The EPA's proposal to increase biofuel blending mandates by 2025 would raise greenhouse gas emissions in the short term before producing long-term reductions. The information is from the agency's own documents.

The Renewable Fuel Standard requires the country's oil refineries to add billions of gallons of biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol, in a policy designed to help farmers, reduce energy imports and combat climate change.

The EPA this month unveiled a proposal that would increase mandatory volumes over the next three years from 20.82 billion gallons in 2023 to 22.68 billion gallons by 2025 – including more than 15 billion gallons annually of conventional biofuels such as corn-based ethanol.

This proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions within three years between 81 million and 265.9 million metric tons, as the new cultivation of corn, soybeans and other plantations releases carbon from the soil, according to internal analysis of the EPA proposal, released by Reuters.

That's the climate equivalent of driving between 17.5 million and 57 million vehicles for a year, according to the EPA's greenhouse gas equivalence calculator. The EPA's analysis, however, projects that these emissions will be more than offset in the long run due to reduced exhaust emissions and other factors – assuming that biofuel volume mandates do not change after 2025.

Over 30 years, the proposal would lead to a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of between 128 million and 1.16 billion metric tons, he said, which is equivalent to taking between 28 million and 250 million cars off the streets in a year. "Overall, based on the wide range of life-cycle GHG estimates in the scientific literature, proposed volumes of renewable fuel are estimated to reduce GHG emissions," the EPA said in a statement.

Valerie Thomas, professor of systems engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and chairman of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committee on life cycle analyses for low-carbon transportation fuels, told Reuters that the projected initial increase in emissions is worrisome. "To drive short-term climate change, it's short-term emissions that matter," she said.

Source: RPA news