President Touts His Alternative Fuels Plan
President Obama moved on Wednesday to bolster the nation’s production of corn-based ethanol and other alternative liquid fuels and ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, John M. Broder reports in The New York Times.
The president is trying to expand the portfolio of American energy sources to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a factor in global warming, and spur advances in alternative technologies. Last week he expressed support in his State of the Union address for increased generation of nuclear power and offshore drilling for oil and gas.
Mr. Obama’s motives are environmental, economic and political. He is trying to address climate change by replacing dirty fuels with cleaner sources, jump-start an American clean-energy industry, reduce dependence on foreign oil and attract Republican votes for legislation to do all three.
Efforts to pass a broad energy and climate bill remain mired in the Senate, with some senators challenging the notion that the earth is warming.
“Now, there’s no reason that we shouldn’t be able to work together in a bipartisan way to get this done,” Mr. Obama said after opening a meeting with several cabinet officers and a bipartisan group of about a dozen governors to discuss his energy agenda.
“I know that there is some concern about how energy fits together with climate change,” he said. “I happen to believe that climate change is one of the reasons why we’ve got to pursue a clean energy agenda, but it’s not the only reason.”
“So even if you don’t believe in the severity of climate change, as I do, you still should want to pursue this agenda. It’s good for our national security and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. It’s good for our economy because it will produce jobs.”
To that end, the administration announced that it was completing a rule to try to meet a mandate in a 2007 energy bill to produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol and advanced biofuels a year by 2022. The United States now produces 12 billion gallons of biofuels, mostly corn-based ethanol. The country does not have the capacity to triple that production.
The Environmental Protection Agency said that meeting the 2022 standard would reduce oil use by 328 billion barrels a year. To qualify under the biofuels program, the agency said, producers must demonstrate that their fuels produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than oil does throughout the life cycle — growing, processing, transport and burning.
The Agriculture Department said it would provide financing to farmers, ranchers and foresters to convert biomass — farm and forest waste, sugar cane, switch grass and other materials — into liquid fuels for land, air and sea transportation.
And the Energy Department said it would try to build five to 10 projects by 2016 to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal.
“Our nation’s economy will continue to rely on the availability and affordability of domestic coal for decades to meet its energy needs, and these advances are necessary to reduce pollution in the meantime,” said Steven Chu, the energy secretary.
Representatives of the biofuels industry generally welcomed the announcement. But they expressed concern about whether adequate federal support would be available to ensure financing for the plants and pipelines needed to make biofuels competitive with oil. They said that rules on life cycle emissions might be so strict as to favor oil.
