by Erin Krueger (Ethanol Produce Magazine) Hawaii lawmakers on May 6 approved legislation to create a clean fuel standard (CFS) that aims to reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of transportation fuels by at lease 50% below 2019 levels by 2045. The bill will now be considered by Hawaii Governor Josh Green. Green’s office previously offered testimony in support of the bill and he is expected to sign the legislation into law.
Legislation to create a Hawaii CFS was initially introduced in January. The bill was amended several times as it progressed through Hawaii House of Representatives and Hawaii Senate. A conference committee was formed in April to reconcile differences between legislation approved by the House and Senate. An amended version of the bill was approved by the conference committee on May 1, with final approval provided by the full House and Senate on May 6.
The bill, S.B. 2999, requires the Hawaii Department of Transportation to adopt rules creating a CFS and implement those rules by Jan. 1, 2029. The CFS aims to phase in CI reductions, achieving a reduction of no less than 10% below 2019 levels by 2035 and ramping up to at least a 50% CI reduction by 2045. The Hawaii DOT is tasked with setting specific annual CI reduction standards.
The CFC will be crafted as a credit-based system where alternative fuel that have a CI score below the annual CI standard generate a credit and diesel or gasoline that have a CI score above the annual CI standard generate a deficit. Gasoline, diesel and other fuels used by aircraft, railroad locomotives, military vehicles and interstate waterborne vessels would be exempt from the program. These exempt end-users, however, could opt into the CFS to generate credits for the use of alternative fuels.
Under the bill, lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be calculated using the most recent version of the U.S. Department of Energy’s GREET model. The technology-neutral program defines alternative fuel as any fuel that is not fossil fuel-based and is used for transportation purposes.
The legislation also includes provisions designed to protect Hawaii customers from unreasonable price increase resulting from the CFS.
The American Biogas Council is applauding passage of the CFS bill. “Hawaii’s clean fuel policy will expand markets for low carbon fuels like renewable natural gas (RNG) and biogas-generated electricity,” said Patrick Serfass, executive director of the ABC. “When biogas projects capture methane from organic waste streams such as agriculture, wastewater, and landfills, they produce the lowest-carbon transportation fuel available, while creating jobs, reducing emissions, and strengthening local economies.” READ MORE
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by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) ... Fuel remains mostly invisible until suddenly it isn’t. That is the strange thing about oil markets. They create what might be called a parallax of price.
In astronomy, parallax describes how an object appears to shift depending on the observer’s position. Oil prices behave similarly. When prices are low, the world appears stable. Consumers interpret affordability as security. Politicians declare “energy independence.” Markets reassure themselves that the system is functioning normally. Yet the apparent calm can be deceptive.
Oil is not merely a commodity. It is a globally synchronized system whose price compresses enormous complexity into a single number posted on a roadside sign. Hidden inside that number are wars, shipping routes, refinery outages, OPEC calculations, currency flows, trader psychology, insurance rates, and geopolitical risk premiums stretching across continents.
When prices fall, those underlying tensions do not disappear. They simply become harder to see.
Then comes the disruption. An embargo. A revolution. A drone strike. A pipeline shutdown. A refinery closure. Suddenly the invisible structure underneath the system reappears, and society rediscovers its exposure all at once.
This is why the recurring argument over ethanol and renewable fuels deserves a more careful framing than the old binaries of “energy independence” versus “subsidy” or “oil” versus “green.”
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The real issue may be resilience. Higher ethanol blends as Brazil has, as E85 affords, do something subtle but important: they partially decouple the retail gallon from the full force of global oil volatility. Not completely, of course. Oil remains deeply embedded in transportation, agriculture, petrochemicals, and global trade. But a gallon containing 85 percent domestically produced ethanol contains less embedded geopolitical exposure than a gallon containing 10 percent. That matters.
The value is not simply lower carbon intensity or farm support or octane enhancement, though those all matter too. The value is reduced exposure to forces beyond the driver’s control.
Brazil understood this after the oil shocks of the 1970s.
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The United States largely chose another path. We pursued efficiency gains and expanded domestic oil production, both important achievements. Yet even as America became one of the world’s largest oil producers again, consumers remained tethered to global price dynamics because oil prices are globally set.
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This is where ethanol’s role becomes especially interesting. A barrel of crude yields only a fraction of finished gasoline once refining complexity is accounted for. Ethanol, meanwhile, arrives already as high-octane fuel. At higher blends, it does not merely supplement gasoline supply; it frees refining capacity and reduces pressure on constrained systems. That is not a wartime argument. It is a systems argument.
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But there remains a legitimate strategic logic to maintaining multiple fuel pathways instead of optimizing entirely around one globally volatile system.
In that sense, renewable fuels resemble strategic reserves, backup generators, or crop insurance. They are not simply products.
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After blackouts, grids add reserves. After bank panics, liquidity rules tighten. The lesson becomes infrastructure. Perhaps the Strait of Hormuz tensions should leave behind one such memory in American fuel policy.
Not a grand national mobilization. Just a practical reduction in exposure.
One example would be finally normalizing nationwide year-round E15 sales by removing outdated regulatory friction around Reid Vapor Pressure waivers and fuel certification barriers that continue to treat modestly higher ethanol blends as exceptional rather than routine.
Another would be expanding the effective market for E85 adoption — not by forcing consumers into unfamiliar systems, but by allowing existing vehicles and infrastructure to utilize blends already approved for most of the U.S. fleet.
This would not sever America from global oil markets.
But it would slightly reduce the coupling between geopolitical instability and the family budget.
And perhaps that is how durable systems actually learn: not through permanent fear, but through incremental diversification quietly embedded after each reminder of vulnerability. READ MORE
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Excerpt from Clean Fuels Development Coalition/Governors' Biofuels Coalition: The public is being led to believe we are “energy independent” and understandably is asking why then do events in the middle east raise our prices. This is part of the complication of oil-if the world price of oil doubles, Exxon, Chevron, or any of the big guys aren’t going to leave that money on the table. It is a global commodity, and global demand is going to set the price everywhere.
So how do we reduce the price of oil? Reduce the demand for it, of course. A 42 gallon barrel of oil produces just 20 gallons of gasoline, even less when making premium, high octane grades. By the same metric, a barrel of ethanol is 42 gallons of high octane fuel and frees up refinery capacity. READ MORE
Excerpt from Washington Post: The market is highly interconnected. The U.S. produces mostly lighter shale oil, while the bulk of its refineries are intended for a heavier grade of crude, so it both exports and imports oil.