Obama urges greater use of biofuels

03 Feb 10

The Obama administration gave a boost to the corn and coal industries Wednesday February 3, announcing a series of moves to accelerate biofuel use and deploy so-called clean-coal technology on power plants. Unveiling the actions in a meeting with energy-state governors at the White House, President Obama said the steps would create jobs in rural areas, reduce foreign energy dependence and curb the emissions that scientists blame for global warming. Most notably, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made final a regulation that could give corn ethanol a much larger share of the renewable-fuel market mandated by Congress in 2007. An earlier version of the rule included a controversial calculation -- since reworked by EPA scientists -- that would have minimized corn ethanol's role because of concerns about the fuel's overall pollution-fighting credentials. The finding was controversial because it included a scientifically debated calculation of the "indirect" land-use effects of corn ethanol production -- the idea that growing corn for fuel domestically could spur farmers overseas to cut down trees and plant crops such as soybeans. EPA scientists revised their calculations for the final regulation to include new information on crop productivity and a more global view of indirect land-use effects, and they concluded corn ethanol produced in the most energy-efficient manner would in fact meet the emissions standard, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biofuels4-2010feb04,0,6179879.story

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