US RFA asks for revised ILUC decisions on biofuels to be made

The US Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen has called for certainty over indirect land use change (ILUC) penalties in a letter sent to the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

It has been over two years since CARB proposed to revise ILUC penalties against certain biofuels as part of the state’s Low Standard Fuels Standard (LCFS).

‘I am writing to again encourage CARB to honour its commitments to expeditiously revise the ILUC penalty factor assessed against corn ethanol and to utilise the ‘best available science’ when determining direct carbon intensity (CI) values,’ Dinneen stated.

‘Revising the direct and indirect CI values for corn ethanol would be much more than a mere academic exercise; rather, a continued failure to update these CI values will jeopardise the ability of regulated parties to reasonably comply with the LCFS programme’s increasingly rigid CI standards in 2013, 2014 and beyond.’

The RFA points toward many peer-reviewed studies, published since the LCFS was adopted, that show CARB overstated the overall carbon intensity of corn ethanol.

One such study, conducted by Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model creator Michael Wang of the Argonne National Laboratory, found the carbon intensity of average corn ethanol to be 62 grams of CO²-equivalent per megajoule (g/MJ) which included ‘possible emissions from ILUC’.

That figure is 38% lower than CARB’s current estimate of 99.4g/MJ for average Midwest corn ethanol.