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Administration to support renewable fuels standard

U.S. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the Obama Administration won’t abandon the Renewable Fuels Standard and will encourage Congress to maintain it. That’s according to story on Bloomberg.

However, legislation was introduced this week in the House and Senate to rewrite the Renewable Fuel Standard. It would force the EPA to set targets for biofuels production based on the previous year’s biofuels production. Supporter of the renewable fuel standard fear the legislation would effectively kill future development of next-generation biofuels. Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis (bias) calls the legislation bad policy and pandering to the wishes of the oil industry. He says it’s nothing more than an end run around the Renewable Fuel Standard.

The Renewable Fuels Standard mandates the use of a minimum volume of renewable biofuels annually. The EPA currently sets increasing annual production targets. This year it’s 13.8 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel, increasing by 2015 to15 billion gallons with an eventual goal of 36 billion gallons by 2022.

  • Here is a good site on ethanol facts and fiction http://www.farmecon.com/Pages/EthanolAFactandFiction.aspx by Dr. Thomas E. Elam.

    We don’t need to, and with the drought and population growth we shouldn’t use farm land to grow fuel. There are better options, for energy like,Safe, new, nuclear- http://www.terrapower.com, that Bill Gates promotes, and could be tied with http://www.airfuelsynthesis.com/ and also produce carbon free energy for electric cars.
    Also, /www.proterro.com/ that makes the sucrose instead of extracting it, lowering the cost of sugar for the economical and scalable production of biofuels.
    We really should support and fast track these options for a cleaner, healthier planet, and for the best future for America and the world.
    But the RFS mandates takes away resources(money, research) and stifles better options by forcing us to use billions of gallons, of corn ethanol and other land source energy.

    The highly respected OECD said. “The rush to energy crops threatens to cause food shortages and damage to biodiversity with limited benefits … Government policies supporting and protecting domestic production of biofuels are inefficient [and] not cost effective … The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits … Governments should cease creating new mandates for biofuels and investigate ways to phase them out.” – Richard Doornbosch and Ronald Steenblik, “Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?” in Round Table on Sustainable Development (OECD, Sep 11-12, 2007).

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