The Keystone XL pipeline has now waited six years for White House approval. The notion of transporting Canadian oil-sands crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries is anathema to radical “greens.” who form much of President Obama’s political base.
The activists are worried the delays won’t continue past the upcoming elections. Accordingly they’ve launched initiatives to discourage or prevent the crude from being used in transportation fuels. They are pouring money into Northeastern states to persuade them to track the carbon content of fuels and impose low carbon fuel standards (LCFS).
Meanwhile, thousands of activists marched through New York City recently, demanding that the nation stop climate change that has been occurring since Earth began, slash or eliminate hydrocarbons that supply 80 percent of America’s energy, abolish capitalism and ban hydraulic fracturing — which is largely responsible for reducing carbon-dioxide emissions that they blame for climate change while cutting oil and natural-gas prices and generating much-needed jobs and government revenues.
Various laws already require blending conventional and man-made fuels (ethanol, biodiesel and still nearly nonexistent cellulosic biofuels) that supposedly contain less carbon or produce less carbon dioxide across their life cycles. However, some states clearly want their own low carbon fuel standards, while Vermont and Massachusetts appear headed in this direction.
Oregon’s standards will terminate at the end of 2015 unless the legislature extends it. If that doesn’t happen, Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber says he will use “every tool” at his disposal, including executive action, to “fully implement” the state’s “Clean Fuels Program.”
Washington’s Democratic governor, Jay Inslee, is equally committed to implementing a climate agenda, low carbon fuel standards and “carbon market.” If the legislature won’t support his plans, he intends to use his executive authority, a statewide ballot initiative and campaigns to defeat reluctant legislators.
The governors and activists are counting on support from billionaire Tom Steyer, whose fortune was built on fossil-fuel investments. “We’re working to give Jay the legislature he needs,” said League of Conservation Voters President Jay Karpinski, and to aid the entire LCFS effort.
Mr. Inslee says he won’t proceed until there’s been a “rigorous analysis” of the low carbon fuel standards costs and technologies. However, he plans to sole-source that task to a liberal California company — and he attended a closed-door fundraiser in Mr. Steyer’s home the day he joined California, Oregon and British Columbia in signing a climate agreement that had been developed with no public input.
California and British Columbia have already implemented low carbon fuel standards and other rules. The economic impact from Golden State laws and regulations will increase dramatically in January 2015.
All these players think a unified Pacific coast and Northeastern state program will force the United States and world to take action. If a new international climate treaty becomes impossible, they plan to use low carbon fuel standards to augment the Environmental Protection Agency’s unilateral restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions.
India says it will not sign a binding climate agreement to curb its fossil-fuel use. Its first priority is to improve the nation’s economy and lift people out of poverty, disease, misery and premature death.
This requires increasing emissions through new coal-powered electricity and oil-fueled transportation, its environment minister says, so it will be at least 30 years before India will reduce its carbon-dioxide emissions. China, Brazil and other major developing countries are in the same position.
That means punitive EPA and fuel-standard actions will have no effect on global atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels — or on climate change, even if carbon dioxide has somehow become more important than the powerful solar effect and other natural forces that have always ruled Earth’s fickle climate.
Worldwide demand for oil dictates that the Canadian oil sands will continue being used to make fuels, and courts have ruled that only California has authority from the Clean Air Act to enact its own fuel standards.
Mr. Kitzhaber responds that LCFS will “spark a homegrown clean-fuels industry” and create jobs.
Charles River Associates says this is unlikely. Applied nationally, it calculated, low carbon fuel regulations could raise the cost of motor fuels by up to 170 percent over the next 10 years and destroy between 2.5 million and 4.5 million jobs.
Low carbon fuel standards prop up outdated fuels created to address “peak oil and gas” problems that ended with fracking, which has dramatically increased U.S. production of both fuels.
Producing biofuels requires massive amounts of land, pesticides, fertilizers, fossil fuels and water. Current quotas require plowing an area larger than Iowa to grow corn for ethanol, instead of using it for food crops or wildlife habitat.
The Department of Energy says fracking requires about six gallons of fresh or brackish water per million British thermal units (BTUs) of energy produced. Corn-based ethanol requires up to 29,000 gallons of fresh water per million British thermal units, and soybean biodiesel consumes as much as 75,000 gallons of water per million BTUs.
In terms of carbon dioxide molecules consumed and carbon dioxide emitted over the planting, growing, harvesting, refining, shipping and fuel-use cycle, “green” fuels fare no better than conventional gasoline and diesel.
Low carbon fuel standards are foolish. They amount to crony capitalism masquerading as a solution to an exaggerated or fabricated climate problem — and to separate taxpayers and motorists from their hard-earned currency.
Fiats are fun to drive, but executive fiats kill jobs, economies, family budgets and our children’s future.
____________
This article originally appeared in the Washington Times
Ethanol is added to gas as an oxidizer to lower the emissions. when HTB was added it ended up polluting our water, you can pour Ethanol in a lake and in a few days its gone HTB pollutes the water for hundreds of years.
What is HTB?
sorry meant MTBE
If I remember correctly in my high school science class I was told water is only used the molecules return to the state of water eventually, or I thing the world would have ran out of water a long time ago. I do not know if Ethanol is good or bad but your article has to many holes for me to believe anything in it.
You mite want to brush up on your English, it has many holes in it.
Ethanol is not an oxider. It is a fuel, used in many racing applications and to extend gasoline. One of the problems with ethanol is that it is much lower in btu’s than gasoline, so more needs to be burned to do the same amount of work.
You mite want to Google Ethanol vs MTBE.
another problem with ethanol is that it gives the inside of the fuel tank and fuel system an unwanted wash; some of the detritus then goes through the engine. this is not good. another problem is that most engines are not optimised for ethanol-petrol blends so the mpg is compromised.
I suspect that the ideological belief in environmentalism is behind the current claims that promote quixotic environmental policies in the US and rest of the globe. The ideological move to curb carbon dioxide emissions is questionable, in my view, and therefore must be challenged right from the beginning. – J.P.K.
I tried E-85 gasoline 2 years ago on an 800 mile round trip, as an honest test of my Avalanche. Having made that trip 5 or 6 times before, in winter and summer, I had a good idea what I should be getting for fuel consumption. I get about 20.5 miles per Canadian gallon, but with E-85, the best I managed was 17 mpg, mostly because I had so much less power. I have never used E-85 since and never will. 15% less mileage for the same price per gallon. A massive ripoff. When I need to fill up, it is worth it for me to go out of my way to get real gasoline rather than fill at a gas station that only sells fake crap.
The original intent of adding ethanol to gasoline was to lower the vapor pressure of gasoline and thus lower the amount of atmospheric contamination from evaporation. Adding ethanol past 10% results in diminishing returns. A further consideration is that burning ethanol in an internal combustion engine results in a presence of formaldehyde in the exhaust gases. Ethanol has only two thirds the energy content of gasoline and requires large amounts of petroleum to produce. .
Some years ago, the government implemented mandatory 10% ethanol blend be sold as 87 octane gasoline in Hawaii. When it was first mandated, they said the refineries could no longer “produce” straight mogas and the ethanol blend, so straight fuel would no longer be available. This was totally untrue, but the media and public bought it. Actually, the ethanol is blended at the “terminal” when the tank trucks are filled, not during the refining process. In fact, due to periodic lack of availability of ethanol, the E10 fuel, purported to be 10% ethanol, being sold could have less than the posted percentage of ethanol. Based upon fuel mileage variations that I have observed with multiple vehicles, I believe that some E10 fuel that I have used actually contained far less than 10% ethanol. I noticed the E10 sticker labels on the pumps actually say “May contain up to 10% ethanol” (the operative word being “May”). Now 89 octane straight gasoline is more commonly available. Although they have inflated the cost of the straight gasoline, we use the 89 octane without ethanol exclusively in all 2-cycle engines (weed eater and chainsaw), small single cylinder engine water pumps and pressure washer, outboard motor on our boat and in a ’97 V-8 Dodge pickup. Fuel consumption in the truck with straight mogas is approximately 3 MPG more than with E10 so the additional cost per gallon is negated. We have no issues with fuel system components being damaged or prematurely failing with the small engines and boat.
Also: Straight fuel can be stored longer without degradation. Our 2 gallon fuel can of 89 octane mixed with a premium 2-cycle lube oil has lasted in excess of 4 months with no signs of phase separation or water accumulation. Before, we never pre-mixed more than one gallon or a one month supply of 2-cycle fuel if only E10 was available.