The executive director of The Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC) has responded to the current Time Magazine cover story “The Clean Energy Scam.”
Toni Nuernberg said the article makes corn-based ethanol “the scapegoat of the week." She noted that the studies alluded to in the article “reach conclusions regarding the greenhouse gas emissions associated with potential global land-use changes caused by increasing biofuels demand — specifically for corn-based ethanol. Their conclusions are considered debatable by others in the scientific community."
She also points out that the studies make assumptions that are unrealistic.
(The assumptions) double the level of corn ethanol that is actually required under the new Renewable Fuels Standards by 2015, an assumption that’s not realistic to U.S. corn ethanol production in the next seven years. Congress established a production cap of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol by 2015 to help guard against dramatic land use changes. But Searchinger bases his projections on a model in which U.S. corn ethanol production increased from 15 billion gallons a year to 30 billion gallons a year by 2015. Thus, the findings are irrelevant.
Those assumptions -- that all the full RFS will be met by corn are repeated in lots of places; bu one would think a good reporter would figure that out.
You can read the full letter on Domestic Fuel.
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