The EPA Raised the Renewable Fuels Standard. Here’s Why That Makes No Sense.
This story originally appeared in Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced how many gallons of transportation fuels will have to come from renewable sources in the next couple of years. The numbers are significantly higher than the agency had proposed earlier.
Since 2007, the Untied States has required that a percentage of the fuel we use for transportation come from biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel. That percentage is called the Renewable Fuels Standard, and it keeps increasing. The EPA decides how much.
"More renewable" sounds like a good thing, but in this case it's not. Growing crops and then turning them into energy is just really inefficient—it drives more land into agricultural production (with all the attendant environmental problems) and is generally worse for climate change than plain old petroleum.