BONUS COVERAGE! More On CARB's Heavy Hand.. "Dear Governor..."

This seemed like an appropriate follow-up to this monring's post about CARB's take-no-prisoners approach to new carbon regulations:

The New Fuels Alliance put out a press release today touting a letter "100 of the nation's top scientists" sent to Arnold, calling out CARB's Low Carbon Fuel Standard ("LCFS").

According to the release:

"Biofuels are being wrongly penalized by the California Air Resources Board's (CARB) Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) which requires oil companies to reduce the carbon sold in their fuels 10 percent by 2020. Under this proposal, all fuels are assigned a "carbon score" to reward the least carbon intensive fuels. But only biofuel is being singled out for so-called "indirect effects" thereby giving petroleum products a better carbon score and a competitive advantage. For drivers in California, it means they will be buying more dirty petroleum products and less of the cleaner renewable fuels."

At the heart of the issue for the scientists is a part of the carbon score methodology that stacks the deck against biofuels like cellulosic ethanol.

For biofuels, CARB includes an "indirect land use charge" that is absent for fossile fuels that are scored under the CARB system. This, the scientists argue, creates an unfair playing field and gives dirty, polluting fossile fuels an advantage.

I encourage you to resist the urge to say that ethanol (which has enjoyed something of a privileged playing field itself) has had it coming, becuase in this particular instance, the complaint against the land use charge seems legitimate.

NFA: Will Highly Anticipated California Climate Plan Backfire? [New Fuels Association]