PYLE: EPA's Biofuel Fix Is Only a Band-Aid

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released today its 2014 requirements for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The proposed rule scales back the ethanol mandate to the 2012 level of 15.2 billion gallons, down from 16.55 billion gallons in 2013. American Energy Alliance President Thomas Pyle released the following statement in response to the […]

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AP Exposes 'Secret, Dirty Cost' of Federal Ethanol Mandate

All energy sources involve tradeoffs. Ethanol production, for example, requires vast amounts of farmland and additional use of fertilizer can contaminate water supplies. As a new Associated Press investigation uncovered, the environmental tradeoffs associated with ethanol production have intensified as the federal ethanol mandate has expanded. The AP explains: With the Iowa political caucuses on […]

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Cellulosic Production (Still) Falls Woefully Short of Mandate

The EPA recently released updated Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) data showing Renewable Identification Number (RIN) generation for the month of September. A RIN is a 38-digit number assigned to a gallon of ethanol that refiners use to demonstrate compliance with the RFS. The updated data show, once again, that the EPA’s mandate for the use […]

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AAA Slams ‘Outdated’ Federal Ethanol Mandate

Yesterday, AAA called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lower the 2014 ethanol mandates under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). AAA’s statement comes in response to a recently leaked draft copy of the EPA’s 2014 requirements, in which the agency weighs decreasing the total biofuel mandate. EPA’s leaked draft proposes reducing the total renewable […]

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EPA Weighs Quadrupling Phantom Fuel Mandate

A leaked draft of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2014 volume requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) reveal that the agency may decrease the total biofuel mandate but nearly quadruple the amount of cellulosic biofuel that refiners must blend into gasoline. The draft proposal calls for decreasing the total amount of biofuel to 15.21 […]

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Ethanol Production Down in 2013 Despite Federal Mandate

Despite federal law requiring refiners to blend increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline, domestic ethanol production has actually declined over the last year. The U.S. ethanol industry produced 6.40 billion gallons of ethanol through the first half of 2013, down from 6.89 billion gallons over the same period last year, according to the Energy Information […]

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Working Group Broke the Rules With Its 'Social Cost of Carbon' Estimate

In my recent testimony to the Senate Environmental and Public Works committee, I explained that (among its other problems) the Obama Administration’s Working Group on climate change had explicitly ignored the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines stating that cost/benefit analyses had to be conducted using both a 3 percent and a 7 percent […]

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