Obama: (Un)intentionally Reengineering the RFS for Big Oil?
by Brooke Coleman (Biofuels Digest/Advanced Ethanol Council) … It is doubtful that anyone on the Obama energy team regards themselves as having anything in common with someone like Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who has declared climate change a hoax. Senator Inhofe is one of the fossil fuel industry’s greatest champions. He is also one of the biofuel industry’s greatest antagonists, and believes the RFS should be repealed. But when it comes to the new path proposed by the President for the RFS, there is really no difference between Obama and Inhofe.
… To us, this means that obligated parties may not be obligated anymore, because oil companies largely control the distribution of renewable fuel to consumers.
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The oil industry’s attempt to hobble the RFS via “distribution capacity” (i.e. something it could control) was not isolated to the Senate. Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – two outspoken critics of policy support for renewable fuels but huge champions of the same for the oil industry – ushered identical language into the final House version of the RFS in the same year.
… The conference committee formed to reconcile the House and Senate energy packages (ultimately, as the Energy Policy Act of 2005) rejected the “distribution capacity” language advanced by both House and Senate oil-state Republicans. It was well understood at the time that Clean Air Act (CAA) regulations that rely on the whims of obligated parties cannot work.
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If you are wondering how it is possible that President Obama is trying to do something administratively to the RFS in 2014 that the oil industry could not get done legislatively in 2005, you are not alone.
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The advanced biofuel industry will prevail, if not in this country then in another one, and if not with this President then the next one. READ MORE
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