama has walked the walk on air.”

Current EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, in a post on CNNMoney.com, put the health argument front and center. But she also said cutting emissions would help the economy, not hinder it:

“Missing work, feeling ill, or caring for a sick child costs us time, money, and personal hardship. When family health issues hurt us financially, that drags down the whole economy. … Special-interest critics will try to convince you that pollution standards chase away local jobs and businesses, but, in fact, healthy communities attract new businesses, new investment, and new jobs.”

 

Fuel Freedom Staff

Oil, ethanol groups say EPA delay hurting their industries

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U.S. ethanol producers and the oil industry responsible for mixing the renewable fuel into the gasoline supply rarely agree on anything.

But the two foes say the failure of the Environmental Protection Agency to finalize how much ethanol should be mixed into the country’s motor fuel supply in 2014, more than a year after the regulator first issued its proposal, has created uncertainty and hindered the ability of the free market to work.

“The market is kind of frozen right now because the EPA hasn’t responded,” said Bob Greco, downstream director with the American Petroleum Institute, a trade group representing more than 550 oil and natural gas companies. “The EPA, because of the way (the Renewable Fuel Standard) is structured, moves markets by making these decisions. You’ve got billions of dollars of investments threatened.”

In November 2013, the EPA proposed reducing ethanol produced from corn in 2014 to 13.01 billion gallons from 14.4 billion gallons initially required by Congress in the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard, a law that requires refiners to buy alternative fuels made from corn, soybeans and other products to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign energy.

Read more at: Des Moines Register

Arctic Leaf

The game of checkers and corn-based ethanol

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Recent news concerning the use of corn waste or residual products to create commercially viable ethanol reminds me of a game of checkers. One jump forward, one jump backward, one move sideways. Depending how smart, bored or prone to crying the players are, the game often results in either a stalemate or a glorious victory, particularly glorious when it’s your grandson or granddaughter.

The good news! The American-owned POET and the Dutch-owned Royal DSM opened the first facility in Iowa that produces cellulosic ethanol from corn waste (not your favorite corn on the cob), only the second in the U.S. to commercially produce cellulosic ethanol from agricultural waste, according to James Stafford’s recent article in OilPrice.com (Sept. 5).

The new owners jumped (note the analogy to checkers…my readers are bright) with joy. They announced, perhaps, a bit prematurely, that the joint project, called Project LIBERTY, is the “first step in transforming our economy, our environment and our national security.” After their press release, quick, generally positive, comments came from electric and hydrogen fuel makers, CNG producers, advocates of natural gas-based ethanol and a whole host of other replacement fuel enthusiasts. The comments reflected the high hopes and dreams of leaders of public interest groups, some in the business community, several think tanks and many in the government who see transitional replacement fuels reducing U.S. dependency on oil and simultaneously improving the economy and environment. Several were fuel agnostic as long as increased competition at the pump offered a range of fuels at lower costs to consumers and reduced environmental harm to the nation.

Ethanol from corn waste, if the conversion could be made easily and if it resulted in less costs than gasoline, would mute tension between those who argue that use of corn for ethanol would limit food supplies and provide consumers a good deal, cost wise. The cowboys and the farmers might even eat the same table. (Sorry, Mr. Hammerstein.)

Life is never easy. Generally, when a replacement fuel seems to offer competition to gasoline, the API (American Petroleum Institute — supported by the oil industry) immediately tries to check the advocates of replacement fuel. The association didn’t disappoint. It made a clever jump of its own with a confusing move…sort of a bait and switch move.

API’s check and jump is reflected in their quote to Scientific American. It indicated, in holier-than-thou tones, “API supports the use of advanced biofuels, including cellulosic biofuels, once they are commercially viable and in demand by consumers. But EPA must end mandates for these fuels that don’t even exist.” Wow, how subtle. API supports and then denies!

What a bunch of hokum! Given their back-handed endorsement of advanced biofuels, would API and its supporters among oil companies agree to end their unneeded government tax subsidies simultaneously with EPA’s reductions or ending of mandates? Would API and its supporters agree to add provisions to franchise agreements that would allow gas station owners or managers to locate ethanol from cellulosic biofuels in a central visible pump? Would API work with advocates of replacement fuels to open up the gas market to replacement fuels and competition? Would API agree to a collaborative study of the impact of corn-based residue as the primers of ethanol with supporters of residue derived ethanol, a study including refereed, independent evaluators, and abide by the results? If you answer no to all of these questions, you would be right. API, in effect, is clearly trying to jump supporters of corn-based residual ethanol and block them from producing and marketing their product. Conversely, if you believe the answer is yes to one or more of the questions, you will wait a long time for anything to happen and I will offer to sell you the Golden Gate Bridge and more.

The advocates and producers of cellulosic-based ethanol from corn waste (next move) were suggested by overheard advisors to API. These advisors from the oil industry cheered API’s last move and noted that a recent study in Nature Climate Change, a respected peer-reviewed journal, suggested that biofuels made from corn residue emit 7 percent more greenhouse gases in early years than gasoline and does not meet current energy laws. They wanted checkerboard pieces held by advocates of corn residue off the policy board.

Oh, but the supporters are wise! They don’t give in right away. They pointed to an EPA analysis which indicates that using corn residue to secure ethanol meets existing energy laws and probably produces much, much less carbon than gasoline. Studies like the one reported in Nature Climate Change do not, according to an EPA spokesperson, report on lifecycle changes in an adequate way — from pre-planting, through production, blending, distribution, retailing produce and use. Moreover, a recent analysis funded by DuPont — soon to open a new cellulosic residue to ethanol facility — indicates that using corn residue to produce ethanol will be 100 percent better than gasoline, concerning GHG emissions. (Supporters were a bit hesitant about shouting out DuPont’s involvement in funding the study. It is a chemical company with a mixed environmental record. But after review, supporters indicated it seemed like a decent analysis.)

The response of supporters and its intensity caused API and its advisors to withdraw their insistence, that the checkers of the advocates of corn based residue derived ethanol come of the board. Instead, they asked for a two-hour break in the game. The residue folks were scared. “API was a devious group. What were they up too?”

When the game started again, both supporters and opponents pulled out lots of competing studies, before they made their moves. The only things they agreed on was that the extent of land use devoted to corn, combined with the way farmers manage the soil and the residue, likely would significantly affect GHG emissions. Keeping a strategic amount of residual on the soil would help reduce emissions.

Supporters of corn-based residue argued for a quick collaborative study that might help bridge the analysis gap. But they wanted a bonafide commitment from API that if corn-based residual, derived ethanol, proved better than gasoline, it would support it as a transitional replacement fuel. No soap! The game ended in a stalemate.

Based on talking to experts and surveying much of the literature, I believe that the fictional checkers game tilts toward corn residual derived ethanol, assuming significant attention is granted by farmers to management of the soil and the residue. Whether corn residual-based ethanol becomes competitive as a transitional replacement fuel will be based mostly on farmer intelligence, consumer and political acceptance and a set of even playing field regulations. It, as well as natural gas-based ethanol, as I have written in previous columns, are worthy of a set of demonstration efforts. The nation will have an extended wait until electric and hybrid cars make a big dent regarding the share of the total number of cars in America. We have a moral obligation to do the best we know how to do to lower GHG emissions and other pollutants. We shouldn’t let the almost perfect in our future reduce the possible good now.