The Fuels America coalition sponsored Politico's Morning Energy for the second week in a row this week, underscoring that gutting the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) would pose an enormous threat to America's emerging cellulosic ethanol and advanced biofuel industry.
"Caving to oil industry pressure and reducing the market for renewable fuels would undercut the industry's ability to make investments in advanced biofuels," Fuels America's text pointed out. "Especially if the administration's rationale for the reduction is the fact that the oil industry is refusing to provide the infrastructure to sell renewable fuels in spite of a law requiring them to do so."
Fuels America's Morning Energy sponsorship follows a May 15 letter from DuPont, Abengoa, Novozymes, Poet DSM and 30 other advanced biofuel leaders to President Obama explaining that they had invested "billions of dollars in the development and commercial deployment of ultra-low carbon biofuels... based on the expectation that when [they] succeed, the RFS will be maintained as a mechanism to open the market for our fuels." They went on to warn that the "current proposal would break that promise by allowing incumbent fuel producers, who want to see the program fail, to limit the distribution of renewable fuels and thereby define future RFS blending obligations." Fuel's America's text concluded with a link to that letter.
The sponsorship by the Fuels America coalition comes as a final 2014 RFS rule draws closer and just on the heels of significant announcements from President Obama regarding the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. The Administration's proposal to weaken the bipartisan RFS, however, would represent an increase in carbon emissions worse than cancelling every wind farm now under development in the United States. And as Fuels America explains in this week's Morning Energy, a weakened RFS will seriously undercut investments in America's low carbon advanced biofuels, which represent reductions in lifecycle CO2 emissions of 88-108%.
Credit: our-green-energy.blogspot.com
