In what should be a landmark decision (December 29, 2011) in the ongoing feud between business and the more activist environmentalists, Fresno District Judge Lawrence J. O'Neill ruled against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in a suit filed by the Renewable Fuels Association and Growth Energy. Both organizations are proponents of ethanol produced primarily in the Midwest. The ruling will surely cloud the courts for years to come with litigation denser than the carbon layers CARB claims Midwest ethanol would have spread over the Golden State. But the decision also hints that the friskier efforts of dogmatic environmentalists may have reached a zenith, and a return to practicality and reasonableness, not to mention better science, is on the horizon.
The case in a nutshell pitted Midwest corn growers and ethanol producers against the state of California. After several years of research and hearings centered on California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and the subsequent Low Carbon Fuel Stnadard (LCFS), CARB determined the production of Midwest ethanol was more troublesome to the environment than ethanol produced in California. Judge O'Neill had a different take on it. He ruled the state's LCFS was unconstitutional. In his decision he wrote, "This Court finds that the Low Carbon Fuel Standard discriminates against out-of-state corn-derived ethanol while favoring in-state ethanol and impermissibly regulates extraterritorial conduct."
Neither the litigation nor the court ruling had anything to do with the issue of tax incentives the ethanol industry had been receiving (and which are going away). What was at stake was the health of the Midwest agricultural economy. The California LCFS alone was a serious concern for Midwest corn growers. But an even greater threat loomed when 13 other states with activist environmental agendas confirmed they would enact the same restrictions CARB had come up with to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). They even bought into California's program without benefit of their own research.
In their zealotry for clean air, CARB officials either overlooked or disregarded the consequences their policies would have on a significant sector of the nation's economy. CARB also took an egregious misstep in its march to cleanse California skies of GHG pollutants (which catalytic converters had already done a pretty good job of since the 1970s). It may not have been a factor in Judge O'Neill's decision, but the overstep points to the arrogance typical of many (not all) people and agencies involved in environmental policy matters.
Case in point: A research model prepared in 2009 by Purdue University's Department of Agricultural Economics to help CARB justify its introduction of stricter regulations on carbon dioxide emissions in California was drastically modified in 2010. The modification came about after a year's worth of pushback from concerned scientists criticizing Purdue's data and presumptions. It seems the modelers who were tallying the release of CO2 from indirect-land-use- change did not factor in important market data or by-product information and omitted key weather events and actual yield records in calculating amounts of ethanol feedstock as it related to GHG emissions. Those miscalculations resulted in exaggerated estimations of corn ethanol's GHG emissions. By almost 72 percent. Oops.
The Purdue research team explained its new, lower estimations of GHGs would be "roughly a quarter of the only other published estimate of releases attributable to changes in indirect-land-use." By the way, that "only other published estimate" was theirs. With a dramatically lower incidence of GHG emissions finally attributed to corn growers, you'd think California would have initiated a complete review and overhaul of its stiff regulations. It didn't. But Judge O'Neill's ruling might nudge California to do the right thing.
The case in a nutshell pitted Midwest corn growers and ethanol producers against the state of California. After several years of research and hearings centered on California's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and the subsequent Low Carbon Fuel Stnadard (LCFS), CARB determined the production of Midwest ethanol was more troublesome to the environment than ethanol produced in California. Judge O'Neill had a different take on it. He ruled the state's LCFS was unconstitutional. In his decision he wrote, "This Court finds that the Low Carbon Fuel Standard discriminates against out-of-state corn-derived ethanol while favoring in-state ethanol and impermissibly regulates extraterritorial conduct."
Neither the litigation nor the court ruling had anything to do with the issue of tax incentives the ethanol industry had been receiving (and which are going away). What was at stake was the health of the Midwest agricultural economy. The California LCFS alone was a serious concern for Midwest corn growers. But an even greater threat loomed when 13 other states with activist environmental agendas confirmed they would enact the same restrictions CARB had come up with to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). They even bought into California's program without benefit of their own research.
In their zealotry for clean air, CARB officials either overlooked or disregarded the consequences their policies would have on a significant sector of the nation's economy. CARB also took an egregious misstep in its march to cleanse California skies of GHG pollutants (which catalytic converters had already done a pretty good job of since the 1970s). It may not have been a factor in Judge O'Neill's decision, but the overstep points to the arrogance typical of many (not all) people and agencies involved in environmental policy matters.
Case in point: A research model prepared in 2009 by Purdue University's Department of Agricultural Economics to help CARB justify its introduction of stricter regulations on carbon dioxide emissions in California was drastically modified in 2010. The modification came about after a year's worth of pushback from concerned scientists criticizing Purdue's data and presumptions. It seems the modelers who were tallying the release of CO2 from indirect-land-use- change did not factor in important market data or by-product information and omitted key weather events and actual yield records in calculating amounts of ethanol feedstock as it related to GHG emissions. Those miscalculations resulted in exaggerated estimations of corn ethanol's GHG emissions. By almost 72 percent. Oops.
The Purdue research team explained its new, lower estimations of GHGs would be "roughly a quarter of the only other published estimate of releases attributable to changes in indirect-land-use." By the way, that "only other published estimate" was theirs. With a dramatically lower incidence of GHG emissions finally attributed to corn growers, you'd think California would have initiated a complete review and overhaul of its stiff regulations. It didn't. But Judge O'Neill's ruling might nudge California to do the right thing.
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