How U.S. regulators allow ethanol plants to pollute more than oil refineries
, did not comment on the Reuters findings on ethanol emissions. In response to Reuters inquiries, the EPA said it has followed the intent of Congress in implementing the biofuels law, including the regulatory exemptions. The agency acknowledged the higher production emissions of ethanol, compared to gasoline, but asserted that ethanol is cleaner overall.
Other industry observers say the RFS has utterly failed to meet its stated environmental goals. The ethanol mandate was “just a mistake,” said Timothy Searchinger, a senior researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. “We created a terrible model.”Ethanol does have a key environmental advantage over gasoline: It burns cleaner in cars.
The EPA’s methodology, by contrast, has hewed closer to the findings of industry-commissioned studies, which assert that ethanol produces as much as 40% less lifecycle emissions than gasoline. The EPA has used a controversial methodology to estimate the ethanol industry’s life-cycle emissions that has effectively ensured the industry’s continuing regulatory compliance.
Congress initially required the exemptions, but the EPA had broad authority to interpret the law. Several environmental groups asked the agency early on to set an expiration date for the exemptions, or to terminate exemptions for plants that are substantially upgraded or expanded. The agency declined, regulatory records show.
While the small number of ethanol plants subject to regulation produce 40% less pollution than the exempted plants, they still produce more pollution, on average, than oil refineries, the Reuters analysis found. Ethanol plants complying with the rule produced an average of 860 metric tons of carbon per millions of gallons of fuel capacity, compared to 533 tons at the average oil refinery. The average exempted ethanol plant produced 1,203 tons of carbon.
Industry groups including the RFA bristled at the calculation and urged the agency to change the formula. The industry recommendations included adopting a model maintained by the Global Trade Analysis Project at Purdue University to estimate the pollution generated by planting corn for ethanol, EPA records of the debate show.
The Purdue model is led by Dr. Farzad Taheripour, a researcher and professor of agricultural economics. Taheripour said the model was modified over time to reflect real-world observations of how biofuels production has affected land use. For instance, early scholarship on ethanol regulation suggested the RFS would lead to deforestation, which did not occur, he said.
Moreover, corn acreage statistics do not account for millions of acres of corn for ethanol being planted on new lands -- the result of another EPA regulation that relaxed restrictions on the industry.
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