California Air Resources Board Deadline Nears

Broad Expert Objection To Proposed Renewable Fuel Standard

CHICAGO, April 20 /PRNewswire/ — The California Air Resources Board (CARB), an arm of the State’s Environmental Protection Agency, will end its comment period next week on the merits of adopting the Golden State’s proposed Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS).

With only days remaining before the comment period ends April 24, increasing numbers of university professors, scientists, researchers, and industry trade organizations have registered their opposition to adoption of the LCFS proposal in its present form.

Central to many opponents’ objections is that the LCFS proposed regulation is grounded in incomplete — if not misguided — research and will, if enacted, work against the U.S. government’s goal of achieving energy independence through development of renewable fuels.

Following is a sampling of quotes from those who have posted their written LCFS objections with the Air Resources Board in Sacramento.

“The science is far too limited and uncertain for regulatory enforcement… to date, the Air Resources Board is proposing to enforce indirect effects against biofuel production only… Enforcing different compliance metrics against different fuels is the equivalent of picking winners and losers, which is in direct conflict with the ambition of the LCFS.”

                                       --Blake A. Simmons, Ph.D.
                                       Sandia National Laboratories
                                       Livermore CA
                                       And 112 fellow Ph.D. signatories

“Incorporating indirect effects into policy will wrongly penalize important new technologies such as ethanol by handicapping them with someone else’s pollution.”

                                       --Dr. Bruce E. Dale
                                       University Distinguished Professor
                                       Associate Director: Office of Biobased
                                        Technologies
                                       Michigan State University

“The report prepared by the staff at the AIR Resources Board… is poorly completed and the conclusions that are reached are not supported by data from the scientific literature. The work is based on very few references… and at least one of the references listed in the Appendix is incorrect or falsified.”

                                       --Hans Stein
                                      Associate Professor of Swine Nutrition
                                      Department of Animal Sciences
                                      University of Illinois

“Simply put, we do not believe the issue has been fully explored and understood, and that the model applied in determining California‘s LCFS is flawed.”

                                       --Joseph Irvin
                                       Executive Director
                                       California Ethanol Vehicle Coalition
                                       Newcastle, CA

“There should be no rush to judgment on such a complex and important issue. Therefore, the (Ag Biomass Council, Inc.) recommends that CARB take an additional two years to conduct a through analysis of the indirect land use changes before deciding whether and how to incorporate it into the LCFS.”

                                       --Thor Bailey
                                       Ag Biomass Council, Inc.
                                       Chico, CA

“We are concerned that as currently proposed, the LCFS will be ineffective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as inadvertently slowing the deployment of technologies that can reduce our reliance on… fossil fuels.”

                                       --Prof. Robert C. Brown
                                       17 colleagues
                                       Iowa State University
                                       Ames, IA

“The CARB staff report is seriously deficient on both economic and environmental grounds… Although the staff conducted an economic analysis, it is grossly deficient and does not include a supply and demand analysis… The LCFS is an unprecedented effort to reformulate California’s diesel and gasoline supplies in order to reduce their carbon intensity.”

                                       --Dorothy Rothrock
                                       Sr. Vice President
                                       California Manufacturers and Technology
                                       Association and 24 other California
                                       Trade Organizations

    Contact:        James Prendergast, jim@thekineogroup.com
                    William Crawford, bill@thekineogroup.com
                    The Kineo Group
                    312 588-3380

SOURCE The Kineo Group