Advisers for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sought advice from California regulators on ways to revamp U.S. biofuel mandates, said Reuters. Corn-based ethanol is popular in the Midwest so the possibility of change in the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard could hurt her in corn states “like Iowa, where she faces a tough battle against Republican rival Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election.”
According to Reuters, the Clinton campaign contacted the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to discuss if an approach similar to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard could augment or replace the RFS. The low-carbon standard is a market-based system rather than a mandate. It requires a 10-percent reduction in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 2020 but leaves it to companies to decide how to comply.
CARB chief Mary Nichols, a supporter of the low-carbon standard, said she told Clinton advisers there would be less backlash with other approaches, such as encouraging sales of electric cars and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. A Clinton spokesman said the campaign “does not support replacing the RFS with a national low-carbon fuel standard.”
Environmentalists, the oil industry, farm groups and ethanol makers have been in a dog fight for years over the ethanol mandate. The oil industry says the gasoline market is saturated with ethanol. Farm groups want EPA to set higher targets for biofuel use.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican and a leading Senate supporter of ethanol, said the RFS is “a tremendous success … Any proposal that opens up or undermines the RFS and results in less ethanol, biodiesel and cellulosic biofuels is a non-starter with those of us who understand the value of renewable fuels and the potential for industry innovation to continue indefinitely.”
“The Renewable Fuel Standard has been and continues to be a tremendous success for clean air, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and support for homegrown biofuels,” Grassley said. “A low carbon fuel standard, which exists in California, is an invention of those who belittle the carbon benefit of traditional corn ethanol, using a scientifically questionable rationale.”
In a fact sheet on rural America, issued last year, Clinton said she would “strengthen the Renewable Fuel Standard so it drives the development of advanced cellulosic and other advanced biofuels, protects consumers, improves access to E15, E85, and biodiesel blends, and provides investment certainty.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he supports the biofuels mandates set in a 2007 law, which would mean a continued rise in the share of the fuel market guaranteed to ethanol and second-generation biofuels such as ethanol made from woody plants.