ACE applauds bipartisan Senators’ letter urging EPA to update ethanol science
Posted on 06/25/2019
Sioux Falls, SD (June 25, 2019) – American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) applauds the letter a group of bipartisan Senators sent today urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publicly announce its intent to review and incorporate the latest “Greenhouse gas and Regulated Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET)” modeling into an updated life cycle assessment for corn ethanol. U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), both members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, led the effort in advising EPA to update its outdated environmental analysis on ethanol. ACE CEO Brian Jennings issued the following statement applauding the Senators for urging EPA to formally adopt these changes without further delay:
“ACE extends our gratitude to Senators Durbin and Grassley for leading this bipartisan effort to hold EPA accountable on this important issue. Unlike the Argonne GREET model, EPA has not reviewed or updated their original 2010 corn ethanol greenhouse gas (GHG) assessments. Current data from the GREET model indicate that corn ethanol’s carbon intensity is almost 50 percent less than petroleum gasoline providing significantly more GHG reduction benefits than when the RFS was enacted a decade ago. Last year, ACE published “The Case for Properly Valuing the Low Carbon Benefits of Corn Ethanol” recommending, as is stated in the Senators’ letter today, that EPA refer to the latest U.S. Department of Energy GREET model for life cycle analysis of corn ethanol.
“Given the all hands-on deck nature of the climate change problem, agricultural and biofuel stakeholders continue to believe that governmental policies need to properly acknowledge the role that agriculture and biofuel can play in providing near-term solutions to offsetting U.S. GHG emissions. One of the most direct ways to capitalize on agriculture’s ability to mitigate GHG emissions is to properly acknowledge the role U.S. farmers and ethanol producers are playing to dramatically reduce life cycle GHG emissions from corn ethanol by improving efficiencies, investing in technologies, and adopting sustainable agricultural practices.
“U.S. farmers are under tremendous financial stress from collapsing net farm income, rising expenses, ongoing trade tensions, weather-related disasters, and the undermining of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) with demand destroying small refinery waivers. Updating EPA’s decade-old modeling would be a step in the right direction to underpin the scientific and economic opportunity for ethanol use to increase via low carbon fuel markets.”
ACE’s White Paper titled “The Case for Properly Valuing the Low Carbon Benefits of Corn Ethanol” is available online by visiting https://ethanol.org/ethanol-essentials/low-carbon-benefits-of-corn-ethanol.
ACE Scholarship Program Announces 2023 Winners
As Annual RVP Season Comes to an End, ACE Renews Call for This to Be the Very Last Summer of E15 Uncertainty