“If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”

That is what President Obama said in his speech at Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday. He stressed the need to fully embrace a clean energy future because “without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”

However, the Renewable Fuels Association notes that environmental activists continue seeking to undermine the growth of biofuels as a way to displace fossil fuels by using unproven theories like Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) and Global Rebound Effect.

RFA points to a new paper published this week in Environmental Research Letters by the originator of the ILUC theory, environmental attorney Tim Searchinger, that suggests the climatic effects of using biomass for energy are no different than using fossil fuels. “By using Searchinger’s logic, a beverage can made from recycled aluminum is the same as a can made from aluminum that was just mined from the ground,” said RFA president Bob Dinneen. “That simply doesn’t make sense, nor does it do anything to break America’s addition to oil.”

According to RFA, the latest scientific evidence clearly shows ethanol production is both environmentally responsible as well as increasingly sustainable, and they are calling on California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) to keep its promise to use the “best available science” in reevaluating its Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS). RFA has written the board twice, urging the immediate adoption of new research from Purdue University that shows ARB overestimated corn ethanol’s potential land use effects by a factor of two. In a letter sent last week to the board, Dinneen expressed concern that ARB is “shirking its commitment to use the best available science and is taking the new Purdue results too lightly.” Adopting new scientific data from Purdue University would reduce corn ethanol’s potential indirect land use change (ILUC) penalty by 50 percent.

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The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) is discounting gasoline by 54 cents per gallon on the Tuesday before Memorial Day at two Capitol Hill gas stations to draw attention to a 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

“The one-day discount will provide Washington area residents with a preview of how Americans across the country could save money at the pump if Congress ends this unfair import tax later this year,” reads the UNICA release on the promotion.

The promotion is not sitting well with ethanol organization Growth Energy. “The only thing we should be importing from Brazil is their resolve to become energy independent,” said CEO Tom Buis. “Domestic ethanol is cheaper than imported ethanol, and it is far cheaper than gasoline refined from imported oil. The truth is that we have to end our reliance on foreign energy – period. Domestic ethanol helps create U.S. jobs, and helps the U.S. economy, and strengthens our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign energy.”

The 54 cent per gallon secondary tariff on ethanol is tied to the 51-cent blender’s credit to encourage blenders to use domestically produced ethanol. The secondary tariff on ethanol imports ensures that the tax credit is not given to the ethanol produced in another country. All ethanol blended with gasoline in the U.S. qualifies for the blenders’ credit, no matter the country of origin of the fuel ethanol. To avoid the use of taxpayer dollars to support foreign ethanol production, U.S. ethanol imports from non-Caribbean Basin countries are subject to the secondary tariff.

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