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National Biodiesel Board offers testimony on RFS-2

The NationalBiodiesel Board testified Wednesday before the House Ag subcommittee on the RFS-2.  The hearing focused on the impact Indirect Land Use Change assumptions in the proposed EPA standard will have on the biofuels industry.

NB vice president of federal affairs, Manning Feracisays while the science pertaining to direct emissions is well established, showing biodiesel reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 78 percent, science does NOT back up indirect land use effects.  NBB President Joe Jobe tells Brownfield only four actual studies on indirect land use have been done,"And all four of them have different conclusions and some of them contrasting conclusions."

Jobe says the Biodiesel Board is developing scientific data to assist EPA in its promise to review scientific data related to indirect greenhouse gas effects ofbiofuels.  On Monday, the NBB said U.S. biodiesel production fell to 30 million gallons in March with the industry poised to slide back to 2006 production levels.  Jobe says the industry is not immune to the effects of the global recession and credit crunch.  And the energy and agsectors always see these boom and bust cycles, "When the prices go up, alternatives come into the markets but then the prices crash and alternatives are suffocated out."

Jobe says it's going to take sound, stable energy policy to make that happen,"We've got to have the RFS to help feather out this bust cycle, this downturn that we're in so that the industry doesn't just wither away."

Nationwide, many biodiesel plants are sitting idle and at least 20 have gone out of business.  Jobesays he's encouraged by the biofuels directives of President Obama to support the industry.