News Coverage
Ethanol Eyes Only
Published May 20, 2009
Minnesota's Collin Peterson is evidently willing to throw climate-change legislation under the bus to coddle an unsuccessful industry.
The tirade that House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota recently delivered accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of sinking the corn-ethanol industry has many of us in the environmental community scratching our heads. Peterson accused federal officials of being "in bed with the oil companies" because their science-based analysis found that corn ethanol doesn't reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as much as the industry claims.
On Friday, Peterson's anger turned to threats in comments to Agriculture.com that included: "... If they don't fix this, I'm going to bring this climate bill down," a reference to legislation he introduced the day before to strip the science-based analysis of biofuels from the Renewable Fuel Standard. Apparently, the chairman intends to hold critical climate-change legislation hostage unless corn ethanol receives yet another free pass.
What has Peterson and the corn-ethanol lobby so upset is that the EPA took into consideration "indirect land use change" -- technical jargon for factoring in the climate-damaging gases that will be released when forests or grasslands are plowed under and planted with crops to make up for the corn used to make ethanol. When EPA scientists factor in indirect land use change, as they are required to do by law, it turns out corn ethanol likely increases rather than decreases greenhouse-gas emissions.
Peterson has failed to mention, however, that Congress already made sure corn ethanol was protected from any scientific assessment of its impact on the environment when it passed the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. Buried in the law are provisions that exempt every gallon of corn ethanol from the requirement to reduce greenhouse gases that all other biofuels have to meet to qualify as a "renewable fuel." The EPA estimates that these provisions grandfather in 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol, 6 billion gallons more than was produced in 2008, whether putting that fuel in our gas tanks helps protect our climate or not.
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http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/45443617.html?elr=KArksLck...
