World’s first low-carbon fuel provision
California regulators will design life-cycle assessment protocols to help fuel producers measure their CO2 output from cradle to grave.
Transportation fuels sold in California will have to contain 10% less carbon by 2020 under an executive order signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in late January. California is the nation’s largest fuel consumer and will provide a steady market that is likely to stimulate renewed entrepreneurial activity related to cleaner fuels, like cellulosic ethanol, as well as plug-in electric hybrids and even hydrogen fuel cells.
“This is a game-changing event,” says Sara Hessenflow Harper, an analyst for the activist group Environmental Defense. Harper says she believes that other states and countries are likely to follow suit. “For the first time, [this measure] will provide a way to judge fuels from a life-cycle standpoint, not just from the tailpipe.”
The order directs the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop protocols by June for measuring the carbon intensity of each particular fuel from beginning to end, starting with the way fuels are processed. After such a calculation, two gallons of ethanol could receive different ratings, based on the amount of energy that went into producing them, Harper explains. Plants that use methane gas captured from livestock manure as a fuel source to ferment corn, for example, avoid both an emission of methane, which is significantly more potent than CO2, and a purchase of natural gas that they otherwise would’ve needed to fuel their operations.
“The beauty of this policy is that it doesn’t pick a specific [fuel] winner,” unlike the U.S. EPA’s renewable fuel standard for ethanol, says Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. “It sets a performance level and lets the market compete to meet it.” The measure should encourage market forces to create a significant financial penalty for dirtier fuels, such as oil from tar sands.
Fuel suppliers say they’re encouraged by the market-based approach, but Jay McKeeman, a spokesperson for the California Independent Oil Marketers Association, says they “want to make sure that the administration is focusing equally on the engine side of the equation.” The Schwarzenegger administration plans to address this issue by improving vehicle fuel efficiency under California’s 2004 Pavley standards.
Schwarzenegger is calling for implementation of his order by the end of 2008. Resulting carbon emissions reductions are estimated at 13 million metric tons, roughly 8% of the carbon cap California adopted in a global-warming bill (113KB PDF) last year. That legislation requires statewide reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
