Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil
Check out the map of the oil spill and the 2009 hypoxic zone in today's New York Times. As I mentioned in my last blog, the nitrogen runoff from corn grown all along the Mississippi causes a huge dead zone...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Yesterday, RFA delivered a letter to President Obama urging immediate solution and long-term strategies in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Certainly both are needed, but unfortunately RFA’s solutions amount to using more corn ethanol today...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today, in yet another example of ethanol industry spin, the Renewable Fuels Association released a state-by-state version of its highly inflated jobs study. This is just another part of big ethanol’s effort to make the case for extending the Volumetric...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Big ethanol has gone into high gear lobbying for the extension of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). This article summarizes the basics. At the top of their list of dire warnings are claims that allowing the subsidy to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
A new study by University of Missouri Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (PDF) reveals that the current corn ethanol tax credit is effectively costing tax payers $4.18 per gallon and is driving up grain prices. The study estimates that...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
This little article focuses on my friend John Sheehan and his take on biofuels and land-use. He proposed reframing the issue in an interesting way: "We need to not look at land use as a biofuels problem, we need to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
This post by Steven Mufson reports on the advanced biofuels industry wanting addition incentive and particularly an investment tax credit. Last year, NRDC proposed a "Billion Gallon Challenge" program linking rich incentives for the first billion gallon of produciton capacity...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Robert Rapier has a great blog on the redundant and ridiculous biofuels tax credits, which given our huge Renewable Fuel Standard pay the oil companies to do what they’re legally obliged to do. I’ve written about the need to reform...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, sign the final regulations to implement the renewable fuel standard as amended in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (a.k.a. RFSII). With the tools that EPA has developed, we can finally start to...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Biomass is a bit like Longfellow’s little girl with a curl: when it is good, it can be very, very good, and when it is bad, it’s horrid. Done right, converting biomass to heat or fuel can reduce global carbon...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Technically, I'm on vacation, and I hope everyone out there is enjoying at least some R&R this holiday season. Fortunately for all of us, the good people in the Governors' offices of 11 Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states have been busy....
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today in the Boston Globe, two of the biggest, but very different, names in biofuels have coauthored an op-ed on the importance of getting the GHG accounting right for bioenergy. I’ve written and done a video on this critically important...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Recently, I posted a video and a narrative explanation about a critical accounting error that threatens to turn climate legislation into a big incentive for deforestation. Put as simply as possible, the House climate bill and the Boxer-Kerry Senate bill...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Last Monday, I posted a video about a critical accounting error that threatens to turn climate legislation into a big incentive for deforestation. Here’s a narrative version of the same description. If you’ve seen the video this should sound and...
Posted by Nathanael Greene in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how Loni Kemp won a Farm Foundation contest for an essay laying out a greener biofuel tax credit. Today in DC, this reward was given with appropriate fan fair. Jeremy Martin at UCS also deserves lots of credit for helping to shape this idea. Here now for your reading pleasure is a short summary of how I would like to see the biofuel tax credits reformed based on all of Loni and Jeremy’s great work.
