White Paper Examines Environmental Impacts of US Biofuels Policy

In Washington, DC, the Energy and Commerce Committee of the House of Representatives has released its third white paper that examines greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts associated with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The RFS was created in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and greatly expanded under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. It sets targets and timetables for four categories of biofuels to be added into the nation's transportation fuel supply. Each category must meet specific requirements as to its feedstock and its lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. The four categories are conventional biofuel (corn-derived ethanol), biodiesel, cellulosic biofuel, and undifferentiated advanced biofuel. The targets for the four categories total 16.55 billion gallons for 2013, of which not more than 13.8 billion gallons is conventional biofuel. Conventional biofuel is scheduled to reach its cap of 15 billion gallons by 2015, while the other categories continue to rise until the total RFS reaches 36 billion gallons by 2022.

The series of white papers issued by the Committee seeks to review the RFS and its implementation and to solicit input from interested stakeholders. The Committee is posing a number of discussion questions to examine the issues emerging with the current RFS. The committee is requesting interested stakeholders to respond by May 24, 2013.