Word: stress
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...produce scenarios in which it's even remotely attractive as a fuel alternative. In any case, the heavily subsidized corn-ethanol industries won't really be penalized for promoting deforestation and accelerating global warming; Congress exempted its existing plants from any consequences in the 2007 law requiring the stress tests. At her May 5 news conference with Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Jackson suggested this was a good thing, because corn ethanol is an "important bridge" to better biofuels. The Administration also announced that it plans to push the auto industry to make flex-fuel vehicles...
...life cycle, but that in some scenarios, corn ethanol (as well as lesser-used soy biodiesel) can produce even more emissions than gasoline. Some environmentalists and journalists have portrayed this as a courageous rebuke to the powerful agro-fuels lobby, while some advocates for farmers have complained that the stress tests were too tough. At a hearing after the announcement, House Agriculture Committee chairman Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, accused the EPA of attacking corn and soybean farmers. "You're going to kill off the biofuels industry before it even gets started," Peterson said. "You are in bed with...
...fairness, corn ethanol was already pretty much a done deal; Congress demanded 15 billion gallons in annual production by 2022, and the industry is already almost there. That is why the real stress tests that mattered were the ones concerning biofuels of the future like cellulosic ethanol grown from switchgrass - which has not been proven commercially viable but has been hailed as a kind of magic weed. Once again, the EPA used rosy life-cycle assumptions to conclude that next-generation biofuels will reduce billions of tons of emissions over the next century, ultimately reducing our oil consumption...
...This is why Congress included the stress tests along with a huge biofuels mandate in its 2007 energy bill, throwing a bone to environmentalists who were freaking out that the alternative fuels they had championed for years were in fact ecological calamities. The law - supported by then-Senator Barack Obama - required life-cycle analyses that would calculate direct and indirect emissions...
...example of the problems with the analysis is the time horizon. When the EPA studied a reasonable 30-year time period, even with its generous assumptions, soy biodiesel and corn-ethanol plants powered by coal or natural gas actually produced more emissions than gasoline; corn ethanol only passed the stress test (and just barely) when powered by the cleanest possible power. And that analysis assumed it's a good trade-off to accept massive emissions today in exchange for reductions over 30 years, when in fact massive emissions today could help trigger devastating ice melts and other feedback loops that...