Climate Corner: Caution – the Renewable Fuel Standard story

Nov 16, 2024

Vic Elam

editorial@newsandsentinel.com

In 2006, the Federal Government passed the Renewable Fuel Standard, and the Environmental Protection Agency was tasked with implementing it. It seemed like a great idea at the time – what could go wrong, producing biofuels from crops to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and prop up the agriculture community. Let’s look a little closer at the reality of this “great” idea.

First, a little background. The U.S. produces corn on more than 90 million acres a year and soybeans on about 87 million acres. And just for clarification for some who are not familiar, when we say corn, we are not talking about the corn you get from your local grocery store or farmer’s market or grow in your garden, that is sweet corn. We are referring to what I call field corn. Field corn is used as feed for livestock including cattle, hogs, chickens, and more. Corn syrup is produced from corn, and with the advent of ethanol production a large amount is used for that. Soybeans are similar in their uses and instead of ethanol it is used to produce biodiesel.

The Renewable Fuel Standard requires a certain amount of ethanol and biodiesel be blended with traditional gasoline and diesel fuel in exchange for financial incentives. In 2022, 15.36 billion gallons of ethanol, and 1.62 billion gallons of biodiesel were produced in the U.S. with 1.31 and .24 billion gallons exported.

Here’s the problem: Production of ethanol inflated the price of corn so much that it caused farmers, who had marginal agriculture quality land that was conserved for wildlife and was sequestering carbon, to convert that land to corn production and in some cases converting native prairie. Corn production typically requires intensive inputs such as fertilizer, irrigation, chemical application, all of which require massive fuel usage and have harmful effects, such as soil erosion, chemical impacts, reduction in aquifer storage, quick run-off that results in flooding and denies aquifer recharge, transportation impacts, etc. Higher prices caused food insecurity problems; and biofuel production may be partially responsible for beneficial insect population declines. The U.S. exports much of our corn and soybean production to countries like China for their livestock feed and when we create a world market for more production, then other countries find it a market to fill and they start converting wildlife habitat (like rainforest) to farming. The problems were similar for soybean production. The price of corn has since moderated, but the stated impacts remain and there are many more negative impacts that I will not expound upon here. In the end, if everything was wrapped into a cost/benefit analysis, I feel quite certain that bio-fuel production would be found to be more damaging to the climate than normal fossil fuel production. We need a different solution.

EPA is required to assess the impacts of the Renewable Fuel Standard and adjust accordingly, and that analysis is to include environmental and wildlife impacts, but in a cursory review of the documentation found in the Federal Register and elsewhere, I found little evidence that all the environmental impacts are being weighed. I feel that it would be hard to really assess the carbon release impacts from things like converted forest in South America.

The latest effort is to lower the carbon output from the aviation industry with Sustainable Aviation Fuel which is a similar process to other biofuel production except that hydrogen will need to be added to increase the energy density of the fuel. Hydrogen can be produced with green technology, but that is rare. An honest, holistic look at all implications of SAF production is needed.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is necessary for the future of our planet and ourselves, but looking at solutions with a critical eye is crucial to keep us from going down dead-end roads. I’m sure that there will be many alternatives tried out before we really settle on the right recipe that will take us into the future.

***

Vic Elam is an avid outdoorsman and contributor to organizations that share his concern for our environment, including Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.