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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Ethanol, biodiesel interests cry foul at EPA's calculation of their greenhouse-gas impact

Advocates of ethanol and biodiesel argued at a hearing today that the Environmental Protection Agency was out of bounds when it decided to use "land use changes around the world and years into the future" in estimating the fuels' environmental impact, Brownfield Network reports.

“There is so much uncertainty in trying to account for international impacts that it renders the regulatory process incapable of determining a specific number,” said Renewable Fuels Association President and CEO Bob Dinneen, reports DomesticFuel.com.

Mark Stowers, a vice president of leading ethanol maker POET, said EPA calculation models "have severe problems and limitations, including 'failure to make apples-to-apples comparisons with gasoline,' and an underestimation of corn and ethanol yields," report Ken Anderson, Tom Steever and Bob Meyer of Brownfield. (Read more)

Manning Feraci of the National Biodiesel Board acknowledged that federal law "requires EPA to consider significant indirect emissions when calculating a renewable-fuels emission profile," but said EPA should not "rely on faulty data and unrealistic scenarios that punish the U.S. biodiesel industry for wholly unrelated land use decisions in South America." For the DomesticFuel story, click here. For a longer story from Environment News Service click here.

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