House ag chairman standing against climate bill

As another congressional committee considered a climate change bill with major implications for agriculture, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said he would not consider supporting the bill unless Congress passes a “renewable fuel standard improvement act” he and House Agriculture Committee ranking member Frank Lucas, D-Okla., have introduced. The Peterson-Lucas bill would repeal a provision in the 2007 energy bill that requires EPA to consider how biofuel production affects land use in the United States and internationally when calculating the greenhouse gas emissions associated with advanced biofuels. The calculation would determine whether ethanol and other biofuels meet a standard to be considered low carbon emitters. At a House Agriculture Committee hearing on May 21, renewable fuels industry officials said that the analytical models being used by the California Air Resources Board and EPA to analyze whether corn-based ethanol and other biofuels meet a low carbon fuels standard are unscientific. Industry officials said models to determine whether U.S. corn ethanol production leads to changes in land use in other countries are particularly faulty, but they also said the agencies are not applying the same standards to other transportation fuels...Ag Week