THIS REPORT HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN BY REUTERS Special Report: How U.S. Ethanol Plants Are Allowed to Pollute More than Oil Refineries

September 08, 2022

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Sept 23 (Reuters) - Reuters is withdrawing a Sept. 8 article that compared carbon emissions from U.S. ethanol plants and oil refineries because of its flawed interpretation of data on ethanol-plant pollution and fuel-production capacity. That led to inaccurate estimates of carbon emissions for individual ethanol plants named in the story.

STORY_NUMBER: L8N30E5AE

STORY_DATE: 08/09/2022

STORY_TIME: 1000 GMT

Reporting by Leah Douglas; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

by Leah Douglas (Reuters) In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline. One of the top goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

But today, the nation’s ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation’s oil refineries, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with writing the regulations to meet the goals set by Congress. For processors, that translates to an EPA requirement that the plants use certain emissions-control processes the agency assumes will result in lower-than-gasoline emissions.

But the agency has exempted more than 95% of U.S. ethanol plants from the requirement through a grandfathering provision that excused plants built or under construction before the legislation passed. Today, these plants produce more than 80% of the nation’s ethanol, according to the EPA.

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Green Plains, Marquis and POET said that ethanol is cleaner than gasoline, despite higher plant-level emissions, when all factors are considered, including emissions from fuel consumption in vehicles. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the exempted plants produced much less pollution, including some owned by the same companies producing the highest emissions. The EPA said about a third meet the law’s environmental standard even though they are not required to do so. But as a group, the plants freed from regulation produced 40% more pollution per gallon of fuel capacity, on average, than the plants required to comply, the Reuters analysis found.

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Ethanol industry representatives have recognized the need to lower the biofuel’s carbon emissions, and biofuel producers have been investing in projects that would capture plants’ carbon emissions and bury them permanently underground.

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Ethanol does have a key environmental advantage over gasoline: It burns cleaner in cars.

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Researchers from industry, government and academia seek to account for all these dynamics in estimating ethanol’s pollution throughout its full “life cycle” -- from farms to processing plants to automobile tailpipes.

The Reuters analysis examined one major part of that cycle - ethanol processing - based on the emissions data that most plants are required to report to the EPA. The data provides the only view of ethanol emissions tied to individual processors, allowing for comparisons among ethanol plants subject to the emissions-reduction regulation, those exempt from it, and their counterparts in oil refining.

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The RFA said the Reuters analysis of processing-plant pollution inappropriately focused on only one aspect of the industry’s pollution profile and disputed the findings of independent academic researchers showing the overall life-cycle emissions of ethanol are higher than gasoline. Cooper, the association’s president, concluded that “the science is clear,” showing overall ethanol emissions are “40-50% lower than gasoline.”

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The bulk of ethanol emissions are produced when new land is tilled for corn production, releasing carbon that is stored in soil and roots. Two biofuel experts told Reuters that the team working on the Purdue model has steadily reduced its estimate of how much carbon is released from tilled land over the years, making ethanol appear more climate-friendly.

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The Purdue model is led by Dr. Farzad Taheripour, a researcher and professor of agricultural economics. Taheripour said the model was modified over time to reflect real-world observations of how biofuels production has affected land use. For instance, early scholarship on ethanol regulation suggested the RFS would lead to deforestation, which did not occur, he said.

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U.S. ethanol industry banks on carbon capture to solve emissions problem (Reuters)

A no-ethanol future doesn’t mean a no-profit future: Alan Guebert (Farm Forum)

IN RECENT STORY, REUTERS LOOKS OUT FOR OIL, UNDERMINES CLEAN ENERGY PROGRESS (National Corn Growers Association)

RFA Rebuts Reuters Ethanol Plant Emissions Article (Energy.AgWired.com)

RFA, Growth Energy slam inaccurate Reuters report on ethanol GHGs (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

Reuters Article Recycles False Claims from Widely Debunked Anti-Ethanol Narrative (Growth Energy)

Interview: Ethanol and Carbon Emissions (Renewable Fuels Association; includes AUDIO)

Ethanol Burns Clean, But Creates More Emissions Than Gasoline: The Renewable Energy Standard that mandates the use of ethanol in fuels is up for review this year. Should it be abolished? (Clean Technica)

U.S. BIOFUEL LEADERS CALL OUT ERRORS IN REUTERS REPORT (Fuels America)

Story on U.S. ethanol plant emissions is withdrawn (Reuters)

Climate misinformation spreads on Musk’s Twitter (E&E News)

Excerpt from Renewable Fuels Association: Today’s free-for-all segment on the syndicated radio program Agritalk began with RFA’s Troy Bredenkamp setting the record straight about ethanol plants and carbon emissions. READ MORE; includes AUDIO

Excerpt from National Corn Growers Association: Once again, we see outdated projections made in the early days of the Renewable Fuel Standard – nearly 15 years ago –substitute for today’s analysis based on actual corn and ethanol production experience. This keeps old oil arguments afloat when today’s data show otherwise.

What does recent research on this issue tell us?

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab concluded in 2021 that the combined improvements from farmers and ethanol producers cut ethanol’s carbon intensity by 23 percent between 2005 and 2019, resulting in ethanol that is 44 to 52 percent lower in GHG emissions than the gasoline it replaces, including accounting for emissions from land cover changes.

The research from the Argonne National Lab, which is consistent with updated analysis from Environmental Health and Engineering with researchers from Harvard and Tufts Universities and ethanol production facility assessments from the California Air Resources Board, also notes that any energy source requires a full life-cycle analysis, including corn feedstock production, the biorefining process and transportation/distribution and combustion in vehicles. And emissions across transportation sources must be compared on a full life-cycle to life-cycle basis.

As we consider the life-cycle process, it’s also important to remember that the bulk of CO2 emissions from an ethanol plant are biogenic. That means the carbon emissions from the fuel production process are counterbalanced by carbon uptake during the feedstock production process. That’s our corn plants hard at work, pulling carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil, a process we can actually view from space during the summer.

Unlike oil refineries, biorefineries produce a nearly pure stream of carbon emissions, creating demand for recycling this resource for food and beverages, meat processing, and other sources, adding value and meeting the needs of a range of industries. These characteristics also make biorefineries great facilities to deploy carbon capture and storage technologies, and adoption of this technology is growing rapidly across the industry to further shrink ethanol’s carbon intensity on a pathway to net zero emissions.

In addition, farmers’ increased productivity and efficiency, resulting in higher yields using less land and fewer resources, coupled with continuous improvements in farming practices, cut carbon emissions from the corn feedstock production portion of the lifecycle by 15 percent. We plant fewer acres to corn today than when the RFS was expanded in 2007, yet corn production has increased about 2 percent per year, thanks to farmers’ productivity.

The bottom line: You simply can’t compare emissions from energy and transportation sources based on one variable or a single point in the production and use process. And you can’t rely on projections made nearly 15 years ago when updated data based on actual corn and ethanol production experience is readily available. READ MORE

Excerpt from Energy.AgWired.com: RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper sent the reporter the following statement when contacted for comment regarding the article. “To truly understand the climate impacts of transportation fuels, you have to look at the emissions associated with every step in the production process. Narrowly focusing on just one piece of the carbon lifecycle is inappropriate, misleading, and misses the forest for the trees. When all of the energy inputs and emissions related to producing corn ethanol are properly considered from beginning to end, it is clear that the fuel has a lifecycle carbon intensity that is 40-50% lower than gasoline. The science is clear that ethanol offers a significant and immediate carbon savings compared to petroleum.”

RFA added, “If one took the same analytical approach to electricity that the reporter is taking with ethanol and petroleum refining, the emissions related to electricity generation across most of the United States would be 14 to 35 times worse than the estimate for ethanol (per gasoline-gallon equivalent) and 27 to 66 times worse than the estimate for refined petroleum products (the low end is natural gas; high end is coal).”

Cooper concluded, “The fact is, ethanol and other biofuels offer significant carbon emissions reductions today, and there is a clear and workable pathway toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: The Renewable Fuels Association and Growth Energy are slamming a Reuters article published on Sept. 8 that recycles highly misleading claims about the greenhouse gas (GHG) impact of U.S. ethanol plants.

The Reuters article, in part, cites the widely discredited study by Tyler Lark and others, which was published in February. Lark’s research has been specifically criticized by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, Perdue University, and the University of Illinois. A review of Lark’s work posted to the ANL website points out major flaws in his research and concludes “that the results and conclusions provided by [Lark, et al] are based on several questionable assumptions and a simple modeling approach that has resulted in overestimation of the GHG emissions of corn ethanol.” The ANL response also criticizes Lark’s study for doubling counting emissions and using outdated and inaccurate projections.

The Reuters article also misrepresents the “grandfathering” provisions implemented by the U.S. EPA when the Renewable Fuel Standard was expanded under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.

The RFA points out that just because an ethanol plant was “grandfathered” under the EPA’s rules to implement the RFS, that does not mean the facility isn’t meeting or surpassing the 20 percent GHG reduction requirement that non-grandfathered plants must meet to participate in the RFS. “The plants were grandfathered based on the date they commenced construction, not based on their actual GHG performance,” said the RFA in a statement. “In fact, dozens of ethanol plants have clearly demonstrated to EPA (via the efficient producer pathway process) that they are surpassing the 20 percent threshold. We do not see how one can argue that ‘grandfathered plants contribute 40 percent more emissions than non-grandfathered plants.’ There is no way of knowing that, as grandfathered plants that did not pursue an efficient producer pathway do not submit their full lifecycle carbon intensity scores to EPA.”

The RFA and Growth Energy are also criticizing the Reuters piece for focusing exclusively on stationary-source emissions, rather than the full lifecycle impacts of the fuel. “Compounding the distortion, by its own admission, the Reuters analysis cherry-picked one isolated part of the carbon lifecycle – where yeast ferments renewable starch into fuel and CO2 – while ignoring CO2 taken out of the atmosphere when growing crops, tailpipe reductions, or even the biogenic CO2 captured for reuse in beverages, refrigeration, and meatpacking,” said Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy. “By repeating false claims from Lark and others without any meaningful context, the report does little more than lend ammunition to misinformation campaigns aimed at halting climate progress."

The RFA provided an example to the Reuters author of why examining stationary-source emissions in isolation of the rest of the fuel’s lifecycle is misleading and problematic. “If one took the same analytical approach to electricity that the reporter is taking with ethanol and petroleum refining, the emissions related to electricity generation across most of the United States would be 14 to 35 times worse than the estimate for ethanol (per gasoline-gallon equivalent) and 27 to 66 times worse than the estimate for refined petroleum products (the low end is natural gas; high end is coal),” according to the RFA.

“To truly understand the climate impacts of transportation fuels, you have to look at the emissions associated with every step in the production process,” said Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the RFA.” Narrowly focusing on just one piece of the carbon lifecycle is inappropriate, misleading, and misses the forest for the trees. When all of the energy inputs and emissions related to producing corn ethanol are properly considered from beginning to end, it is clear that the fuel has a lifecycle carbon intensity that is 40-50 percent lower than gasoline. The science is clear that ethanol offers a significant and immediate carbon savings compared to petroleum.”

“This isn’t the first hit piece orchestrated by those opposed to renewable energy, and it won’t be the last,” Skor said. “That’s why Growth Energy will never stop fighting to make sure the American public, and our elected officials, are armed with the truth.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Clean Technica: Ethanol has many uses, including as a fuel for internal combustion engines. According to North Dakota State University, ethanol was first used to power an engine in 1826. Fifty years latter, Nicolaus Otto, the inventor of the modern 4-cycle engine, used ethanol to power one of his first internal combustion prototypes. It also fueled the Ford Model T in 1908. The first ethanol blended with gasoline for use as an octane booster occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, and was in high demand during World War II because of fuel shortages. READ MORE

Excerpt from Fuels America: Reuters has an obligation to quickly correct the record regarding fundamental flaws in the latest “special report” by Leah Douglas about U.S. ethanol. Despite being provided with reams of data from a wide array of subject matter experts, including our own, the author appears to have selectively and purposefully ignored or omitted key facts that did not match a pre-existing narrative. Instead, the story quotes a few outlier biofuel critics without any context about how their conclusions have been repeatedly discredited by many of the nation’s most respected climate scientists. This kind of reporting is a disservice to your readers, who depend on Reuters for an unbiased take on important issues like climate change.

On its face, the central premise of the story is invalid – a fact pointed out to the reporter before this article was published. No credible climate analysis would ever draw conclusions based on a single sliver of the carbon lifecycle, especially when comparing completely different energy sources. That kind of baseless comparison is the hallmark of anti-climate propaganda, and it can be used to justify misleading statements about any clean energy source, be they wind, solar, or biofuels. Nor would any true scientist suggest that policymakers draw conclusions based on outdated, inaccurate projections that have been overtaken by real-world data for over a decade. That’s exactly what this article does.

In stark contrast to the Reuters analysis, it is well settled among climate scientists that a valid understanding of the climate impact of an energy source requires a full “well-to-wheels” lifecycle analysis. For example, the upstream carbon impact of electric vehicles (EV) is worse than petroleum, but EVs offer significant reductions downstream by avoiding combustion. Yet, that’s precisely the baseless logic that Reuters applied to ethanol by isolating a single stage of production.

The report ultimately attempts to explain away its misleading focus by claiming that it’s the “only view of ethanol emissions tied to individual processors.” This is simply untrue. The driving force behind the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard (CA LCFS) is facility-specific carbon intensity scoring. The California Resources Board (CARB) data is easily accessible, and was provided to the reporter. Neither its existence nor its results (showing that the vast majority of ethanol facilities produce a lower-carbon product than petroleum) are mentioned in the report. Notably, CARB is not the only source of data for “ethanol emissions tied to individual processors.” DOE’s latest work at Argonne National Lab (2021) shows that corn ethanol is significantly less carbon intensive than gasoline. It provides a cross-section of different elements of the supply-chain (including production emissions), demonstrating a 30 percent reduction in ethanol production emissions from 2005-2019. This is not obscure technical analysis; it is openly discussed in a recent post (“Ethanol vs. Petroleum-Based Fuel Carbon Emissions”) on the DOE website.

Unlike the Reuters analysis, these data sources reflect basic realities of the carbon lifecycle for ethanol. For example, roughly 25 percent of the ethanol industry captures carbon dioxide. In contrast to petroleum refineries, much of the carbon released during ethanol production is pure, which makes it a valuable source of the food-grade CO2 needed to keep grocery shelves stocked with meat, frozen food, soda, and other staples. And in contrast to petroleum refineries, the biogenic carbon released during fermentation is carbon that was first drawn out of the atmosphere by growing plants.

Arguably the most inaccurate statement in the report is that “a growing consensus of academics has found that, considering all phases of the fuel’s life cycle, ethanol produces more carbon than gasoline – not less.” To make that claim, Reuters appears to have purposefully ignored the most widely cited and credible non-industry authorities on carbon lifecycle modeling (DOE/Argonne/GREET and CARB/CA GREET) in favor of the recent “Lark paper” publicly rebuked by government and academic scientists for “double counting” emissions, using “outdated and inaccurate projections,” “systematic overestimation of soil organic carbon changes,” “inconsistencies, ” and “deficiencies in modeling land transition.” In fact, the same group of climate scientists released a second critique in May 2022 offering an even deeper look at “various major deficiencies, problematic assessments, and misinterpretation of the existing literature,” adding that “the Lark paper is more problematic that what we initially evaluated to be the case.” DOE has publicly distanced itself (sharply) from this analysis in writing.

Again, your reporter was provided with all of this information well before publishing her story. After failing to mention any of this work, including an additional report shared by the Union of Concerned Scientists, your reporter points to a Purdue University model (GTAP) evaluated by EPA as evidence of industry influence merely because (unlike many researchers) Purdue discloses industry funding for industry-funded projects. However, she fails to mention that EPA references GTAP only as a secondary source of information, that EPA relied almost completely on the Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model (FASOM) and the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) model, and GTAP is an economic model used to estimate global market-mediated effects, not production emissions.

Any fair evaluation of up-to-date source material also would have revealed that two of five “fuel production” facilities specifically cited in the report, in Nebraska and Missouri, do not even currently make fuel ethanol. They make alcohol for products like beverages and sanitizer – a process with different standards that should not be conflated with fuel production. For other facilities, it appears that Reuters simply cross-referenced federal emissions data with the nameplate capacity of various facilities, rather than utilize actual facility-level production data that would have offered a less warped view of carbon intensity. Further complicating the picture, Reuters did not make its actual calculations public, which means other errors may be hidden from view.

Moreover, Reuters paints a misleading picture when it comes to grandfathering. When the renewable fuel standards were adopted, a high percentage of ethanol capacity was not initially required to demonstrate alignment with EPA’s 20 percent GHG standard. However, plants that expand capacity must update their data, and you can see in the databases analyzed by Reuters that approximately 100 have gone through the ‘efficient producer’ process and meet the GHG performance standard. There are grandfathered plants that have not filed an efficient producer pathway petition, but that only demonstrates that they have never expanded. It is not a reflection of performance data, and to suggest otherwise by claiming these plants are worse than oil refineries is simply untrue. Over 90 percent of U.S. ethanol capacity is natural gas fired. You can clearly see in the Argonne and CARB data – not mentioned in the Reuters report – that all gas-fired ethanol plants meet the 20 percent GHG standard.

In short, the “regulatory documents examined by Reuters” are not new – they are public records that could only make headlines by being twisted beyond any reasonable context. That Reuters elected to leave so many key facts out of its report speaks volumes about the journalistic integrity of its ‘special’ reporting. READ MORE

Excerpt from Sept 23 (Reuters) - Reuters is withdrawing a Sept. 8 article that compared carbon emissions from U.S. ethanol plants and oil refineries because of its flawed interpretation of data on ethanol-plant pollution and fuel-production capacity. That led to inaccurate estimates of carbon emissions for individual ethanol plants named in the story.

STORY_NUMBER: L8N30E5AE

STORY_DATE: 08/09/2022

STORY_TIME: 1000 GMT

Reporting by Leah Douglas; editing by Richard Valdmanis and Brian Thevenot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Excerpt from Reuters: Reuters has withdrawn a Sept. 8 story comparing carbon emissions at U.S. ethanol plants and oil refineries because of flaws in its interpretation of data that led to inaccurate estimates of pollution at individual ethanol plants.

The errors stemmed in part from a misinterpretation of Environmental Protection Agency data that included emissions from non-fuel products produced by the ethanol plants, such as alcohol for beverages or sanitizer.

Three of the plants named in the story as top industry polluters - owned by Golden Triangle Energy, Central Indiana Ethanol and Green Plains Inc (GPRE.O) - produced mostly non-fuel products, according to the companies. That made the article’s comparison of their emissions to oil refineries inappropriate.

In addition, the emissions estimate for another plant, owned by Marquis Energy, was inflated because Reuters used data on fuel capacity to derive an estimate of plant emissions per gallon of fuel production. The estimate was overstated because the Marquis plant’s actual production was substantially higher than its stated capacity in the data set.

Data on actual production at ethanol plants is not publicly available. READ MORE