POLICIES IN THE UNITED STATES
U.S. Ethanol Policy
The United States is the largest producer and consumer of ethanol in the world. Corn ethanol has been produced in the U.S. for more than 30 years and has blossomed into a thriving industry. U.S. farms and refineries generate more than half of all ethanol produced around the globe, or 58 billion liters (15 billion gallons) in 2010. Ethanol policy in the U.S. is based mainly on:
Renewable Fuels Standard – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees the world’s most ambitious program to promote ethanol. The Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2), created by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), requires adding continually increasing volumes of renewable sources into the country’s fuel supply – growing from nearly 98 billion liters (26 billion gallons) in 2018 up to 136 billion liters (36 billion gallons) by 2022.
As the agency implemented RFS2, EPA determined that sugarcane ethanol cuts carbon dioxide emissions by more than 60 percent and designated it an Advanced Renewable Fuel. This designation puts sugarcane ethanol in an important category of superior biofuels that will make up 79.5 billion liters (21 billion gallons) of the fuel supply in the United States by 2022 – an amount equal to about 14 percent of today’s gasoline market. Sugarcane ethanol plays a modest but important role supplying Americans with clean renewable fuel. Learn more about sugarcane ethanol’s impact on the RFS.
Other U.S. Policies
On a state level, California enacted the first low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) in the world in 2007 with the objective of lowering by 10 percent the carbon intensity of its transportation fuels when compared to gasoline by the year 2020. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) oversees this program and is responsible for conducting the life-cycle analysis for all fuels used for transportation in California. Under CARB’s most recent analysis, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol is considered one of the lowest carbon fuels available today at commercial scale.
Written by Eduardo Leão de Sousa, Executive-Director at UNICA The elephant is the heaviest terrestrial animal on our planet. On average, it weighs 5 tonnes. Now, imagine 100 million of them placed on a giant scale, whose balance pan is the size of a large city, such as Mexico City or Bangkok. The result of […]Renewable Fuel Standard
