Advanced Biofuels USA Comments on CA Waiver Review

A public hearing concerning this reconsideration was held on March 5, 2009, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Deadline to submit written comments was April 6, 2009. READ MORE.

Advanced Biofuels USA Executive Director, Joanne Ivancic, attended the hearing. Click Here for her testimony. Click Here for the Advanced Biofuels USA Press Release.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the regulatory authority to issue CO₂ control regulations under the Clean Air Act, and California took the lead in regulating ozone (smog) causing pollutants in the 1950s, it is very important that any motor vehicle CO₂ control waivers issued to California or other states properly account for all related CO₂ production. This is especially important since new vehicle technologies including plug-in hybrids and advanced biofuels produced from low nutrient input non-food biomass will be coming to market in the near future. Therefore, EPA should strongly consider the following in their waiver determination process.

1. CO₂ Emissions from Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles (PHEVs) and Electric Vehicles

It is extremely important that CO₂ produced in the course of producing electricity to charge plug-in hybrid or electric only vehicles be properly accounted for in Clean Air Act mandated emission inventories. Even more important, they must be apportioned to, and therefore controlled at, their actual place of use. If not, California could claim plug-in hybrids used in Los Angeles are "emission-free" while the electricity and CO₂ produced to charge them comes from a new or expanded coal-fired power plant on an Indian reservation, (where the Clean Air Act does not apply), in New Mexico. This would result in additional CO₂ being emitted into the earth's atmosphere without any record of these emissions having occurred, subverting the goal of controlling Green House Gas emissions.

a. All electricity and CO₂ generated from coal or other non-renewable fueled power plants used to charge plug-in hybrid or electric only vehicles must be accounted for in Clean Air Act mandated state emission inventories.

b. Quantities of electricity and CO₂ used for charging batteries must include energy losses (and CO₂ production) incurred in electrical production, step-up/step-down transformers, and long-range transmission, (totaling approximately 60%+ of total electrical production, USNAS).

d. Plug-in Hybrid battery charging electrical CO₂ emissions must be included, along with on-board combustion CO₂ emissions, in point-of-use state mobile source emission inventories no matter where the electricity is produced.

e. Electric only vehicle charging electrical CO₂ emissions must be included in point-of-use mobile source state emission inventories no matter where the electricity is produced.

With the potential of CO₂ emission or fuel economy waivers being granted to California and the New England/Mid Atlantic States, there is the possibility of at least three different standards and, more important, three different methods of calculating Green House Gas emissions. Therefore, it is important to have a single uniform method (or formula) for making these calculations. In establishing this formula, the following technical issues must be addressed.

a. A uniform standard for the conversion of CO₂ emissions from plug-in, electric only (see above) and conventional hybrids to miles per gallon (MPG) that is equal (not equivalent) to the MPG of internal combustion equipped vehicles. (Without this, marketing claims and false science will take over.)

b. A uniform standard (or algorithm) for the calculation of CO₂ emissions and MPG for biofuels, in addition to existing standards for corn-ethanol or soybean oil biodiesel, that can account for: a) increased energy content per gallon, b) decreased CO₂ emissions during fuel production, and c) increased MPG of new fuel mixtures. (Without this, significant regulatory barriers to the use of new biofuels, which would decrease CO₂ emissions without affecting food production and costs, would be created.)