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Groups favor repeal of RFS
A coalition of groups wants the renewable fuel standard repealed. A conference call Monday featured spokespeople decrying renewable fuels for food shortages to ruined engines to a damaged environment. Charlie Drevna with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers says anything over a ten percent ethanol blend is not appropriate.
“Virtually every automobile manufacturer has warned that the use of E-15 gasoline would damage motor vehicles and engines in nearly the entire existing fleet,” said Drevna during a conference call Monday.
However Brian Jennings with the American Coalition for Ethanol takes issue, saying that Drevna cited a type of ethanol fuel that contains water and acid and that is not available on the market.
“It had a greater percentage of water than what you find in any fuel today, it had a greater percentage of certain acids than you find in fuel that’s available on the market,” Jennings told Brownfield Ag News Monday. “When you put fuel designed to ruin an engine in an engine in a test, guess what, it’ll be ruined.”
Use of the ethanol commonly blended at a rate of 15 percent with gasoline, said Jennings, will not harm the engines tested successfully by the EPA.
“The fuel that EPA tested is E-15 that we produce,” he said. “That’s the fuel they approved for use in 2001 and newer vehicles; it’s going to work great in those cars.”
Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group calls ethanol an environmental disaster resulting in wetlands destruction to accommodate additional corn acres. Brian Jennings of the American Coalition for Ethanol disagrees with that and with Faber’s contention that ethanol fuel directly pollutes the air.
“That’s not true,” said Jennings, referring to Faber’s statements. “EPA says even the worst corn ethanol on the planet is 20 percent cleaner than gasoline from a greenhouse gas standpoint; that’s EPA, and they’re not a fan of ethanol necessarily.”
A similar panel is on Capitol Hill Tuesday conducting House and Senate staff briefings about their disapproval of the renewable fuel standard.
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