Just when we thought policymakers were serious about addressing climate change, we read in The Washington Post that the US State Department has approved the construction of a new petroleum pipeline with the sole purpose of importing Canadian tar sands oil to the US. As the Renewable Fuels Association noted in August (see photo below), the environmental footprint of tar sands (carbon emissions aside) is very damaging, to say the least.
In justifying its surprising decision, the State Department claims, "Approval of the permit sends a positive economic signal, in a difficult economic period, about the future reliability and availability of a portion of United States' energy imports, and in the immediate term, this shovel-ready project will provide construction jobs for workers in the United States." And concerns about the environmental impact? Here's what Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said: Concerns about "higher-than-average levels of greenhouse gas emissions associated with oil sands crude" would be "best addressed in the context of the overall set of domestic policies that Canada and the United States will take to address their respective greenhouse gas emissions." We can be sure that will play well with climate policymakers in China and Saudi Arabia who have been resisting limits on their carbon emissions.
Most Americans have come to understand that relying on increasingly environmentally unsustainable imports of petroleum is not a long-term solution to our energy or greenhouse gas emission problems. But, based on its tar sands pipeline decision, it's clear the State Department hasn't gotten the message.
And neither has, or so it appears, the US Environmental Protection Agency. Acting without a solid scientific or policy basis, the EPA is not only ignoring the vast environmental, greenhouse gas and land use impacts of petroleum production such as tar sands, but is in the process of creating roadblocks for the development of American biofuels, a much cleaner domestic alternative. How illogical and contradictory is it to hold US biofuels to an impossible standard and then turn a blind eye to tar sands? And why would we trumpet creating jobs mining tar sands in Canada, while trashing a renewable industry creating jobs in the US. In promulgating a rulemaking that would make it more difficult to produce biofuels in the US, the EPA has shown surprisingly little concern over the expansion of tar sands production. In its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the EPA stated "...our preliminary analysis suggests land use impacts of petroleum production for the fuels used in the US in 2005 would not have an appreciable impact..." Based on the evidence, this claim is not just nonsense, it is dangerous.
Not only is tar sands-based petroleum production environmentally damaging, so too is refining this heavier source of crude oil. According to the Chicago Tribune, "researchers have calculated that refining the Canadian petroleum produces 15 percent to 40 percent more carbon dioxide emissions than conventional oil."
Clearly, tar sands excavation involves significant environmental damages -- with regard to land, water and air. If massive tar sands excavation doesn't have a disruptive effect on land use in Canada, that will be news to many environmental organizations both here and in Canada. In the Post story, Sarah Burt, an attorney for Earthjustice said, "By approving this pipeline, we are committing to another generation of dependence not only on fossil fuels but on the dirtiest, most greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels. We thought that the Obama administration would walk the walk on this, but it appears that that's not happening."
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The Argonne National Laboratory has debunked many of your myths here:
www.ethanolrfa.org/objects/documents/1303/eere_ethanol_energy_balance.pdf
I hope you have found time to follow the link I provided, debunking the DOE PDF:
http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2009/05/biofuel-myths.html
What do biofuels have to do with oil sands? This is called a logical fallacy. Specifically it is a false dilemma in which only two alternatives are assumed (biofuels or oil sands), when in reality the options are not mutually exclusive, related, or even dependent on one another.
I discuss this latest tactic by the RFA in detail on www.biodiversivist.com
Efficiency is the only real game in town. 80% of the fuel in a gas tank is wasted by today's car technology. Simply replacing that fuel with liquefied food, which is made from a mixture of unsustainable fossil fuels and corn, has turned out to be a really dumb idea. The Prius and several other cars on the road today use less than half as much gas as the American average. Compare that to flex fuel fleet burning corn ethanol that get 30% worse than the average mileage.
I have been running E85 in both my Flex Fuel cars for over 3 years and my mpg has only gone down by 7-10% while I am normally buying it for 20% less than gasoline! Alcohol is a REPLACEMENT to gasoline and it also can be blended into gasoline to oxygenate it and make dirty gasoline burn more completely.
Stop believing the myths put out by the Big Oil propaganda machine (the American Petroleum Institute) and look into some facts. Dr Robert Zubrin has an excellent book out "Energy Victory"...I suggest you check it out. The Argonne National Laboratory has done some excellent research and shown that ethanol beats gasoline on every metric (pollution reduction, return on energy investment, performance, etc) which you can check out here: http://www.chicagocleancities.org/PDFs/Wang2005Summary.pdf
Finally, by designing engines with high compression ratios that take advantage of the high octane properties of ethanol we will have vehicles that have greater power and better gas mileage than gasoline only vehicles www.greencarcongress.com/2009/02/ricardo-introdu.html.
You forget to add in the 45 cents per gallon blending subsidy. A 27% mileage drop was reported in the following article titled "The ethanol myth" by Consumer Reports:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/new-cars/news/2006/ethanol-10-06/overview/1006_ethanol_ov1_1.htm
The study by Wang was released almost five years ago. Science is always advancing. His study has been eclipsed by newer studies showing corn ethanol is worse gallon for gallon than gasoline for global warming, water eutrophication, food price disruption, smog formation biodiversity loss and ecosystem destruction. Here are just a few of those studies:
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/biodiesel/page3.html
I'm a mechanical engineer. Note in the last link you provided that it says " Current flex-fuel engines pay a fuel economy penalty of about 30% compared to gasoline." You on the other hand are claiming only 7-10%. What gives? The engine is an experiment and had not even been fired at the time of the article and the article does not say it will get better gas mileage than a gasoline engine. Ethanol has 2/3 less energy per gallon.
Using tar sand derived oil is a disaster and we need to start unplugging ourselves from this oil dependency and build our own renewable energy supplies.
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/08/my-point-exactly.html
http://www.energy.gov/media/Myths_and_Facts.pdf
Sorry, but you are just misinformed. Here is a report that relies on real data from the USDA (food vs fuel nonsense) and will provide a little education on how corn is used in this country and how converting the starch first to ethanol provides for a much better feed to animals.
http://www.ethanolacrossamerica.net/PDFs/09CFDC-004_VanderGriendWhitePaper.pdf
Isn't it also true that "biofuels" are hardly without enviromental effects in its production?
Getting oil from a neighbor and ally is much smarter than importing it across the oceans. This pipeline will create blue collar jobs, too, a major Obama constituency. The "blue-green" alliance won't be an alliance once the "blue" part realizes that the "green" part of the alliance doesn't care about jobs (except for those 25 jobs installing solar panels in Arizona).
The reality is that we still have a long way to go before our carbon footprint is reduced to almost zero. Solar is still a long way from being economically sound without tax subsidies, wind is facing resistance to NIMBYs and of course hydro isn't really "green" because a fish might get hurt going through a turbine.
The nation's electrical grid needs billions in upgrades to handle the new sources of power as well. I expect the head of the RFA to speak this way but get real--oil, gas and coal are still needed and North America has lots of them.
Gasahol refining & mixing already an obsolete, overly expensive, overly delicate process that wastes food.
Forget about building excessivly large passanger vehicles to transport only 2 to 4 people. We can't afford that any more. Oil is too scarce & expensive to waste on gas hogs.
I don't doubt that the construction of the pipeline will be a good source of construction jobs, and of some jobs over time to manage and repair such a pipeline.
But the same money, invested in increased efficiency product production and installation, a high-speed rail system, and more sustainable sources of fuel would be far more productive in the long run.