Biofuels can worsen climate change, Vox reports

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on August 3, 2023 finalized renewable fuel standards for 2023, 2024 and 2025, preserving a program that moves tens of billions of gallons a year.

Biofuels include crop-based ethanol and soy-based biodiesel, but also waste oils and agricultural residues, plus wood-biomass pathways that have drawn sharp criticism in Europe and the United States. Biofuels can reduce energy and greenhouse gas emission intensities associated with transportation, but may have significant societal and environmental effects.

Jonathan Lewis, senior counsel at Clean Air Task Force, drew a bright line between feedstocks when he said, "I support the development and deployment of fuels made from waste, algae, and other feedstocks that do not depend on farmland." Conservation Law Foundation says crop- and waste-derived fuels are not climate solutions at scale. That divide runs through the RFS, where federal law has required gasoline and diesel to be blended with increasing volumes of renewable fuels for about twenty years.

On February 14, 2022, Reuters estimated U.S. corn-based ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline because of emissions from land-use changes to grow corn. On December 15, 2022, Reuters estimated that an EPA biofuels proposal would boost greenhouse gas emissions over three years by between 81 million and 265.9 million metric tons as new tilling and land conversion occur. A 2019 study on biofuel impacts on food prices and land-use change found no evidence of food price increases or land conversion to agriculture in the real-world data it examined.

Emily Skor, the trade group’s CEO, said in a June 20, 2023 Reuters interview, "To overcome the world's climate challenges, we must be guided by the best available science, which shows that biofuels are vital to reaching climate goals.