The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held its first "listening sessions" this week on its controversial proposed rule to reduce carbon dioxide at existing power plants. BRAG has previously reported on the proposed rule. A copy of the proposed rule is available online.

The listening sessions took place on July 29 and 30, 2014, in Atlanta, Georgia, Denver, Colorado, and Washington, D.C., and will take place on August 1, 2014, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the sessions, EPA heard from a wide range of stakeholders on both sides of the issue, including industry representatives arguing that the proposal would harm the economy, environmental groups stating their support for the rule, and private citizens describing the need for EPA to take action to clean up the air in their states and communities.
 

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On July 31, 2014, USDA issued a report on greenhouse gases. According to USDA's press release, the Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory report "for the first time, provides uniform scientific methods for quantifying the changes in greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and carbon storage from various land management and conservation activities." A copy of the report is available online.

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On May 29, 2014, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report entitled "Ethanol's Broken Promise: Using Less Corn Ethanol Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions." A copy of the report is available online.

The report concludes that "[t]he Environmental Protection Agency's pending proposal to cut the amount of corn ethanol that must be blended into gasoline in 2014 by 1.39 billion gallons would lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 3 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2e) – as much as taking 580,000 cars off the road for a year." The report finds that the corn ethanol volume requirements in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) have led to increased greenhouse gas emissions as more uncultivated land is cleared to grow biofuels feedstocks.

Key biofuels trade groups have made public statements challenging the report's findings. For instance, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) issued a press release disputing the flawed EWG report. In the release, RFA President Bob Dinneen states that "[t]he Department of Energy's GREET model clearly shows that corn ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 34 percent compared to gasoline, including hypothetical land use change emissions. Additionally, a Life Cycle Associates study found that corn ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 37-40 percent when compared to tight oil from fracking and tar sands." RFA's press release is available online.

The report comes at a time when EPA is expected to release its final 2014 RFS rule soon, perhaps in June. The biofuels industry generally has urged EPA to revisit the proposed reductions to the advanced and corn ethanol 2014 RFS volumes, while RFS opponents, including generally the oil and gas and livestock industries, have been supportive of EPA's proposed 2014 RFS reductions.
 

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