One was a busy financial adviser. Another was an insurance agent. A third had recently finished law school and embarked on a legal career.Then came the tornado.WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is off base in its proposed rules to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases from factories that make ethanol and other alternative fuels, Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Friday.
“At this time when we all seek to work with the president to improve the economy through new energy investment, it is unfathomable that the EPA would act to curtail a great boon to rural development,” Lugar said to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.
The EPA issued draft rules Tuesday on how much carbon dioxide can be released during the production of ethanol and other fuels made from plants.
The agency said it would factor in its calculation the domino effect of ethanol production. For instance, if more U.S. crops are sent to fuel distilleries rather than exported, and that causes farmers in other countries to chop down trees to create more farmland, and that causes more carbon to be released because fewer trees are absorbing it, the U.S. ethanol plant would be “charged” for that increase in carbon emissions.
Ethanol plants under construction by December 2007 would be exempt from the rule.
Lugar said that calculation is “highly speculative and imperfect” and can’t be made with sufficient accuracy.
Lugar said the ruling would “further entrench U.S. dependency on foreign oil.”
He said the production of 9.2 billion gallons of ethanol in 2008 erased the need for 325 million barrels of crude oil – the amount of crude oil the U.S. imports in a month.
In theory, he said, “domestic ethanol production allowed the U.S. to be ‘oil import-free’ for an entire month last year. While the U.S. paid $453 billion for oil imports in 2008, that same year, ethanol production prevented the outflow of $32 billion.”
