By: CP

CP — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:47:30 +0000

Why don’t you mention the amount of biodiesel exported this year?
You also spend a lot of time talking about splash and dash, but gloss over the govt and industries efforts to correct it (very successfully).
Further, you don’t seem to have an understanding of how the market works. While it’s unfortunate that people continued to export after the close of the splash and dash loophole, you omit the fact that this was the only viable option for many people to keep their doors open. The tax credit had expired so the price of biodiesel jumped significantly above petrol, creating a huge downward force on demand. Unless you’re advocating that biodiesel producers are not allowed to export, I don’t see the problem with Americans doing what they can to keep their business running and their employees employed. Tax pay money isn’t getting flushed to Europe, because this credit still allowed these domestic business’ to thrive, even if their product was going to another market. The RFS has fixed this by crating a mandated domestic market. Now we see that minimal volumes of biodiesel are exported. While these cases of RIN fraud are also unfortunate, you’re painting an entire industry with a broad brush. Actual production is at record levels, and the industry is deeply concerned with cases like these, as RIN integrity is an issue no one takes lightly. The cause for this concern? Well trolls tend to take the actions of two bad actors and use it to paint the other 199 plants in a negative light. Instead you should realize that EPA is pretty familiar with the program they wrote and are catching those who are trying to cheat the system. Good on EPA.
More things off the mark:
38 digit RINs no longer exist. Soooo 2009. EPA has replaced with with a much more user friendly system, though figuring out how to do the trading correctly takes some education.
“Yet, to effectively maintain the overall biofuels mandate imposed in 2007, the Obama EPA recently proposed to increase the 2013 biodiesel mandate above the statutory level of 1 billion gallons to 1.28 billion gallons. There can only be one outcome: U.S. diesel users will pay more for fuel…”
The biomass-based diesel schedule went up to a billion and the number is still listed as a billion till 2022. The language of the rule states that biomass-based diesel will go to 1 billion gallons in 2010, and be AT LEAST 1 billion gallons after, with the ability of the Administrator of EPA to increase that volume if possible. The biodiesel industry understood the uncertainty in the future of the industry, as far as volumes are concerned and didn’t want to make the same mistake the celulosic industry has made; not having the production/feedstock capacity to meet the mandate. Now that there is more certainty, it’s clear that the biodiesel posesses the production and feedstock capacity to increase the volume. This was always a given. If there can be more biodiesel, there should be more biodiesel. It’s just that in 2007, it wasn’t well known what the potential could be.
and that “one outcome?” Empirically false. In many places throughout the country, but particularly in the midwest, biodiesel and biodiesel blends dropped below the price of petrol diesel. Because of this program.

By: Hugh Mann

Hugh Mann — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 03:43:43 +0000

Trollolololololoollollolololol… olololllololoooo lololo

Comments on: The Consequences of our Biofuel Policy

By: CP

By: Hugh Mann