Biofuels Can Contribute Now to a Cleaner Energy Future

by Tom Daschle (Roll Call/The Daschle Group) Smart agriculture policy that has a role for ethanol can help advance Biden’s agenda on all fronts -- Growing up in South Dakota, agriculture has always been in my blood.

For nearly three decades, I had the honor of representing South Dakota — where agriculture is the leading industry, with a $21 billion annual impact on the economy — in Congress. During nearly 20 years in the Senate, I worked across the aisle with Republican colleagues, many with dramatically different viewpoints on policy, to pass a wide range of agriculture-related legislation. Highlights included working with Bob Dole to pass the “clean octane” amendment to the 1990 Clean Air Act, and 10 years later, teaming up with Richard Lugar to introduce what would become the first renewable fuel standard.

It became clear to me early on that a robust domestic biofuels industry, including ethanol, would not only be good for farmers and our rural economy but also for the environment, public health and the nation’s energy security. Unfortunately, confusion and misinformation — about ethanol’s effects on food prices and vehicle performance — have hindered the realization of these benefits.

Called “the world’s most important food crop” in one Washington Post article, corn has a unique ability to help with climate change, absorbing one-third more carbon from the atmosphere than most other plants. Only 3 percent of plants have this characteristic, but they account for 23 percent of all terrestrial carbon fixation.

Experts at USDA and Argonne National Laboratory have concluded that corn ethanol produced with precision agriculture and other conservation practices can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent to 76 percent compared to gasoline. Other experts predict that over the next several years, high-octane, low-carbon, or HOLC, fuels, such as ethanol, will be classified as ultra-low carbon fuels, surpassing the greenhouse gas benefits of vehicles running on electricity produced from coal and natural gas.

Adding electric vehicles into the fleet will help over time, but improving the quality of the gasoline we use now — more than 100 billion gallons annually — would reap immediate benefits. Higher octane fuels would allow automakers to dramatically increase fuel economy and reduce carbon emissions, benefiting both the environment and public health.

The best way to increase gasoline octane is with HOLC fuels (mid-level ethanol blends such as E30) that replace the toxic compounds now used by refiners, which emit high levels of ultrafine particle pollution, especially in new direct-injection engines. A recent Harvard study associated air pollution with higher COVID-19 mortality rates, providing even more reason to switch to HOLC fuels.

The anticipated review and tightening of the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles rule is an opportunity to demonstrate our renewed commitment to science and put us on a path toward reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. READ MORE

Excerpt from Bloomberg: One strategy in particular is getting attention this year: encouraging farmers to view emissions reduction and carbon sequestration as potential sources of income. The idea is fairly straightforward. Farmers would take steps to reduce their carbon output, such as reducing tillage to avoid releasing soil carbon, planting cover crops to hold carbon in the soil, applying manure treatments and “digesters” to limit emissions of methane, and using nitrogen fertilizer more precisely to lower nitrous-oxide emissions. In return, they could sell credits to companies looking to reduce their own climate footprint. Private markets for such credits are already springing up, and Congress took measures to encourage similar exchanges in the 2008 Farm Bill.

But much about this concept has yet to be worked out, notably the basic question of how to measure the climate value of various farming practices. Here the U.S. Department of Agriculture could help. A Senate bill introduced last year would direct the USDA to create standards for measuring the effectiveness of climate-protection measures on farms, certify people to help farmers take such measurements and verify their value, and work with the Environmental Protection Agency to monitor private carbon-credit markets. Such exchanges could go a long way toward encouraging farmers to reduce emissions and sequester carbon. But they won’t work unless regulators can ensure that they’ll actually bring substantial climate benefits.

Carbon credits won’t be enough on their own; they should be thought of as a complement to other efforts to encourage climate-friendly agriculture, including existing USDA programs that help farmers finance conservation efforts (which also improve soil health and crop yields), and Energy Department research on soil carbon capture. Congress should also make possible improved terms on loans and reduced premiums on crop insurance for farmers who limit emissions (and water pollution) and conserve carbon. READ MORE