A new white paper from the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) finds that lowering the volume requirements for biofuels under the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) as proposed by the administration will lead to an increase in emissions of greenhouse gases next year.
According to Brent Erickson, Executive Vice President of BIO’s Industrial & Environmental Section and lead author of the special report, the proposal from the Environmental Protection Agency could “reverse progress on one of the central goals of the law – reducing climate-changing emissions from the U.S. transportation sector.”
The paper utilizes Energy Information Administration projections of fuel use from 2014 to 2022 to estimate volumes of petroleum and biofuel use for each year. The authors then assigned estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from the GREET1.2013 model to the volumes and added up year-by-year emissions. Based on EPA’s proposed requirements for 2014, the United States would emit 6.6 million more metric tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases than it did in 2013. If EPA followed past practice, allowing the overall requirements to remain at the statutory level, the achieved reduction in GHG emissions would be 21.6 million metric tons CO2e. The difference between the increase and the achievable decrease is equivalent to putting 5.9 million additional cars on the road next year. Under other available options for setting the RFS volume requirements, the United States could still achieve carbon emission reductions, the paper finds.