The Obama administration announced steps today aimed at improving the coordination of U.S. biofuels policy, increasing investment in next-generation fuels and shrinking the industry's environmental footprint.

At the same time, U.S. EPA is releasing draft rules today showing that corn-based ethanol has lower "lifecycle" greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline but still fails to meet emission targets set by Congress in 2007, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said.

The administration is forming a new Biofuels Interagency Working Group that will be led by the secretaries of Energy and Agriculture and the EPA administrator. President Obama is also calling on the Agriculture Department to quicken the pace of programs to support the biofuels industry.

"President Obama's announcement today demonstrates his deep commitment to establishing a permanent biofuels industry in America," said USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, a major ethanol-producing state.

The inter-agency group is tasked with developing a "comprehensive" market development program, which would include policies to aid retail marketing and increase production of flex-fuel vehicles.

Another task would be coordinating infrastructure policies that affect supply, transport and distribution of fuels. A recent report [pdf] by the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy warned that infrastructure to deliver increasing amounts of fuels is at risk of lagging behind increased production.

The group will also come up with policy ideas for reducing the environmental footprint of growing biofuels crops – considering land use, natural-resource conservation, water efficiency and "lifecycle" greenhouse gas emissions.

The United States produced 9 billion gallons of ethanol last year and is expected to surpass 10 billion gallons in 2009, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry trade group.

A major 2007 energy law expanded the national renewable fuels standard to reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. Traditional corn ethanol is limited to 15 billion gallons, and the rest would ultimately come from next-generation sources such as cellulosic ethanol made from crop wastes, grasses and other materials.

5 Comments

1. 1. eco-steve 04:39 PM 5/5/09

   America will only recover from its present dire situation when it accepts that the old ultraliberal economic model is unviable and that an entirely new economy, based on durability is accepted by its people. This will involve defining new objectives and adopting a new way of life. And what is true for America is true for the entire world. A war on waste...

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2. 2. sponger2013 08:20 PM 5/5/09

   Biofuels seem to me to be a "quick fix" solution to a bigger problem. I don't like it, i don't agree with it.
   
   @eco-steve
   
   I agree that we need an entirely new economy, but it should NOT be based on money and greed like it has been my entire life.

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3. 3. Nathaniel 02:06 PM 5/6/09

   ethanol is not good stuff. Not only will it drive the cost of food up, but the stuff becomes fairly toxic when it is burned. On top of all that, it isn't profitable to make without significant government subsidies... which makes it unsustainable.
   
   If they just thought beyond the combustion engine they might come up with some decent solutions. Even hydrogen is better than this. All electric is even better. Spend money on alternative energy, batteries and capacitors and we'll get somewhere. Don't go trying to turn corn into fuel. Perhaps if we tried to figure out how to recycle waste such as used paper and corn husks into fuel... but I'm sure it would still cost more energy than it produces. Bad idea all around.

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4. 4. Telrunya 01:33 PM 5/7/09

   My concern is what this will do to food prices, especially on the global market. We've already had a taste of this durning the Bush administration and it failed miserably. Not only was it inefficent and costly to convert biomass into fuel, but it caused food prices to go up 3-7% world wide. 3-7% isn't a huge hit here in the US. People felt it but business continued as normal. Other places aren't nearly as prosperous or stable. This even greater push for biofuels is only going to magnify the problems. Look for wide spread famine in Asia and Africa, soaring prices everywhere, and inevitably many many wars. Thanks to the Obama administration we're about to enter into one of the most unstable times in human existance.

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5. 5. Pat O'Green 02:01 PM 5/28/09

   Growing crops to power gas guzzling quasi military vehicles that Americans choose to tarnsport themselves in is very peverse. 1 tank of gas could feed a person for a year. If Obama is serious about change, he needs to move America away from giant gas guzzlers.

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